Meet the Mega-Donors of the Future

From left, David Risher, Andrew Dayton, Jennifer Risher, and Katherine Lorenz

Andrew Dayton was steeped in philanthropy from a young age. On his mother’s side, he’s a fifth-generation Rockefeller. His paternal grandfather founded Target in the 1960s and was a major patron of the arts in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

Both families tried to pass on the values of giving back, involving younger generations on family foundation boards. But Dayton says he didn’t know how to be effective in his philanthropy. “I didn’t necessarily feel like I had a playbook for how to do that well.”

Whether self-made or inheritors, they’re serious about giving today and are poised to shape philanthropy in the coming decades.

So Dayton, 41, has been charting his own course.

In 2018, he founded the Constellation Fund, a grant maker that uses data and evidence-based approaches to reduce poverty in the Twin Cities area. The group is modeled on nonprofits like New York’s Robin Hood and Tipping Point in San Francisco, where Dayton spent a few years in the early 2010s working in the mayor’s office.

“I realized that there were models of philanthropy that weren’t rooted in donor preferences, but were rooted in evidence from a community about what’s working best,” he says.

There’s an adage about the traditional approach to giving: Spray, pray, and walk away.

A wave of megadonors has turned all of that on its head, says Michael Moody, professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and co-author of Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors Are Revolutionizing Giving.

“They don’t want to spray. They want to focus on those causes or solutions and innovations that they find interesting,” Moody says. “They don’t want to pray that it happens. They want to be there helping it actually happen with their hands and their talent. And they don’t want to walk away. They want to stick with it and roll up their sleeves and work alongside people to find a solution.”

The average age of a donor on this year’s Philanthropy 50 ranking is 73.5. And to rank on this year’s Philanthropy 50 list, donors gave at least $50 million in 2024. Young donors on the list include Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, who are both 40, as well as Sergey Brin, Sheryl Sandberg, and John and Laura Arnold, who are all 51, and the Pagidipati siblings — Sidd, 49; Rahul, 47; and Srujani, 45.

While many major donors in their 30s, 40s, and 50s aren’t giving at that level, they’re serious about giving today and are poised to continue shaping philanthropy in the decades to come. They also aren’t limiting themselves to one kind of giving vehicle, instead seeking to make a difference in multiple ways, including setting up donor-advised funds, family foundations, LLCs, and 501(c)(4)s.

Whether self-made CEOs or inheritors of multigenerational wealth, many are earnest about changing deeply entrenched systems of injustice in areas like health and gender equity and education. As such, they want to learn from and collaborate with peer donors. Though many still give to big institutions, they’re looking for ways to empower people to create change, often by seeking opportunities to collaborate with other donors and the communities they’d like to reach. Many are adopting approaches that ease restrictions on grantees and trust leaders close to the problems they seek to solve, but they still want to see evidence that their philanthropy is effective.

Says Dayton: “There’s an opportunity to update the toolkit when it comes to how we’re giving.”

An Early Start

Networks of ultrawealthy philanthropists say they’re increasingly connecting with younger donors who tend to want to work more collaboratively than earlier generations of funders.

Over the last five years, Forward Global, a group that advises wealthy individuals on their giving, has seen the average age of its members drop by 10 to 15 years, says CEO Renee Kaplan. About 65 percent of its members are women.

The bulk of the members of the Donors of Color Network are in their 30s to late 50s, says Isabelle Leighton, the group’s executive director.

And Women Moving Millions, a donor network whose members commit to giving $1 million or more to efforts that help women and girls, counts 50 percent of its membership as being under 60.

Women Moving Millions is working to redefine what it means to be a philanthropist, says Monica Parekh, 54, a photographer and former physical therapist who gives to women’s rights and programs aimed at improving how women are portrayed in the media.

“The face of philanthropy is evolving. It’s not just for those who fit the classic mold of wealth and privilege, like the traditional image of an older white woman in pearls,” says Parekh, whose husband, Deven Parekh, is a venture capitalist. When she meets younger donors, “a lot of them will say, ‘Well, I didn’t think I would ever label myself as a philanthropist, because I don’t fit that stereotyped image,’” Parekh says. “We’re like, ‘Well, let’s change that image …’ These are the next philanthropists coming on the scene, and they do look different.”

‘They’re Not Bomb Throwers’

In a recent Bank of America study of 1,007 high-net-worth donors, 88 percent of younger donors ages 21 to 43 said they share their parents’ commitment to giving back, while 80 percent of overall donors polled said they take a different approach than the previous generation. Today’s young donor is more likely to use giving vehicles such as charitable trusts, family foundations, and donor-advised funds than older funders, the study found.

But there’s a misperception that donors who inherited wealth are revolutionaries who want to transform philanthropy, says Moody with the Lilly Family School. “They’re not bomb throwers,” he says. They want to change the norms of giving, “but they don’t see it as replacing everything about previous giving.”

That’s how Katherine Lorenz, granddaughter of Texas natural-gas baron George Mitchell, sees it. Her grandfather’s generation felt strongly that giving to big institutions — universities and the national academies of science — would have the greatest impact. Meanwhile, both she and her parents’ generation took a more “power to the people” approach, she says. “Big gifts to big institutions is not necessarily where the change happens.”

“It’s not a shift in values so much as it’s a shift in tactics,” says Lorenz, president of her family’s foundation.

These active donors — both the earners and inheritors — are looking for ways to involve younger generations in philanthropy early on. That’s especially important as financial experts project that younger generations will inherit tens of trillions of dollars from baby boomers over the next 20 years. Much of that wealth will flow to the wealthiest families. High-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals represent just 1.5 percent of all households yet are expected to benefit from 42 percent of the volume of expected transfers.

Flora Birdzell, a grandchild of the late Hewlett-Packard Company co-founder William R. Hewlett, says she’s come to think of philanthropy as a “family business.”

Self-made individuals, who weren’t exposed to big philanthropy growing up, say that charitable giving has been a learning process. That sometimes comes with a sense of overwhelm or a burden to use the money wisely — but also with more freedom to decide how they want to give and how quickly.

David and Jennifer Risher met in 1991 on their first day of work at Microsoft. Both ended up with lucrative stock in the company. “We found ourselves 30 and with incredible wealth,” says Jen Risher. Though “amazing,” the experience was also strange. “It wasn’t something that I knew growing up,” she says. In 2020, Jen Risher published We Need to Talk: A Memoir About Wealth, sharing her own experience of the ways wealth affected her identity, relationships, and philanthropy.

David went on to executive roles at Amazon and now the rideshare company Lyft, where he’s CEO. Today, Jennifer is a board member of Women Moving Millions. David continues to support and promote the work of Worldreader, the international nonprofit he co-founded in 2010 to give young people in underserved places free access to digital books.

The couple has also been vocal about encouraging their wealthy peers to start giving sooner rather than later. Frustrated by money sitting idle in donor-advised funds during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Rishers launched the #HalfMyDAF campaign in 2020 to encourage more giving. The effort has helped move more than $70 million from donor-advised funds to working charities. But there’s still an estimated $251 billion sitting in DAFs, which is why they are making another push for DAF holders to make a donation this year and commit to spending at least half of the money in their DAFs. The couple also gives to 501(c)(4)s and makes impact investments in underresourced communities.

Holly Fogle, 51, a former McKinsey management consultant, has also approached her philanthropy with “a recognition that we need to do things differently.”

Fogle grew up on a farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. “No one had anything, and so everybody had to pull together all the time to accomplish anything,” Fogle says of her upbringing, where her family’s church was a hub of community support.

After having two children of her own in New York City, and at the urging of her pastor, Fogle founded Nido de Esperanza, or Nest of Hope, in 2016. The nonprofit supports immigrant women and their young children in northern Manhattan through a variety of intensive programming.

She and her husband, venture capitalist Jeff Lieberman, had been giving through a DAF. However, as they saw their overall assets grow exponentially, Nido de Esperanza grew into the Bridge Project, which provides direct cash support to mothers and babies living below the poverty line in the state of New York, including New York City, Rochester, and Buffalo. Last September, it also launched a program in Connecticut to give 500 new and expectant mothers a $1,125 one-time prenatal stipend followed by payments of $750 per month for the first 15 months of the baby’s life, then $275 monthly for the next 21 months.

Fogle is drawn to the approach for its efficiency — 96 cents of every dollar goes into the hands of women — and the trust it puts in mothers. “The woman is not getting something that she doesn’t need,” Fogle says. “She chooses what she does with it.”

Trickier Than Expected

Many of today’s big donors want their philanthropy to be efficient, not bureaucratic. In some cases that means working with advisers or giving through intermediaries, like donor collaboratives, rather than staffing up foundations.

But other donors, who started off with ambitions for a lean approach to philanthropy, have gone on to build new institutions.

“We thought this would be a much easier path than what it ended up being,” says John Arnold, of the couple’s foray into philanthropy. “We didn’t foresee that we’d have 140-something people and be spending pretty much full-time efforts on this.”

Arnold and his wife, Laura, have been on the Philanthropy 50 every year since 2011, and this year rank No. 19.

In 2019, they formed a limited-liability company, Arnold Ventures, to give them more flexibility to address controversial issues like pharmaceutical pricing and criminal-justice reform. They give through their private foundation, a donor-advised fund, and a 501(c)(4) organization, the latter of which permits more lobbying.

Like the Arnolds, the big donors of the future will look at philanthropy as just one element of their approach to giving back, says Moody, with the Lilly Family School. That might mean they’re growing their wealth in impact investments, using their role as a shareholder at a large company, supporting social enterprises or B Corporations, and giving politically.

“They’re sort of sector agnostic,” he says. “They like having a diversity of options.”

Looking to Their Peers

Many next-generation donors are focusing their efforts on changing systems and addressing the root causes of injustice, says Nick Tedesco, CEO of the National Center for Family Philanthropy: “They see that as the highest and best use of their resources.”

Liz and Don Thompson view their Cleveland Avenue Foundation for Education as a vehicle to not only help young Black people succeed, but also change the way philanthropy supports Black leaders.

Liz Thompson, an engineer by training, grew up in Chicago’s Cabrini Greene housing development. Don, who grew up a few blocks away, was the first African American CEO of McDonald’s Corp.

Their foundation supports college-access and career-readiness groups. Their 1954 Project provides $1 million grants to Black leaders working to reshape the education system.

The group also raises money from other donors to support its work. Trying to change systems requires being “loud” about your work to bring in others, Liz Thompson says. “You’ve got to attract other partners with you in this work.”

When she’s not busy running the foundation, Thompson is often out talking to other philanthropists — about how to set up a grant-making foundation and how to find a strategic focus.

Both self-made donors and inheritors say they look to their peers for inspiration, advice, and opportunities to collaborate.

“WhatsApp chats where other donors share information about giving and wealth in an informal way on an ongoing basis are very prevalent in my world,” says Lorenz, president of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation.

Her late grandfather signed the Giving Pledge in 2010. Lorenz started a group for fellow descendants of Giving Pledge signatories who will ultimately carry out the pledge made by their parents or grandparents.

You can read about philanthropy best practices, she says, but “there’s nothing like connecting with other families who have different models of trying to get to the same end.”

This story, "Meet the Mega-Donors of the Future," originally appeared in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on March 4, 2025.

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