Ultra-Wealthy Donors to Watch: Who Took the Giving Pledge in 2023?

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The Giving Pledge has lost much of its shine since those early days circa 2010, when starry-eyed billionaire watchers hoped it might set off a sea change in megadonor philanthropy. Both as a means to spur giving by the ultra-rich and as a marker of their generosity, the pledge’s record over these past 13 years leaves a lot to be desired.

We’ve related that theme plenty of times before, but a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies gave Giving Pledge skeptics some new hard numbers to cite. According to the research, the combined assets of the 73 living U.S. Giving Pledgers who were billionaires in 2010 skyrocketed from $348 billion back then to $828 billion through 2022 — a growth rate of 224%, adjusted for inflation. 

That’s hardly the stuff of spending down, nor does it reflect well on promises to give away mere halves of fortunes. But despite the pledgers’ collective lack of progress, it’s still worth keeping an eye on this space, for a few reasons. The Giving Pledge is a statement of intent, and even if it remains unfulfilled, it can point toward plans for wider giving, however vague those plans may be. In addition, the pledge — along with the pledgers’ accompanying statements — offers a window into evolving narratives around big-donor philanthropy. 

After a large crop of new signatories joined the pledge at the end of 2021, its ranks have grown more slowly, most likely a result of stock market turbulence. But 2023 still saw seven new entrants join the list, with three pledgers signing as individuals and four pledges from couples. 

As the year draws to a close, here’s a quick rundown of who made the pledge in 2023 and what the general shape of their giving looks like so far. 

Dennis Troper and Susan Wojcicki

Susan Wojcicki, 55, along with her sister Anne, is one of tech’s most successful women. Having served as CEO of YouTube for nearly a decade, she departed that post in early 2023 to focus on “family, health and personal projects.” One of the first Google employees, Wojcicki retains an advisory role at the company and at its parent, Alphabet. Forbes pegged her net worth at $780 million earlier this year.

Both Wojcicki sisters have been active givers for a while, with Anne Wojcicki making our recent list of the most powerful women in philanthropy. Susan, meanwhile, having stepped down from her leadership role at YouTube, seems primed to step up her giving. She heads the Troper Wojcicki Foundation alongside her husband Dennis Troper, a director of product management at Google. The foundation reported about $311 million in assets at the end of 2021. The couple’s recent giving through the foundation includes mostly five- and six-figure gifts to Bay Area charities, international humanitarian organizations, Jewish groups and some green groups, with a focus on conservation.

Susan Wojcicki also plays a role in her sister’s giving, accompanying Anne as a trustee of the Anne Wojcicki Foundation.

Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner

Tom Preston-Werner, 44, is the founder and former CEO of the software development platform GitHub, which he departed back in 2014 under somewhat contentious circumstances. His career also encompasses other for-profit ventures, including the language learning service Chatterbug and venture capital investing through Preston-Werner Ventures. Theresa Preston-Werner, meanwhile, has a Ph.D. in anthropology and has worked in a variety of advisory roles across the nonprofit sphere.

The couple’s main philanthropic focus has been the 128 Collective, a climate-focused funding organization they founded in 2018. Aiming to “work on the just transition to 1.5 degrees,” the 128 Collective is a progressive grantmaker, backing climate organizing and education through groups like the Green Workers Alliance and the Alliance for Youth Organizing. It also supports progressive political capacity-building, in addition to some giving for local Bay Area organizations and STEM education. 

In 2021, the 128 Collective Foundation had roughly $67 million in assets and gave away around $5 million — although that may not encompass all of the couple’s funding under the 128 Collective umbrella. As they wrote in their Giving Pledge letter, “We push beyond c3 giving, because some projects need different tools: c4 dollars, campaign contributions, concessionary investing, and even just straightforward gifts.”

Nikhil Kamath

Hailing from India, Nikhil Kamath came to the Giving Pledge at the age of 36, having amassed a $1.1 billion fortune as cofounder of retail brokerage firm Zerodha alongside his older brother Nithin Kamath, also a billionaire. 

According to reporting from Barron’s, Kamath’s pledge stems in part from his engagement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in his home country, “including renovating buildings and upgrading the educational quality of about 200 government-run middle schools in South India about two years ago.” His partnership with Gates also includes addressing malnutrition in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Transitioning away from fossil fuels and supporting older people appear to be additional interests for Kamath.

“I expect to have more questions than answers,” Kamath wrote in his pledge letter. “The Giving Pledge offers a great platform to learn, exchange ideas, and work collaboratively to address some of the world's most pressing challenges.”

Benoit Dageville and Marie-Florence Dageville

French-born entrepreneur Benoit Dageville, 57, cofounded the cloud-based data management company Snowflake. The company’s September 2020 IPO made Dageville a billionaire (he’s currently worth around $1.2 billion) and gave him and his wife, Marie-Florence Dageville, the resources to create the Patchwork Collective, which describes itself as “family philanthropic effort supporting locally led solutions to global challenges.”

Funding in fields like social equity, global health and climate justice, the Patchwork Collective takes a trust-oriented venture approach, saying it does away with “onerous one-size-fits all grant proposals and progress reports.” 

The Dagevilles’ giving seems primed to expand. In their letter, the couple wrote, “We feel a responsibility to give — and to give with urgency.” This year, Patchwork was the main financial backer behind the Maternal & Infant Health Award, a $12 million global funding competition it conducted alongside Lever for Change and ICONIQ Impact. 

Ravenel B. Curry III

A former officer in the U.S. Army, Ravenel Curry founded Eagle Capital Management over three decades ago with his wife Beth, who passed away in 2015. Curry’s giving also goes quite a way back — the couple founded their Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation in 1975. In 2022, the foundation held about $519 million in assets and gave away roughly $28.8 million.

Education has been a consistent theme in Curry’s giving, with gifts going out to his alma mater, South Carolina’s Furman University, as well as other schools he and his wife have been associated with. Curry has also supported education reform and backed charter schools, including through the Alliance for School Choice, Families for Excellent Schools and the Center for Education Reform. A recent grant of $5 million went to the Charter School Growth Fund.

Curry’s also a longtime supporter of conservative and libertarian policy organizations. Many of the big names in that space have received money over the years, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute (Curry has also served on both boards). He’s also backed places like the Atlas Network, the Cato Institute, the Alexander Hamilton Society and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In his letter, Curry pledged to “give away 99% of the wealth that my late-wife Beth and I have earned — during my lifetime or at my death.”

Andrew Wilkinson and Zoe Peterson

Like Kamath, this couple is coming to the Giving Pledge young. Andrew Wilkinson, 36, founded the Canadian holding company Tiny, which now owns over 30 web-based businesses. In their letter, the couple pledged “to give the majority of our wealth back to society before we die,” citing the fact that “much of our luck has been due to circumstances outside of our control.”

The plan seems to be to channel this giving through the Tiny Foundation, where Wilkinson serves as director. Based in Canada, the foundation currently lists social justice, child protection, journalism and medical research as its areas of focus. The Tiny Foundation has taken a venture funding approach in at least some cases, backing organizations like the journalism outlet Canadaland with long-term capital. Other recipients are listed on the Tiny Foundation’s website as “fellows” — they appear to have discretion to direct at least part of the funding they receive to projects of their choice.

Jahm Najafi

The latest billionaire to sign the pledge, Jahm Najafi is a private equity investor with a $1.3 billion fortune and a part ownership stake in the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. Najafi, 60, was born in Iran and immigrated to the United States as a child. He launched his investment firm Najafi Companies in 2002. 

In his pledge letter, Najafi wrote that he and his wife, Cheryl, had “frequently and anonymously supported education and the arts, recently adding social justice and equity. We’re now publicly aligning ourselves with these causes so that others may be similarly inspired to give.” 

What exactly does that look like? Well, following the mass protests of 2020, the longtime basketball fan was moved to take a more public stance with his philanthropy, and did so in 2021 by committing $10 million over 10 years to the newly formed NBA Foundation. That matched a $10 million pledge from the Phoenix Suns toward the NBA Foundation’s larger $300 million pledge, which is focused on job readiness, skills training, job placement and career advancement for Black youth. Expect additional racial equity commitments from Najafi down the line.