It is another banner year for America’s ultra-rich, and the numbers are almost too large to make sense of. Over the past twelve months, the 400 wealthiest people in the United States added a combined $1.4 trillion to their fortunes, an increase of 21 percent in a single year. That is not a gradual trickle of prosperity; it is a torrent, the kind of wealth creation that reshapes economies and leaves most ordinary earners far behind. Yet amid all that new money, a nagging question remains: Did America’s billionaires become more generous as their bank accounts swelled? Forbes decided to find out, once again investigating the lifetime charitable donations of every member of this year’s ranking, known as The Forbes 400, the definitive ranking of America’s richest people in 2026. The answer is complicated, and slightly uncomfortable. The 400 members of the list have collectively given away at least $366 billion to charitable causes over the course of their lives. That is $47 billion more than the amount recorded last year, and in absolute terms it represents an enormous flow of money to universities, hospitals, museums, food banks, medical research, and grassroots organizations across the country and around the world. But when you measure that giving against their current wealth, a very different picture emerges. As a percentage of their fortunes, the members of The Forbes 400 are actually less charitable than they were a year ago. They have given away roughly 4.4 percent of their net worth, down from 4.6 percent in the 2025 list and 5 percent in 2024. In other words, while their combined wealth jumped by more than a fifth, their lifetime giving as a share of that wealth actually fell. This is partly a simple matter of arithmetic: if your fortune grows faster than your giving, the ratio goes down even if you have not changed your habits. But it also suggests that many of the richest Americans have allowed philanthropy to lag behind prosperity, even as their capacity to give reached historic heights.
To make these patterns visible, Forbes assigns every member of the list a lifetime giving score, a number from one to five that tries to capture how much of their own wealth they have actually given away. The calculation is straightforward: add an individual’s estimated lifetime charitable donations to their 2026 net worth, then divide the donations by that total. If the result is less than one percent, they receive a score of 1; if it is twenty percent or more, they receive a score of 5. The scores in between correspond to tiers of one to 4.99 percent, five to 9.99 percent, and ten to 19.99 percent. This year’s results are striking, and not in a good way. Nearly 80 percent of the list received a score of 1 or 2, meaning they have given away less than five percent of their riches. That is the highest percentage since Forbes began publishing these scores in 2020. More than 40 percent of listees have given away less than one percent of their wealth. And at the very bottom, Forbes estimates that as many as 45 members of The Forbes 400 have given away absolutely nothing, or something so close to nothing that it cannot be measured. It is important to understand what the score does and does not count. Forbes only gives credit for money that has actually been paid out to people in need, meaning checks that arrived, grants that were spent, and donations that landed in the hands of a charity. Money still sitting in a foundation, no matter how vast, does not count. Future pledges, even if they are signed with great ceremony, do not count either. This distinction matters because many billionaires have parked enormous sums inside their family foundations, which enjoy generous tax benefits but are required by the IRS to pay out only a tiny fraction of their assets each year. The rest can sit indefinitely, invested and growing, while the world waits for help that may never come. There are also practical limitations on the data. Forbes relied heavily on public foundation filings, which are often released on a one- or two-year delay. Some billionaires volunteered updated information about their personal gifts, while others declined to comment or simply did not respond. In 17 cases, Forbes could not find enough reliable information about a person’s giving, and those individuals received a score of N/A, or not available. That means the true philanthropic totals are almost certainly higher than what Forbes could track—but if anything, the incomplete data makes the low giving scores look conservative, not generous.
Even with all those caveats, the top of the generosity ranking is unmistakable, and it begins with a familiar name. For the seventh year in a row, hedge fund pioneer George Soros is the most generous member of The Forbes 400 relative to his wealth. Soros, whose estimated net worth is $8.6 billion, says he has given away $24.2 billion over the course of his lifetime—about 74 percent of his fortune—to American and international organizations. His Open Society Foundations have spent billions on human rights, democratic governance, criminal justice reform, public health, and independent media around the world. Soros’s giving is not passive or symbolic; it is engaged, sometimes controversial, and always substantial. That combination of scale and willingness is exceptionally rare. He is one of only 13 members of the list who earned a perfect 5 score, meaning they have donated at least 20 percent of their wealth. On a list of 400 people, that is a strikingly small group. These 13 individuals represent just 3 percent of The Forbes 400, though the number is growing; last year, only 11 people earned a 5. The additions this year are former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and healthcare investor Mitchell Rales. Bloomberg, the media and data billionaire, has become one of the most prominent philanthropists in the world through his decades of giving to public health, climate action, education, and urban policy. Rales, a quieter but equally serious giver, has directed billions to the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian, educational institutions, and medical research. Their presence in the top tier is a reminder that even among the richest Americans, there are wildly different attitudes toward giving: some treat philanthropy as a central part of their lives, while others treat wealth as something to be held, protected, and passed on.
If Soros represents the model of giving relative to means, Warren Buffett represents the model of giving in absolute dollars. The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, whose estimated net worth is $144 billion, has long vowed to give away more than 99 percent of his wealth. As of 2026, he has already poured an almost incomprehensible $72.6 billion into four Buffett family foundations and, until this summer, the Gates Foundation, which he supported for many years with enormous annual gifts. That sum is equal to more than a third of his current fortune, and it makes him the biggest philanthropist on the list by sheer dollar amount. Buffett’s approach has often been described as “giving while living,” and he has shown a patient but determined willingness to move his money out of his own balance sheet and into the world. He is also, by his own example, showing other billionaires what is possible if they take generosity seriously. Yet Buffett and Soros are very much exceptions. The other members of the 5-score club include Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, whose foundation has defined modern global health philanthropy; MacKenzie Scott, whose rapid, unrestricted gifts have transformed nonprofit organizations across the country; Reed Hastings, the Netflix founder who has given heavily to education; Dustin Moskovitz, the Facebook and Asana co-founder whose quiet grants support global development and scientific research; Amos Hostetter Jr., a cable industry pioneer; Lynn Schusterman, a longtime supporter of Jewish life and education; Marilyn Simons, whose charitable foundation focuses on math and science; Edythe Broad, a major patron of the arts and education; and a small number of others who have reached the same threshold. Together, these donors show that extreme wealth and extreme generosity can coexist. But their small numbers also highlight just how unusual genuine philanthropy has become at the top of American society.
To appreciate just how lopsided the philanthropy landscape is, it helps to look at the full scorecard. At the bottom, a score of 1, meaning less than one percent of wealth given away, captures a huge swath of the list. Among the names in that group are fashion designer Ralph Lauren, Google cofounder Larry Page, and President Donald Trump, along with more than 170 other billionaires. Not far above them, at score 2, which represents giving of one to 4.99 percent, sit Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, In-N-Out Burger owner Lynsi Snyder, and Walmart heir Jim Walton, along with well over a hundred others. Together, these two groups account for roughly four out of every five people on The Forbes 400. In other words, most of America’s richest people have given away less than five percent of what they own. It is not until score 3, representing giving of five to 9.99 percent, that we begin to see names known for serious, sustained philanthropy: New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg, and investor Les Wexner, along with about 35 other list members. At score 4, the ten to 19.99 percent tier, the group narrows to just 14 individuals, including energy and banking investor George Kaiser, Nike founder Phil Knight, and Star Wars creator George Lucas. That is a remarkably small number of people, on a list of 400, who have given away between a tenth and a fifth of their fortunes. And at the very top, there are only 13 individuals who have given away 20 percent or more of their wealth. The gaps between these tiers are enormous. A billionaire can be worth $100 billion and still receive a score of 1 if they have only given away a few hundred million dollars. By contrast, someone with far less wealth can earn a score of 5 by giving away a much larger share of a smaller, but still immense, fortune. The scoring system is designed to reward generosity relative to means, and by that measure, most of The Forbes 400 are failing.
Taken together, this year’s data tells a story less about the mechanics of charity and more about priorities. The same period that produced a $1.4 trillion increase in the combined wealth of 400 people saw only a modest $47 billion rise in their cumulative lifetime giving. That gap is impossible to ignore. It suggests that philanthropy, for many of the wealthiest Americans, remains an afterthought, something to be managed rather than something that defines them. It also raises a deeper question about the social contract. At a time when so many public institutions are underfunded, when community organizations are struggling, when the demand for food banks and housing assistance is surging, there sits an extraordinary stockpile of private capital in the hands of a few hundred people. Some of those people have chosen to use that capital for the common good, and their examples should be celebrated. But the vast majority, for all their billions, have not moved the needle nearly as far as they could. Perhaps the most human takeaway is that wealth alone does not create generosity. Generosity is a habit, a value system, a choice that has to be made again and again. George Soros made that choice on a grand scale. Warren Buffett made it. MacKenzie Scott made it. Michael Bloomberg made it. But across the rest of The Forbes 400, the pattern is overwhelmingly one of accumulation rather than circulation. The rich are getting richer; that is not news. What is news, and what is troubling, is that their giving is not keeping up. If the goal is to live in a society where enormous private fortunes also serve the public good, the members of America’s wealthiest list still have a very long way to go.
