Donation Facts

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.

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.

In 2002, Kenyan Maasai tribespeople donated 14 cows to the US to help with the aftermath of 9/11.

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.