Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

Have you heard of Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg? Chances are, you have. They are some of the richest people in the world. Now, have you heard of “The Giving Pledge campaign?” It’s a campaign by Buffet and Gates to recruit billionaires to agree to donate at least half their fortunes to charity. People are keeping track of these generous billionaires. The "Philanthropy 50″ list is issued annually by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The 2014 list is the 14 th annual list of the 50 most generous donors in America in 2013. Something surprising about these giving people is their mean age, the median age of the top 50 donors in 2013 was 72.5. Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg and Pricilla Chan made new donations or pledges that total nearly $1 billion in 2013. Zuckerberg is the youngest ever billionaire on the top 50 donors list. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg is the exception when it comes to young billionaires. His peers are choosing, at least s...

If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money? Dreams of new houses, cars, trips and jewelry may have just begun dancing through your head. It’s a fun game to play.  And of course, you would give some money to charity, too.  I recently inherited some money and have both enjoyed the idea of giving some of it away and then have been stuck on where to give it, not because there aren’t enough worthy charities, but because there are so many. Truly, it hasn’t been that hard. I have given to several charities which I support regularly. What about $40 million, what would you do with it? Fulfill your needs (and a few wants), help out your family and then put some away for a rainy day?  Or would you give it all away? If you’re Tom Crist you would. The Canadian lottery winner didn’t even tell his children he won for seven months.  He had what he needed to live, to take care of his children, but what he didn’t have was his wife. She had died ...