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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

Alan Naiman earned $67,200 a year as a social worker. He wore shoes held together with duct tape and bought clothes at the grocery store. When he died at 63, his coworkers discovered he had quietly saved nearly $11 million and left most of it to children's charities.

Dale Schroeder worked as a carpenter at the same Iowa company for 67 years. He never married. He drove a rusty old Chevrolet. When he died in 2005, nobody could believe he had secretly saved $3 million. He left it all to send 33 complete strangers to college. They call themselves "Dale's kids."

Sylvia Bloom worked as a legal secretary on Wall Street for 67 years. Every time her boss bought a stock, she quietly bought the same one. Nobody - not her husband, not the lawyers she worked for - knew. When she died at 96, her estate was worth $9 million. She left $8.2 million for college scholarships.

Leonard Gigowski spent 50 years cutting meat at a Milwaukee grocery store. He drove the same car for 15 years. He never married. He never took a vacation. He clipped coupons. His friends figured he was just scraping by. He was quietly buying stock in the company he worked for and holding it for fifty years. When he died at 90, the lawyers opened his estate. $13 million went to his old Catholic high school. Nobody knew he was rich.

At Live Aid in 1985, Bono spotted a 15-year-old girl being crushed at the front of 72,000 people. Security wouldn't help. He jumped off the stage mid-song, lifted Kal Khalique over the barrier himself - and missed the entire final song of their set. His bandmates were livid. They thought he'd blown their biggest chance. They had no idea he'd just made them the biggest band on earth.