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Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos topped The Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of 2020 donations with the largest gift. Bezos, the world's richest person, according to Forbes, donated $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund to combat climate change in February, which was nearly 10% of his $129.9 billion net worth at the time. The $10 billion gift topped The Chronicle's list of the 10 largest publicly announced gifts of 2020.
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So far, Bezos has given $790 million to at least 16 environmental groups through the fund, according to a Chronicle tally.
Aside from Bezos' large gift, overall giving in 2020 was down, with $2.6 billion in contributions overall, a total not seen since 2011.
Bezos also tied with three others in the No. 6 spot for a $100 million donation to Feeding America for its COVID-19 Response Fund. Among them, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan through their Chan Zuckerberg Donor Advised Fund at Silicon Valley Community Foundation donated $100 million to Center for Tech and Civic Life to ensure safe and reliable voting practices in 2020.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Chan, also earned the No. 4 spot for a $250 million donation to the same charity.
Also tied in the No. 6 spot were Stephen Ross and David Roux. Ross is chairman of the international real estate firm Related Companies and Miami Dolphins owner, who donated $100 million to University of Michigan Ann Arbor to build part of the Detroit Center for Innovation. Roux is co-founder of Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, who donated $100 million to establish Roux Institute at Northeastern University.
Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and his wife, philanthropist Penny, who gave $900.7 million to the Knight Foundation, took the No. 2 spot, and the couple also came in the No.3 spot for donating $300 million to the University of Oregon for a variety of programs.
Fred Kummer, founder of HBE Corporation, a construction company, and his wife, June, tied them in the No. 3 spot with a $300 million donation to establish the Kummer Institute Foundation, which supports programs at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
In the fifth spot, Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank, through his Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, donated $200 million to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta to build a new hospital.
Two billionaires made significant contributions to charities cumulatively, but didn't make the list because their individual donations were not enough to qualify. Novelist MacKenzie Scott gave more than $4 billion to hundreds of charities. Among her largest donations was a $50 million gift to Prairie View A&M University, a Historically Black College and University, and $50 million gift to RIP Medical Debt, a debt relief charity.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey gave more than $300 million to about 120 non-profits through a donor advised fund with a $20 million donation to community effort to create free COVID-19 testing sites in major metropolitan and rural communities being among his largest individual contributions.
