Charity Facts

Boxing Day is named so because it was the day that "Christmas boxes" were given to the more needy.

In 2006, the CEO of Whole Foods reduced his salary to $1 a year, donated his entire portfolio to charity, and set up a $100,000 fund for staff facing personal problems.

Between 2007 and 2012, Bill Gates gave away $28 billion; saving 6 million lives.

J.K. Rowling became the first person to fall off the Forbes billionaire list primarily due to charitable giving, donating over $160 million to causes including children's welfare and multiple sclerosis research.

Shakira has been making music for over 35 years, can play guitar, drums, percussion, and harmonica, speaks at least 5 languages fluently (Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian, and French), founded the Pies Descalzos Foundation in 1997, and has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2003.

John F. Kennedy never kept a single government paycheck in his entire political career. Not as a congressman. Not as a senator. Not as president. His presidential salary alone was $100,000 a year — about $1 million today — and he donated every cent to charity, including the United Negro College Fund and the Boy Scouts.

All Sikh temples serve free meals for all visitors, regardless of religion, race, or class.

Keanu Reeves quietly donated millions to children's hospitals and cancer research throughout his career, rarely publicizing his contributions. He also devoted years to supporting his sister Kim during her decade-long battle with leukemia, which she overcame in the early 2000s.

When the $4.05 billion Disney check cleared, George Lucas owned every dollar of Lucasfilm outright. He didn't buy a yacht. He didn't move to Monaco. Two years earlier he had quietly signed The Giving Pledge to donate most of his wealth. He's given almost all the money to education, calling it the key to the survival of the human race. The galactic fortune is rebuilding schools.

Jeremy Clarkson once published his bank account number and sort code to prove that the information couldn't be used to steal money. Someone used it to set up a monthly direct debit from his bank account to a charity.

Hockey player Jarome Iginla donates $2,000 to the children’s charity Kidsport for every goal he scores. Since 2000 it has added up to more than $700,000.

Paul Newman bottled salad dressing as a joke with his neighbour A.E. Hotchner. They sold the first batch to one local store. The original plan was a 50/50 split between profits and charity. They ended up giving every penny away. Newman's Own has now donated over $600 million.

Carlos Vasquez, a dry cleaner in New York, has a sign outside his shop that reads: If you are unemployed and need an outfit clean for an interview, we will clean it for free.

Boxer Wladimir Klitshko auctioned his Olympic gold medal to raise money for underprivileged Ukrainian children. He raised $1,000,000. The buyer immediately returned the medal to Wladimir as he wanted it to remain in the Klitschko family.

Dolly Parton grew up in Sevier County, Tennessee. In November 2016, wildfires there took 14 lives and destroyed or damaged over 2,400 homes and buildings. Within 48 hours, she launched the My People Fund: $1,000 a month for six months, then $5,000 on the last check. Nearly 900 families were paid, almost $9 million in all. She died on August 25, 2026, at 80. The mountains never forgot who took care of them.

John Cena has granted more Make-A-Wish requests than any person in the foundation's history - 650 wishes, a Guinness World Record. No other celebrity has ever reached 400. He started in 2002, hit 500 in 2015, and his total is more than three times higher than anyone else who has ever tried. 'There is no more humbling experience,' he said, 'than a child who could ask for anything in the world asking to meet me.'

Ronald Read worked as a gas station attendant and then a janitor in Brattleboro, Vermont. He held his coat together with safety pins. Someone once offered to pay for his meal, assuming he couldn't afford it. He died at 92 with nearly $8 million - from decades of quietly buying stocks. He left $4.8 million to the local hospital.

Chuck Feeney co-founded Duty Free Shoppers and became a billionaire. Then he secretly gave it all away. He wore a $10 Casio watch. Flew economy. He gave away $8 billion. None of the 1,000 buildings his money built bear his name. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both credit him as their inspiration. He died at 92.

MacKenzie Scott received $35.6 billion in Amazon stock when she divorced Jeff Bezos in 2019. By December 2025, she had quietly given away $26.3 billion of it to 2,700+ nonprofits - no application process, no naming rights, no ceremonies. In 2025 alone, she gave more than Bezos has given in a lifetime.

More than 17 million people worldwide dumped ice water on their own heads in 2014, and the Ice Bucket Challenge helped pay for Project MinE, a global hunt for ALS genes. In 2016 its team of more than 80 scientists in 11 countries found NEK1, a gene whose variants turn up in nearly 3 percent of ALS cases in North America and Europe.

Tony Hawk kept getting emails from kids who had been ticketed or even arrested just for skateboarding in the street. So he started funding places where they could skate legally instead. His foundation, now called The Skatepark Project, has helped build nearly 700 free skateparks in all 50 states. That free skatepark in your town? He probably helped pay for it.

George Strait stops his sold-out concerts to honor a combat-wounded veteran, who is brought on stage and given the key to a mortgage-free home as thousands watch. Banks donate the homes through the Military Warriors Support Foundation, and the count has passed 120 in over a decade. Strait served in the Army from 1971 to 1975, and the foundation says the partnership is still strong.

In April 2020, Matt Pierson, a fifth-generation Montana rancher, phoned neighbors and asked them to donate cows they planned to sell. Within six days, 700 pounds of hamburger reached food banks. When butchers ran out of room, his nonprofit built a federally inspected plant of its own. More than 250,000 pounds have gone out since, and the donated meat still goes free to Montana food banks and schools.

Brittany Bergquist and her 12-year-old brother Robbie saw a news report about a soldier's $7,600 phone bill from calling home. They started with $21 to help, then found a way to recycle old phones into calling cards. Their charity now reports more than 400 million minutes provided to deployed troops, and over 3,000 drop-off sites still collect old phones.