Marty Levine
July 30, 2025
Fifteen years ago, the drums rolled, the horns blared, and the news came down. Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett, three of the world’s wealthiest people, and 38 other ultra-rich individuals committed to using their wealth to better the world. The announcement that they had signed “The Giving Pledge…a promise by the world’s wealthiest philanthropists to give the majority of their wealth to charitable causes in their lifetime or wills” made major headlines.
Since then, this “movement” has grown; today, on its 15th anniversary, “more than 250 of the world’s wealthiest philanthropists from 30 countries have made that promise.”
How its effectiveness and importance will be judged will have much to do with how one understands the concepts of philanthropy and charity.
On its website, the Giving Pledge community provides some of the answers as seen from those who have made the pledge.
I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living — to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition.”
Charles F. Feeney, Pledged in 2011
As a young philanthropist, I expect to have more questions than answers. The Giving Pledge offers a great platform to learn, exchange ideas, and work collaboratively to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Nikhil Kamath, Pledged in 2023
Noble and high-minded words, indeed.
One would think in these days when climate change is wreaking the life of hundreds of millions across the globe, when treatable diseases still afflict millions because adequate medical care is not available, when so many are unhoused, that these funds would be going directly to those organizations that are on the front lines, responding directly to the challenges. One would think that the funds being pledged and in fact given as Pledge signers make good on their commitments would be directly making the world better.
But, according to a study (The Giving Pledge at 15) released today by the Institute for Policy Studies, that is not what the Giving Pledge community has done. The study’s top line conclusion is that it is a failure at best, and a cruel sham at worst. “But across nearly every example, there’s proof that the Pledge is unfulfilled, unfulfillable, and not our ticket to a fairer, better future.
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.
Let me repeat the key part of these findings: “ most of these contributions have gone to private foundations or donor-advised funds (DAFs), which can warehouse wealth without paying it out to working charities.”
The Giving Pledge has just put a new coat of paint on the game plan of so many ultra-wealthy people; they “give” their funds away, get the benefits of our generous tax code, and reap the PR benefits from being civic-minded and charitable. They retain the political clout that wealth can buy. And they, and their descendants, can retain control of their “gift.”
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- 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 of $120 billion in assets, and paid out at a median 9.2 percent.
Three years ago I highlighted how this self-serving giving looks in practice for Bill Gates and his former wife, Melinda French.
Of all the needs and causes in a COVID ravaged world, in a world with growing hunger, in a world with a growing wealth gap that leaves more and more people behind, Mr. Gates and Ms. French selected one cause of greatest need, the Bill and Melinda Gates Trust, which was established to manage the assets donated to support the work of their Foundation.
That is not a typo; their headline-making gift was to increase their trust, which ended 2020 with net assets of $45,396,621,499 by another $15 billion.
Gift or donation implies giving something away. Is it a gift if you give something additional to something else you control? Mr. Gates, Ms. French, and Warren Buffett, as trustees, retain control of how their funds are utilized. So, is it a gift when they move investments from one place to another and retain control?
Is it self-sacrifice, commonly defined as the “sacrifice of one’s personal interests or well-being for the sake of others or for a cause or the sacrifice of what commonly constitutes the happiness of life for the sake of duty or other high motive…”, when Mr. Gates’ fortune grew by more than $30B between March 2020 and October 2021?
Unless we drastically change the laws that govern charitable giving and our social system that rewards wealthy men and women for words and false deeds, there is no reason to expect change.
Institute for Policy Studies suggests a road map for change that I would heartily endorse
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- 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: (wealth inequality)
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- Taxing wealth at a fair rate to prevent these fortunes from accumulating in the first place.
None of these suggestions is new. All have struggled to get political traction; perhaps not surprising given the wealth on the other side.
But failure to act gives us a dystopian future, as described by Chuck Collins, co-author of the report, the director of the Charity Reform Initiative, and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies
Based on these patterns, on the cusp of the Great Wealth Transfer to the next generation and a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, our nation is about to see even more growth and concentration of philanthropic power in dynastic foundations. We are facing the peril of billionaire charity dynasties wielding tremendous private power, the likes of which we’ve never seen — all subsidized by taxpayers.
