Some might say there's no such thing as an ethical billionaire. However, while the systems that allow people to make mind-boggling fortunes might be flawed in places, some of the world's wealthiest people are actually using huge chunks of their money to help others.
Read on as we reveal the familiar names who are donating big bucks to try to fix some of the world's most pressing issues. All dollar amounts in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
MacKenzie Scott became one of the world's richest people following her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, and has been a committed philanthropist ever since.
Scott made her first round of donations in July 2020, splitting $1.7 billion (£1.2bn) among 116 charities that she described in a Medium post as "organizations driving change." And that was just the start. By summer 2021, it was reported that Scott had given away more than $8.6 billion (£6.3bn) of her fortune. So where has it gone?
A signatory of The Giving Pledge – the campaign set up by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage the wealthy to donate the majority of their wealth to deserving causes in their lifetime – Scott has mainly focused her generosity on smaller charities that champion equal education and racial justice. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic she also donated $4.2 billion (£3.1bn) to food banks and emergency relief funds, having handpicked more than 380 charities to support from a list of almost 6,500. This included a $40 million (£29.3m) gift to Morgan State University in Baltimore, the largest one-off donation in the institution's history. The substantial sum almost doubled the university's total financial endowment.
Most recently, Scott has donated $436 million (£335m) to Habitat for Humanity International, including 84 of its American affiliates. In March this year, it was also revealed that Scott has given $275 million (£211m) to Planned Parenthood and $15 million (£11.5m) to New York-based human rights organisation Madre. The philanthropist has announced that she intends to create a database to document her charitable giving, adding that it will "go live only after it reflects the preferences of every one of these nonprofit teams about how details of their gifts are shared," according to The New York Times.
Scott's most recent donations include an unrestricted gift of $38.8 million (£32.9m) to US education non-profit Junior Achievement in August 2022. The organisation educates more than 12.5 million students in 115 countries around the world. In May 2022, she also gave $122 million (£103.7m) to youth mentoring programme Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
This autumn she's donated more than $1.5 billion (£1.3bn) to a variety of causes across the US. In October alone Scott's charitable giving included $84.5 million (£75m) to Girl Scouts of the USA; $15 million (£13m) to VisionSpring, which provides glasses to farmers in developing countries; $15 million for a community health group in Alaska; $13 million (£11m) for the Danville Regional Foundation, which supports the welfare of communities in southwest Virginia and $20 million (£18m) to Fresno Unified School District in California.
Currently one of the richest people in India, Azim Premji took over his father's business selling cooking oil and laundry soap before renaming the company Wipro and shifting his focus to software.
He's currently worth $8.6 billion (£7.28bn) according to Forbes. Previously ranked in second place on the Forbes India Rich List, his position dramatically dropped to 18th due to his generous donations to charitable causes.
Premji won the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2017, which acknowledged his pivotal role in improving access to education across India through the work of his Azim Premji Foundation. The charity, which he founded in 2001, has improved more than 350,000 schools across the country, as well as helping to tackle child malnutrition. It also supports other non-profit organisations.
In response to COVID-19, Wipro Ltd., Wipro Enterprises Ltd. and the Azim Premji Foundation offered a combined donation of Rs 1,125 crore ($150k/£120k) towards medical services and mitigating the human impact of the disease. In 2021 alone he gave away just shy of Rs 10,000 crore ($1.2bn/£1bn).
According to the Economic Times, Premji is the first Indian to sign up to the Giving Pledge.
In the ultimate rags-to-riches story, Oprah Winfrey went from a tough Mississippi upbringing to becoming a media tycoon and the world’s first Black female billionaire.
Winfrey's big break came in 1978 when she hosted the TV show People Are Talking. This led her to launch her own hit series, The Oprah Winfrey Show, in 1986. The TV host, actress and producer now helps to remove barriers to education and healthcare through her Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation, as well as via her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy For Girls in South Africa, which aims to free its students from the cycle of poverty.
In 2018, she partnered with the grocery store chain Kroger to donate one million meals to the charity Feeding America, which operates a network of food banks across the country. In May 2020, it was announced that Winfrey would be giving $12 million (£9m) in COVID-19 relief grants to "under-served communities" in a number of cities that she had previously lived in, including Chicago and Nashville, as well as her childhood hometown of Kosciusko, Mississippi.
The grants contributed towards local grassroots organisations, with Winfrey telling Hollywood Reporter: "I'm not opposed to big organisations dispersing money, but I always like to do the on-the-ground grassroots stuff myself."
Richard Branson hardly had an obvious route to success: he dropped out of school at the age of 16 before starting a mail order record company. However, it might surprise you to learn that that very same company would go on to become the multibillion-dollar Virgin Group.
Branson has promised to give away half his wealth via The Giving Pledge, and supports projects that range from improving LGBTQ+ rights and eliminating nuclear weapons to fighting climate change and reforming drug policy.
Branson has been a controversial figure during the pandemic, receiving criticism back in March 2020 for suggesting the staff of his airline business Virgin Atlantic should take eight weeks of unpaid leave. However, the company later confirmed in a statement that the cost of this leave would be spread over six weeks' worth of pay and that the move would ultimately prevent job losses. Branson was also slammed for asking the UK government for a £500 million ($670m) bailout to help the airline survive the crisis.
On the flip side, the businessman's satellite company, Virgin Orbit, partnered with researchers at the University of California Irvine and the University of Texas to create and mass-produce ventilators for US hospitals.
Read more about his riches in the fascinating story of how Richard Branson made his billions
Jack Ma is best known for co-founding and heading up Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce businesses.
The billionaire, who has a reported net worth of $23.4 billion (£18bn), stepped down as chairman of the business in September 2019. Since then, he has focused on philanthropic work via his eponymous Jack Ma Foundation, which he launched in 2014.
Working collaboratively to help in the fight against COVID-19, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation announced in March 2020 that they would donate millions of masks, testing kits and protective clothing sets to dozens of countries around the world, including the US, Japan and Italy. In fact, the BBC reports that more than 150 countries were supported by the collaboration.
On top of this, the Jack Ma Foundation also gave $2.15 million (£1.6m) to Australia's Peter Doherty Institute to support the development of a vaccine.
It’s hard not to romanticise the success story of J.K. Rowling. After all, she went from being a single mother living on the edge of poverty to becoming the world’s richest author, all thanks to her globally-adored Harry Potter franchise.
While she's been the subject of controversy in recent times due to comments made via her Twitter account, one thing's for sure: there's no denying Rowling's incredibly philanthropic nature. In fact, the writer was no longer a billionaire at one point because she had donated so much of her fortune to charity.
In 2005, Rowling set up Lumos, an organisation which has the ambitious target of eradicating the need for orphanages around the world by 2050. In May 2020, the author also donated £1 million ($1.3m) towards Crisis and Refuge, two UK charities that provided essential support to homeless people and domestic abuse survivors during the pandemic. She has also created a Harry Potter At Home online hub, designed to help keep children amused during lockdowns.
Rowling's most recent donations total around $29.3 million (£25.4m) putting her joint 15th with Patricia Thompson in the Sunday Times giving list 2022. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she also pledged to match donations to Lumos' Ukraine Appeal up to £1 million ($1.1m).
Irish-American businessman Charles "Chuck" Feeney was a pioneer in the duty-free shopping industry.
His company Duty Free Shoppers Group (DFS) began when he and a college classmate started selling alcohol and tobacco to US servicemen in Asia in the 1950s. By the mid-1990s, Feeney and his business partners were making $300 million (£220m) a year. He then made it his life's mission to give away his wealth to good causes.
In 2012, Forbes described him as "the James Bond of philanthropy" and the former billionaire finished giving away his entire fortune, thought to be around $8 billion (£5.9bn), in September 2020. Much of his money was donated through his Atlantic Philanthropies foundation, which he established in 1982, and went to educational projects and institutions in a variety of countries.
When the foundation ran out of cash thanks to Feeney's various charitable donations over the years, which included $2.5 billion (£1.8bn) in capital project grants to build over 1,000 buildings to "invigorate communities" across five continents, Feeney achieved his goal of "giving while one is living." He reportedly retained $2 million (£1.5m) to sustain him during his retirement, which means he has given away a whopping 399,900 times more money than he currently has in the bank.
In a 2022 Forbes interview, Bill Gates name checked Feeney, saying that his own philanthropy was based on Feeney's strategy.
Discover more about Chuck Feeney's life
Frequently cited as one of the most successful financiers in history, the Hungarian-born investor George Soros used his expertise to launch the hedge fund Quantum Fund in 1973, which helped him make his fortune.
In the early 1990s, he went down in banking legend as "the man who broke the Bank of England" after he shorted the British pound. According to Forbes, Soros has a current net worth of $8.6 billion (£6.6bn) and has donated more than $30 billion (£25.38bn) to philanthropic causes.
Soros openly supports liberal and progressive causes, including fighting for freedom of expression, fair governance, justice, and equality through his Open Society Foundations.
It has been reported that Soros has given more than $32 billion (£23.5bn) since the foundation’s conception. In April 2020, the organisation pledged to donate more than $130 million (£95m) towards tackling COVID-19 worldwide; half of the sum went to the US, with other funding focused on mitigating the effects of the pandemic in countries in the Global South.
Often thought to be one of the most successful investors of all time, you might be surprised to learn that Warren Buffett got rejected from Harvard Business School.
The business giant didn't let his disappointment get in the way, however: he enrolled at Columbia University's Columbia Business School and earned a Master of Science in Economics. His business career quickly began to flourish, and he is now the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate that owns more than 60 companies. He's currently worth $101.1 billion (£85.6bn), and is reportedly the world's seventh richest person.
In 2006, Buffett made history by making the largest financial donation ever given by an American individual, pledging around $37 billion (£27bn) to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Along with Bill Gates, Buffett set up The Giving Pledge in 2009, with the goal of inspiring the world's wealthiest people to pass their fortunes on to good causes.
In June 2021, it was reported that the finance mogul had donated an additional $4.1 billion (£3bn) in Berkshire Hathaway stock towards four family foundations, as well as Bill Gates' organisation. Buffett has previously revealed that he plans to give away more than 99% of his fortune, the bulk of which will go towards health, development, policy, growth and equality initiatives, primarily via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
American underwear brand Spanx was born over 20 years ago when founder Sara Blakely was getting ready for a party and longed for the perfect undergarment to give a smooth look under clothes.
By cutting the feet off a pair of tights, she came up with the idea of body-shaping underwear. Spanx would go on to become a globally recognised brand, with Forbes valuing the company at $450 million (£336m) in 2021.
Discover 10 inventors who made a fortune from just one product
Blakely now enjoys passing on her expertise to other women in business, and supports female entrepreneurship through the Sara Blakely Foundation, which funds initiatives ranging from coding workshops and mentorship to grants for social entrepreneurs. She pledged $5 million (£3.7m) towards helping small businesses hit by the pandemic, hoping to support 1,000 female-fronted enterprises with $5,000 (£3.7k) each.
In a slightly more unusual form of donation, Blakely also offered to help brides by loaning them her wedding dress. In a post shared on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, she said she hoped the idea might "help ease someone's plans during this time."
Michael Bloomberg is the co-founder, CEO and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., a media, finance, and software company. The organisation has 167 offices around the world and employs around 20,000 people.
According to Forbes, Bloomberg’s personal wealth currently stands at $76.8 billion (£65bn).
Having served as mayor of New York City for an impressive three terms, Bloomberg launched a campaign for the US presidency in 2019 and spent close to $1 billion (£748m) of his own money in his bid to become the Democratic party nominee. He stepped down from the race in March 2020.
Via his eponymous organisation Bloomberg Philanthropies, March 2020 saw Bloomberg commit $40 million (£29.3m) to help "prevent and slow [the pandemic's] spread around the world, particularly in Africa." However, some have criticised the size of this donation when compared to the amount of cash he pumped into his self-funded political campaign. Forbes states that Bloomberg has donated around $5 billion (£3.7bn) to a number of causes over the years, including gun control and climate change.
Perhaps in response to the critics, in the past two years Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative has given $250 million (£211.5m) towards tackling medical debt among Black Americans, along with another $100 million (£84.6m) split between four historically Black medical schools to provide debt relief to students. Another $150 million (£127m) went to Johns Hopkins University for additional slots for students of colour to study a range of PhDs.
This autumn, Bloomberg is backing a ballot initiative in California called Proposition 31, which would ban the in-person sale of flavoured tobacco products. He's already donated more than $35 million (£31m) of the total $37 million (£33m) raised by the committee in support of the measure, according to campaign finance records.
It's not the first time the billionaire has thrown support behind anti-tobacco causes. Bloomberg Philanthropies reports it's invested more than $1 billion to "fight tobacco use." As mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg supported city-wide indoor smoking bans enacted in 2002 by testifying in front of the city council (pictured), and outdoor bans, such as in parks and at beaches, in 2011.
Larry Ellison made his megabucks in the tech industry, creating the database software company Oracle Corporation. As of 2020, Oracle is the world's 70th largest company, according to calculations by Forbes.
Ellison is currently the seventh richest person in the world, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $106.3 billion (£90bn).
In 2010, it emerged that Ellison had signed The Giving Pledge, joining the ranks of his fellow billionaires. Having made numerous charitable donations over the years, Ellison said at the time of his pledge: “Until now, I have done this giving quietly because I have long believed that charitable giving is a personal and private matter." On 24 March 2020, The New York Times reported that Oracle was providing software to the White House to study unproven COVID-19 treatments, including two drugs used to treat malaria.
Two years on, the effectiveness of both drugs is still unclear. However, Ellison has made various other meaningful medical donations in the past. These include a $5 million (£3.6m) gift to launch the Lawrence J. Ellison Musculo-Skeletal Research Center at the University of California (USC), as well as $200 million (£147m) to launch the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine in 2016, also at USC.
Read more about Larry Ellison: the maverick billionaire who wants to live forever
Ted Turner started out as a producer and writer before founding CNN, the world's first-ever 24-hour cable news channel, in 1980. The growth of his media empire continued: he launched Cartoon Network in 1992, and later became vice chairman of Time Warner when it acquired the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996.
Forbes estimates that his net worth is now $2.3 billion (£1.95bn). But he hasn't kept every penny of his considerable fortune for himself.
In 1997, Turner gifted the United Nations $1 billion (£614m), which allowed the organisation to launch the United Nations Foundation (UNF). UNF supports the UN with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and its work includes working to meet the Paris Agreement on climate, pioneering gender equality, and mobilising a humanitarian response to crises.
Turner's $1 billion donation would be worth $1.75 billion (£1.3bn) in today's money. He is currently chairman of UNF.
Fashion designer Giorgio Armani made his fortune at his eponymous fashion house Armani, which he founded in 1975. The business started out as a menswear brand and has since branched out into accessories, perfumes, make-up and sportswear.
He has a current net worth of $6.2 billion (£5.24bn) according to estimates from Forbes.
The billionaire gave more than €2 million ($1.97m/£1.74m) to fight the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Women’s Wear Daily reported that the funding would go towards two hospitals, as well as one research institute in Milan and another in Rome. Pictured is a Giorgio Armani store in Paris during France's first nationwide lockdown.
Armani is also a supporter of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Giorgio Armani Fragrances has been a repeat sponsor for the UNICEF Tap Project, which aims to provide clean drinking water for children in Mauritania, Togo, Cameroon, and Vietnam.
In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen launched Microsoft, where Gates remained as CEO until 2000. With a current net worth of $112.4 billion (£95bn), Gates is one of the richest people in the world, and arguably also one of the most generous.
Via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates have funded college tuition for 20,000 young people, as well as pledging $10 billion (£7.3bn) in 2010 to the development and delivery of vaccines to impoverished countries. They also launched and fundraised for a $5.5 billion (£4bn) polio campaign; the disease has since been eradicated almost entirely.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had already donated around $350 million (£257m) towards the development of a COVID-19 vaccine before announcing in November 2020 that the organisation would allocate an additional $70 million (£51.3m) towards the distribution and delivery of a vaccine to low-income countries.
Gates and his ex-wife also founded The Giving Pledge with Warren Buffett, and Gates has pledged to give the majority of his fortune away during his lifetime. In July 2022, Gates also announced plans to give all of his wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and be "knocked off" the list of the world's richest people.
In a Twitter thread, he announced that he was transferring $20 billion (£16.95bn) to the foundation's endowment, increasing annual spending to $9 billion (£7.63bn) by 2026. He said this was due to the pandemic and the war on Ukraine, among other things.
Their foundation also made a $10 million (£9m) donation in October 2022 to Giving Tuesday, a organization that facilitates charitable giving, and pledged $1.2 billion (£1bn) to eradicate polio.
Melinda French Gates received around $5.7 billion (£4.3bn) worth of stocks and shares as part of her divorce settlement from her ex-husband Bill Gates in May 2021.
In February 2022, it was announced that she would no longer donate the bulk of her money to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, although she will still funnel most of her funds into philanthropy. In a statement, she wrote: "It's important to acknowledge that giving away money your family will never need is not an especially noble act... The real standard for generosity is set by the people who give even when it means going without."
In 2015, French Gates founded Pivotal Ventures, an investment company that focuses on social progress. In July last year, Pivotal Ventures awarded $10 million (£7.4m) each to four projects that aim to "expand women's power and influence in the US" as part of the Equality Can't Wait Challenge.
One of these projects was Changing the Face of Tech, which provides free coding bootcamps to women and gender-diverse adults, and says it has helped to successfully double its attendees' starting salaries when they enter the workplace. In August 2022, French Gates announced that she would be fronting a new course on streaming platform Masterclass aimed at helping members identify and "unlock their personal power" through giving.
Owing his fortune to Twitter, which he co-founded in 2006, as well as his financial payments company Block (formerly known as Square), Jack Dorsey is currently worth $4.9 billion (£4.15bn).
The tech mogul became one of the world's largest donors in the fight against COVID-19 thanks to his $1 billion (£747m) donation to Start Small, his public fund for tackling the virus. To date, the fund has raised more than $2.4 billion (£1.8bn) and has dispersed $427 million (£318.6m). In October last year, Dorsey also donated to the Families and Workers Fund, which has awarded more than $10 million (£7.3m) to 30 grassroots groups. In turn, these groups have supported over 215,000 US families that have been hit hard by the pandemic.
On its website, Start Small says that its focus after the pandemic will shift to "girl’s health and education, and Universal Basic Income." According to the website, it's given grants to more than 100 projects so far, including the National Police Accountability Project, World Central Kitchen, and Mandy's Farm, a charity that helps people with disabilities achieve their goals.
In March 2022, Start Small gave $1 million (£880k) each to seven different charities to support Ukraine and deliver humanitarian aid.
A high school dropout made good, this Hong Kong businessman made his fortune in real estate, transport and infrastructure. From working 16-hour days at a factory as a teen, Li Ka-shing is now considered to be one of the most influential businessmen in Asia.
The Li Ka Shing Foundation, which he founded in 1980, focuses on two key areas: education, via building schools and giving university students grants; and healthcare, by providing hospitals, doctors and grants. The organisation has already donated more than HK$30 billion ($3.85bn/£2.8bn) worth of university grants and in February 2022 announced plans for a HK$40 million ($5.1m/£3.8m) support package to help the country's hospitals deal with non-COVID patients.
Since the start of the pandemic, Li Ka-shing has shown consistent generosity. In February 2020, he gave HK$100 million ($12.9m/£9.6m) to medical workers in Wuhan, as well as a further HK$80 million ($10.3m/£7.7m) to help the fight against COVID-19 in Hong Kong. In July 2020, he donated HK$101 million ($13m/£9.7m) towards helping patients in Hong Kong who fell outside of the city's social security net, as well as to support medical school graduates and NGOs.
One year later, he pledged HK$20 million ($2.6m/£1.9m) to a disaster relief fund after floods devastated Zhengzhou in Central China's Henan Province.
In July 2022 the Foundation donated HK $150 million ($19.1m/£16.2m) to the Chinese University of Hong Kong to help support research into and development of biomedical technology.
Meta Platforms billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have pledged to donate 99% of their fortune to good causes via their charity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which supports various non-profit organisations. Notable donations the couple have made so far include $25 million (£18.4m) to fight the spread of Ebola in 2014, as well as $120 million (£88m) to improve education in San Francisco's Bay Area over five years.
Facebook founder Zuckerberg has also partnered with Bill Gates on education and climate change initiatives in the past, and made a $25 million (£18.6m) donation to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to COVID-19, Zuckerberg and Chan donated $13.6 million (£9.9m) to a nine-month research project run by UC San Francisco, Stanford University, as well as to the non-profit Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, which was studying the virus within the Bay Area.
Other higher education organizations have benefitted from the couple's philanthropy. In early 2022 they announced a $50-million donation to the University of Hawaii, largest the school had ever received, for its Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology.
Jim Simons made his fortune via Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund firm that manages around $130 billion (£95bn).
Coming from a mathematical background, Simons received a PhD in mathematics from the University of California and worked briefly as a code-cracker for the National Security Agency before beginning his investment career.
A major donor to the Democratic Party, Simons has given away at least $2.7 billion (£2.2bn) of his fortune, according to Forbes. This includes injecting cash into his own Simons Foundation, which was launched in 1994 with the goal of funding research in mathematics and the sciences. The organisation currently works across several fields, including autism research, providing grants for mathematicians and giving Early Career Awards to outstanding researchers in life sciences. The Foundation, along with Simons Foundation International gifted $56 million (£50m) to Stony Brook University in 2022. The donation will fund 50 scholarships for underrepresented students in STEM subjects.
In 2004, Simons also founded Math For America via the Simons Foundation, as well as the Flatiron Institution in 2016, which comprises five centres for around 300 scientists. Simons' philanthropy has been further fuelled by two family tragedies. He founded Avalon Park, a nature reserve in New York, in memory of his son Paul, who was killed in a car crash in 1996. He also launched the Nick Simons Foundation and has become a generous donor to the Nepalese healthcare system after his son Nick drowned while working in the country in 2003.
Ports tycoon Gautam Adani made his fortune by controlling India’s largest port, Mundra Port. He founded Adani Group in 1988, and the business operates across a range of fields, including logistics, resources, energy, agriculture and defence. The Adani family is currently worth $140.3 billion (£118.5bn).
In 1996, Adani set up the eponymous Adani Foundation; on its official website, the organisation reveals that it has helped more than 3.7 million people across 2,400 rural villages across India.
On 29 March 2020, the businessman revealed on Twitter that he would be donating Rs 100 crore ($13.3m/£10.7m) to the emergency fund created by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi (pictured on the right) to help battle COVID-19 in India. The Adani Group also manufactured 120,000 face masks.
In 2022, to mark Gautam Adani's milestone 60th birthday, the family pledged Rs 60,000 crore ($7.5bn/£6.33bn) to charity, the largest philanthropic commitment made in India to date.
Patrice Motsepe is the founder and chairman of South African mining firm African Rainbow Minerals. According to Forbes, he is worth $2.7 billion (£2.28bn).
A notable philanthropist, Motsepe hit headlines in 2013 when he donated half of his family’s fortune to charity through the Motsepe Family Foundation, which funds education, healthcare, entrepreneurial incentives and women’s development, among other important causes.
In May 2020, the businessman announced that his group of companies would give 1 billion rand ($57m/£43.7m) to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. The Motsepe Family Foundation said that the money would go towards buying sanitisers, disinfectants and personal protective equipment to help the healthcare system.
In 2022, Motsepe pledged 33.6 million rand ($2m/£1.69m) in support for flood affected KwaZulu-Natal and other South African communities affected by the floods in Durban.
Making his fortune in the mining industry, Australia's Andrew Forrest has a current net worth of $17.6 billion (£14.9bn). He started out working as a stockbroker before jumping ship to the mining business, taking the helm of Fortescue Metals Group in 2003.
During his time at Fortescue, Forrest was commended for his work in creating jobs and training for Indigenous communities. After stepping down from the business in 2011, he has focused on philanthropy via his Minderoo Group, a foundation that aims to create parity for Indigenous communities, as well as improve education across Australia and end modern slavery.
In 2019, Forrest donated AU$655 million ($482m/£361m) to various good causes. This was Australia's largest-ever charitable donation from a living individual.
Along with his wife Nicola, the billionaire has also given AU$520 million ($381m/£284m) to his Minderoo Foundation to allow it to help in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, Minderoo announced an AU$40 million ($28m/£23.6m) partnership that will fund research and other projects related to ocean conservation, including the use of genomics to help understand marine systems.