January 3, 2012 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Donors call the shots in the nonprofit world, for better or for worse. Their money can have a huge impact on a charity’s work; sometimes they can influence an entire field or cause.
The Chronicle took a look at philanthropists and grant makers whose giving could make a significant difference in 2012 and beyond. The list includes not just donors who are poised to give big but also those who are changing direction or taking a new tack.
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Howard W. Buffett Jr.
A third generation of Buffett philanthropy
Mr. Buffett may be best known as the grandson of the investor Warren Buffett, but he’s quickly making a name for himself in philanthropy. The 28-year-old took over his father’s fund, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, last August. There he will oversee roughly $50-million in annual giving. The younger Mr. Buffett, a former Obama administration official who is often the subject of speculation that he’ll one day run for political office, says that for now he’s focused on grant making. He says he hopes that philanthropy, not his billionaire grandfather’s genius for investing, will be his family’s greatest legacy.
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Laurene Powell Jobs
Will Apple co-founder’s fortune go to philanthropy?
Ms. Jobs, the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, doesn’t seem to share her late husband’s ambivalence toward philanthropy. In 1997, she co-founded College Track, a nonprofit that helps poor children finish high school and get into college. She runs Emerson Collective, which gives money to social entrepreneurs and education leaders. Ms. Jobs is also getting more involved with human-rights issues; for example, she has supported the Eastern Congo Initiative, a nonprofit started by the actor Ben Affleck, that gives money to organizations in the war-ridden region. She serves on the boards of Teach for America (along with her husband’s biographer, Walter Isaacson) and the New America Foundation, among other groups. Whether she continues to give quietly, as she has done to date, or goes public with her philanthropy, Ms. Jobs’s influence is poised to grow.
Simon Greer
Christopher Oechsli
Christopher StoneBig left-leaning foundations have new leaders
Progressive philanthropy has a new crop of leaders. Mr. Greer (left) took over the Nathan Cummings Foundation in August. Mr. Oechsli (center) joined the Atlantic Philanthropies in September. And George Soros’s philanthropy network, the Open Society Foundations, announced in December that Mr. Stone (right) would become its chief executive in July.
Eyes are on Atlantic to see if the fund started by Charles Feeney, one of the founders of duty-free shops, will continue to make big grants to progressive advocacy groups as it follows a path to spending all of its $2-billion endowment by 2016.
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Dustin Moskovitz
More Facebook money may go to charity
Mr. Moskovitz is America’s youngest billionaire, beating his college roommate, Mark Zuckerberg, by eight days. The Facebook co-founders, both 27, have signed the Giving Pledge, a public commitment to give away at least half of their fortunes. But unlike Mr. Zuckerberg, who in 2010 pledged $100-million to help Newark, N.J., schools, Mr. Moskovitz hasn’t made any big commitments yet. In an interview in the October issue of Forbes, Mr. Moskovitz says he and his girlfriend, Cari Tuna, are starting a foundation and will spend the next decade educating themselves about philanthropy. Ms. Tuna in April joined the board of GiveWell, a group that assesses nonprofits’ performance. Facebook has signaled that it plans to go public next year, a move that would free up some big cash for Mr. Moskovitz to donate.
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Peter Thiel
Tech investor pushes radical philanthropy
Mr. Thiel’s $500,000 investment in Facebook in 2004 helped turn him into a billionaire. The mission of his Thiel Foundation reflects his libertarian philosophy: to “defend and promote freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic.” Grantees include the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Human Rights Foundation, and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Mr. Thiel’s most radical philanthropic gesture to date is the Thiel Fellowship, which gives ambitious young people $100,000 to forgo college and start cutting-edge technology businesses.
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Christopher Elias and Trevor Mundel
New faces lead America’s wealthiest foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation saw big changes to its top staff this year. Dr. Elias (left), an 11-year veteran of the international health charity PATH, took over the fund’s antipoverty program. Dr. Mundel (right) will lead Gates’s global-health division. Like his predecessor in the job, Tachi Yamada, Dr. Mundel comes from the pharmaceutical industry; he previously led Novartis’s global drug development.
Between them, the two men will oversee roughly $2-billion in annual giving.
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William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
As Hewlett looks for a new leader, whither “strategic philanthropy”?
The Menlo Park., Calif., grant maker will bid goodbye in 2012 to its president of a dozen years, Paul Brest. A respected and outspoken voice in philanthropy, Mr. Brest built and oversaw the foundation’s work to improve the practice of giving. His August retirement announcement set off an unusual amount of speculation about who would succeed him at the $7-billion philanthropy. A group of charity officials sent a letter this month to Hewlett board members, urging them to choose a leader who maintains the fund’s commitment to effective grant making but also “understands the limits of ‘strategic philanthropy,’” a results-oriented approach to giving advanced by Mr. Brest. The letter, signed by leaders of Friends of the Earth, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and seven other nonprofits, says such an approach is too often “excessively technocratic.”
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William E. Conway
Billionaire crowdsources his philanthropy
“No joke. This is for real,” read a September column in The Washington Post announcing Mr. Conway’s request that the public tell him how to give away $1-billion. A co-founder of the investment firm the Carlyle Group, Mr. Conway said he wanted specific ideas on how his philanthropy could create jobs; within four days, more than 700 people had responded. No word yet on his decision.
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William S. and Joyce M. Cummings
A low-profile couple gives a $1-billion fortune
It was an easy decision last year for the Cummingses to sign the Giving Pledge, a commitment to leave at least half their fortune to charity. The Massachusetts couple, who made their wealth in commercial real estate, had already planned to give much of their money away. Their Cummings Foundation is an operating fund with nearly $1-billion in assets that supports Tufts University’s veterinary school, an academic center to prevent genocide, and two nonprofit assisted-living centers. Last year Mr. and Ms. Cummings started a second foundation to aid local charities in their home state.
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Sylvia Mathews Burwell
From one philanthropy behemoth to another
Two months after Ms. Burwell (center) quietly stepped down from her job leading the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global-development program, she resurfaced as the new philanthropy chief at Wal-Mart, the corporate world’s biggest donor. Ms. Burwell was appointed president in October of the Wal-Mart Foundation, which, together with the Wal-Mart company, typically gives away more money than any other U.S. business. She begins her new job this month. In addition to leading the company’s foundation, she will oversee its social, environmental, and economic programs in Africa.
