The 25 Best Givers

Posted on 12/23/2009

With money tight, top philanthropists insist on more bang for the buck. Meet the 25 most effective givers.

By Suzanne McGee
Barron's

THE NAME OF THE GAME IN PHILANTHROPY this year is to make your dollars go far -- very far. With the recession squeezing donors and charities alike, it's more important than ever to make sure your giving really makes a difference.

Ideally, each dollar you give will transform itself into $3 or $4 of benefits for your chosen causes -- from improving local schools to easing world poverty. That's high-impact giving, and some philanthropists are raising it to a high form of art.

The best of the best are ranked and profiled on the following pages. Barron's developed the listing in collaboration with consulting firm Global Philanthropy Group. While rankings in other publications highlight those who give the most money, we chose to focus on those who are getting the results.

Some of the findings will surprise you. Who would imagine, for instance, that a targeted effort to alleviate the worst poverty in a single country, Ethiopia, could end up having a greater impact than the massive $34 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its myriad education and health programs worldwide? By our standards, the Ethiopian initiative, launched by Donna and Philip Berber, wins by dint of immediacy.

It could take a decade for some of the Gates Foundation's research into vaccines to translate into an impact on people's lives. By contrast, when the Berber's Glimmer of Hope digs a well and provides clean water to an Ethiopian Community, people's lives are improved immediately and critically.

Of course, if even some of the Gates' long-term initiatives bear fruit, the foundation would tower over all other philanthropic efforts in terms of impact. But for now, we rate it No. 7.

Global Philanthropy Group and Barron's considered scores of philanthropists, rating them on such criteria as innovation, quality of alliances with other groups, the ripple effects of their giving and the extent to which their successful projects can be replicated. We gravitated to philanthropists whose causes address severe problems, like children's health in high-poverty regions of the world, but a broad range of causes, even in the arts, are reflected in the final cut.

By its nature, this exercise involves a lot of subjective calls. Facts and figures about philanthropy are much harder to come by than data on corporations. One giver's definition of success can differ sharply from another giver's -- or from ours. But even if you disagree with some of our judgments, you are bound to learn some useful lessons from each of the 25 philanthropists on the list.

See the full list and read more at Barron's.

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