U.S. Billionaires Wealth Growing so Fast, They Can’t Keep Pace with ‘Giving Pledges’

Billionaires’ wealth in America has grown so fast, that they can’t fulfill their Giving Pledges to give half or more of their wealth before they die. Their cash machines runneth over, especially when the cash you pledge to give away sits in a tax-exempt ‘donor-advised fund’ (DAF).

Via The Institute for Policy Studies

The Giving Pledge is a philanthropic initiative co-founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010 to boost giving by America’s billionaires. Members of the Giving Pledge promise to give at least half of their wealth to charity, either while living or upon their death.

The Giving Pledge is the largest and most visible public commitment that billionaires make as a group to distribute their vast fortunes. Now that the Giving Pledge is 15 years old, there’s a body of evidence suggesting how the Pledge might carry on. Will it be remembered as a catalyst or an empty promise?

The rules of the Giving Pledge are simple: One-percenters sign on as individuals, couples, or families and pledge to give away half or more of their wealth before they die, with many penning flowery letters about their commitment to doing so.

Original signatories included major Silicon Valley figures like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, along with founding eBay president Jeffrey Skoll, and Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna. In Zuckerberg and Chan’s case, they are now the richest of the original signatories. They pledged in 2015 to give away 99% of their Facebook shares in their lifetimes.

As of today, the estimate is that Zuck and Chan have given about 6% of their total wealth away. Part of the problem is that their wealth has grown by 4,244% in the last 15 years (sweet Jesus!). The billionaires are simply getting too rich, too fast, to give it away at pace.

But across nearly every example of pledge signers, there’s proof that the original Pledge is unfulfilled.

According ISP, three-quarters of the original U.S. Giving Pledgers who are still alive remain billionaires today, and they have collectively gotten far wealthier since they signed, while just 8 of 22 deceased Pledgers fulfilled their pledges. What’s more, most of these contributions have gone to private foundations or donor-advised funds (DAFs), which can warehouse wealth for years without paying it out to working charities.

On the cusp of the Great Wealth Transfer to the next generation and a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans under the GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” our nation is about to see even more accretions of philanthropic power in dynastic foundations.

These titanic, trillion-dollar foundations will be tax-exempt, depriving our tax base of crucial revenue; they will retain control over giving within families, inherently advancing plutocratic priorities; they will concentrate power over our politics and civil society to a degree that we cannot accept.

Billionaires can use their foundations to their financial advantage; for example, to avoid major tax bills. Elon Musk signed the pledge in 2012 but donated relatively sparingly until 2021, when he sold 15.7 million shares of Tesla stock for more than $16 billion. That same year, he donated $5.7 billion in Tesla shares to his foundation and saved $2.8 billion in income tax and $1.77 billion in capital gains tax.

Instead of allowing the ultra-wealthy to park trillions for generations in family-controlled foundations and intermediaries such as donor-advised funds, we must strengthen the rules that currently allow them to use these vehicles for tax avoidance, and insist that donated dollars actually reach public charities that work for the public benefit. And, to address the Giving Pledge’s core problem, we must tax wealth at a fair rate to prevent these fortunes from accumulating in the first place.

The summary of the IPS report below offers some of the key findings about the Giving Pledge at 15, along with some of IPS policy recommendations to make philanthropy work for the public. The full PDF includes more detail, background, and methodology.

Key Findings from The Institute for Policy Studies

All of the Giving Pledger data used in this analysis is available for public download from our Inequality.org website here.

Throughout this report, we define a Giving Pledger as any individual, couple, or larger family group that signed the Pledge together. For counting the numbers of Giving Pledgers in this analysis, therefore, we consider each couple and larger family unit to be a single signer.

Giving Pledger basics

• To date, 256 individuals, couples, or families have signed the Giving Pledge. This includes 194 signers from the U.S. and 62 signers from other countries.
• 110 of the U.S. signers are still billionaires today, and they have a combined wealth of $1.7 trillion. Together, they account for almost 13 percent of the total 876 billionaires in the United States.

The original 2010 Pledgers

• 57 U.S. individuals, couples, or families signed the Pledge in 2010, the year it was founded. At the time, they made up around 14 percent of the United States’ 404 recorded billionaires.
• 32 of these original 2010 U.S. Pledgers still have more than a billion dollars.
  • Those who still have more than a billion dollars are worth a combined $908 billion, for an average of $28 billion per family.
  • Their combined net worth has grown by 283 percent since 2010 (166 percent when adjusted for inflation).
  • 3 have less wealth and 29 have greater wealth than they did in 2010.
  • 15 of them have seen their wealth increase by more than 200 percent since 2010. (10 have seen their wealth increase by more than 200 percent when adjusted for inflation.)
  • 5 of them have seen their wealth increase by more than 500 percent. (4 have seen their wealth increase by more than 500 percent when adjusted for inflation.)
  • One Pledger couple — Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan — have seen their wealth increase by more than 4,000 percent since 2010. (Their asset growth is 2,919 percent when adjusted for inflation.)
• 11 of the original 2010 U.S. Pledgers no longer have a billion dollars.
  • 4 Pledgers — Jon and Karen Huntsman, Tom Monaghan, Tashia and John Morgridge, and Shelby White — no longer have a billion dollars largely because their assets lost value, or they left or sold the companies they were heading. Most of these people were already on the cusp of the billionaire threshold.
  • 7 Pledgers — Bernard Osher, David Green, Lyda Hill, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest, Bernie and Bill Marcus, and likely Sanford and Joan Weill — no longer have a billion dollars largely because they have given enough away to dip below a billion. Again, many of these people were on the cusp of the billionaire threshold to start with.
• 14 of the original 2010 U.S. Pledgers are deceased. They were worth a combined $59 billion when they died, for an average of $4.2 billion per family.

Pledger giving is mostly intermediary giving

• The original 2010 Pledgers have given an estimated $206 billion to charity to date. Of that amount, Pledgers donated an estimated $164 billion, or 80 percent, to private foundations. Another estimated $5 billion likely went to donor-advised funds, which is almost certainly an undercount due to gaps in required reporting.
• In 2023, the 44 private foundations established by the living original Pledgers held a total $120 billion in assets, and paid out at a median 9.2 percent.

Living Pledger pledge fulfillment

We calculate pledge fulfillment for living Pledgers as the amount of a Pledger’s charitable giving divided by the sum of their current net worth plus their charitable giving (since if they hadn’t given any gifts, their net worth would be larger by at least the amount they have given away).

• According to our estimates, only one set of living 2010 US Pledgers has technically fulfilled their Pledge: Laura and John Arnold. The Arnolds have given away an estimated $4.76 billion, mostly to their foundation, and have $2.93 billion remaining.
• If all of the living 2010 Pledgers who are still billionaires fulfilled their pledges today, they would direct an additional $367 billion to charity. This is just shy of the $392 billion given all by individuals in the U.S. in 2024.
• If those Pledgers then took charitable deductions for their gifts, the U.S. Treasury could lose as much as $272 billion in reduced income, estate, and capital gains taxes. This would reduce funding for vital programs already threatened by drastic reductions in federal support. These losses in tax revenue are based on a conservative assessment of the up to 74 percent in charitable deductions taken by households in the top 0.1 percent. The exact value of tax savings for Pledgers would depend on gift timing, asset classes, appreciated value, and the use of trusts or other devices to reduce estate and gift taxes.

Deceased Pledger pledge fulfillment

We calculate pledge fulfillment for deceased Pledgers as the amount of a Pledger’s charitable giving (either during their lifetime or through bequests from their estate) divided by the sum of their final net worth plus their charitable giving.

• 22 U.S. Pledgers have died, including 14 of the original 2010 signers. These 22 people were worth a combined $43.4 billion when they died.
• Only one of the 22 deceased Pledgers — Chuck Feeney — gave his entire $8 billion fortune away before he died.
• 8 of the 22 deceased Pledgers fulfilled their pledges, giving away 50 percent or more of their wealth at death, either while they were living or in their estates.
• The remaining 13 deceased Pledgers gave away less than 50 percent of their wealth, either while they were living or in their estates — although some of their estates are still being resolved.

Recommendations

If the Pledgers continue as they have, billionaire philanthropy will be more powerful and dynastic than ever.

The U.S. will likely become home to at least one trillion-dollar foundation that disburses a modest 5-7 percent of its assets, gives less than it grows from market investments, and wields the power and influence of a nation state. We’ll see more realizations of PayPal co-founders Elon Musk and Peter Thiel’s techno-feudalist visions of society: philanthropic support for a select few within the walls of a separatist community, and utter abandonment of civic concern beyond those walls.

Pledgers have urgent choices to make to define their legacies. Are they going to take after Chuck Feeney, try publicly for a moonshot like Bill Gates, rest on their philanthropic laurels, or shamelessly enjoy their wealth at everyone else’s expense?

We can’t rely on billionaires to do it on their own

It makes sense that the Giving Pledge, as an organization, does not serve as an oversight body, nor does it police its signatories. But at 15 years old, to retain credibility, Pledgers must either go big or reconsider the Pledge’s value. Its leaders should lift up the bold givers — those who, in the words and actions of MacKenzie Scott, “will keep at it until the safe is empty.”

Could billionaires and civic leaders create or helm a meaningful enough campaign to make the Pledge real? Only if they take action as bold as their public pronouncements.

We propose the adoption and encouragement of a “Feeney Giving Pledge,” a call for Pledgers to pay their fair share of taxes, give money away while alive, and empower organizations led by non-billionaires to solve the urgent problems of our day. Over 20 years, Chuck Feeney distributed over $8 billion through Atlantic Philanthropies and closed up shop. At the end of his life, he was no longer a billionaire.

Bill Gates could lead the way on this. He’s already effectively promised to mirror Feeney’s giving while living practice by emptying his foundation over the next 20 years.

Pledgers could sign onto this new mandate, and a targeted media campaign could ramp up pressure on billionaires to make more meaningful and transparent commitments to giving, or to ceding control over assets.

However, it’s worth remembering that billionaires get several advantages from their philanthropy:

• Hefty tax reductions, subsidized by the public to up to 74 cents per dollar.
• Broad control over nonprofits’ priorities and survival.
• Great press and a rosy reputational glow.
• Anonymity, even for politically oriented giving.

Why would they ever give this up on their own accord?

The case for meaningful policy change

We believe billionaires should pay their fair share in taxes. For those charitably inclined, the tax system encourages and incentivizes billionaires to donate to qualified charities. But because most of these donations travel through intermediaries, there is often a substantial lag time before donations reach working charities.

We believe funds should move in a timely way outside of the donor’s domain to support the work of the vibrant, independent nonprofit sector. We don’t want funds to be parked for generations in taxpayer-subsidized intermediaries, such as private foundations and donor-advised funds (DAFs).

We can’t wait for billionaires to fix our problems through philanthropy. Donations need to flow to working charities, not intermediary vehicles that never step up even on our rainiest days.

We advocate for a number of immediate, broadly popular, and common-sense solutions that would shake loose hundreds of billions of dollars in charitable gifts. These solutions require a commitment to nonpartisan application, instead of using regulation to persecute political enemies. They include:

• Increasing the flow of money from private foundations and DAFs to operating charities.
• Ensuring greater transparency and public accountability.
• Preventing abuses of the charitable system.
• Protecting the fairness and integrity of the tax system.

And, most importantly, to address the Giving Pledge’s core problem:

• Taxing wealth at a fair rate to prevent these fortunes from accumulating in the first place.

For more information, please see our full list of charity reform proposals on Inequality.org.

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