Giving types
Only money that reached a charity counts. Money moved into a vehicle the giver still controls is parked until it is paid out.
| Giving type | Counts toward rate? | Shown as |
|---|---|---|
| Direct gift to a charity | Yes | Given |
| Grants paid by their own foundation | Yes | Given |
| Documented charitable grants paid by their own LLC | Yes | Given |
| Estimate from a published list | Yes, flagged | Given · estimate |
| Transfer into their own foundation | No | Parked |
| Transfer into their own LLC | No | Parked |
| Donor-advised fund deposit | No | Parked |
| Pledge or announced commitment | No | Promised |
| Gift to a political organization | No | Excluded |
A transfer into a person's own foundation or LLC is never counted; only the documented grants it pays out are. This avoids counting the same money twice. Grants that a person's foundation pays into a donor-advised fund are also parked, because where that money goes next is not public. Gifts to an undisclosed charity outside the person's own vehicles count as given. Political gifts are not charitable donations (they are not tax-deductible gifts to a charity), so they fall outside what this site measures.
The rate
For each person and each complete year:
"Given" includes direct gifts, foundation grants paid and flagged estimates. Parked and promised amounts are excluded. The leaderboard uses the average of the last 5 complete years with data (fewer if fewer exist, minimum 2), which smooths out years with one huge gift or none. The years used are always shown.
Net worth at the start of a year is the value at the close of the last trading day of the previous year. Where a person's holdings are public, it is calculated as shares held × closing price. Otherwise it is the Forbes or Bloomberg estimate nearest that date, recorded by hand with its source.
Which years count
A year counts once it has ended and every source needed for it is in. Foundation filings (Form 990-PF) arrive up to a year after the year ends, so a year whose filing is still missing is left out rather than understated. A year without a sourced start-of-year net worth is also left out. Entries are updated as new filings come in, and each person page shows the years used.
The calculator
Your yearly income is compared with a billionaire's yearly gain in wealth, counted before their giving, summed over the same years as the rate (where the next year's starting net worth is known):
income rate = Σ given ÷ Σ gain
Both sides then compare the same thing: the share of what came in during a year that was given away. Billionaire wealth swings with stock prices, so gains are summed over the whole window, not judged year by year. If a person's wealth fell over the whole window, the calculator says so and compares by wealth instead.
"Compare by wealth" multiplies your net worth by the person's average rate. Amounts are stored in US dollars and converted at the European Central Bank reference rate fixed at each update (currently 28 Oct 2026). Share links and images contain only the person and the ratio, rounded to 0.1× steps below 5×, whole numbers up to 100×, then "100×+".
Sources and archiving
Data is collected by hand from public sources, not scraped. Every source page is saved to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, and a figure without an archived copy is not published. Filings on SEC EDGAR are permanent official records, so they are linked directly. The site currently covers 3 people, all US-based, because their foundation and securities filings are public; more are added once each has at least two complete years of primary-source data.
Changelog
Any change to a formula or giving type raises the version number.