No matter your issues with our billionaire mayor from Boston—where to start?—you have to give the man credit: He sure gives away a lot of dough. Hot on the heels of his quarter-million matching donation to Planned Parenthood the Chronicle of Philanthropy has declared Mike Bloomberg the fifth most generous person in all the land. According to their count hizzoner gave $311,276,000 away last year!
Of course, thanks to foundations and the like, figuring out exactly how much Mayor Bloomberg gives away is almost as hard as figuring out exactly how much he makes beyond his $1 salary from the city. The Chronicle's count for Bloomberg's donations is far more conservative than other folks (for instance: they say he gave $332 million in 2010, but later research showed he gave the Bloomberg Family Foundation $361 million on top of another $191 million he gave elsewhere). But when we're talking millions, it never hurts to be conservative. Among the places the Chronicle notes Bloomberg has supported last year are:
Alliance for the Arts, in New York; American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in New York; DC Central Kitchen, in Washington; the Global Road Safety Partnership, in Geneva; Harlem Children’s Zone, in New York; League for the Hard of Hearing, in New York; Mercy Corps, in Portland, Ore.; Mental Health America of Georgia, in Atlanta; New York Landmarks Conservancy; Playwrights Horizons, in New York; Rescue Mission of Trenton, in New Jersey; Save the Children, Westport, Conn.; Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, in Los Angeles; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Embarq: the World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, in Washington; and numerous other nonprofits in New York and elsewhere.
As for who out-gave Mike? Two estates gave away a tremendous amount (Margaret A. Cargill's estate gave $6 billion and the estate of William S. Dietrich II gave half-a-billion) followed by Paul Allen ($372,600,000) and George Soros ($335,000,000). But considering Bloomberg's foundation wants to get rid of all its cash by 2026, Mike's got more than enough time to catch up.
