Maria Di Mento

AP – It was a healthy year for big gifts to charitable causes in 2021, a year that saw one of the largest multibillion-dollar contributions in more than a decade, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy tally.

The power philanthropists Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates announced in May that they were divorcing and then gave a jaw-dropping USD15 billion to their foundation in July. The money will bolster its endowment and support the grant maker’s work in global health, development, policy and advocacy, and United States (US) education well into the future.

The gift increased the grant maker’s endowment to about USD65 billion and is the Gates’ biggest infusion of money into the foundation since 2000, when they transferred Microsoft stock then valued at USD20 million.

When they announced this year’s gift, the two philanthropists indicated they planned to continue running the foundation together for the time being but announced through the foundation that if after two years either one of them decides not to work together, then French Gates will resign as co-chair and trustee.

Regardless, the philanthropists made clear in two new Giving Pledge letters that they both intend to keep giving big in the years ahead.

French Gates wrote that she will continue to support efforts to fight poverty and “advance equality for women and girls and other marginalized groups”. Gates wrote in his Giving Pledge letter that the work of the foundation will continue to be his “top philanthropic priority” and that he plans to increase his giving in other areas like “mitigating climate change and tackling Alzheimer’s”.

Nonprofits that focus on those causes are likely to reap big rewards, given that Bill Gates’s net worth is pegged at about USD137 billion and Melinda French Gates’s at USD6 billion.

Meanwhile, Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny’s, USD500 million contribution to the University of Oregon tied for second place on the list. The gift will be used to expand the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and follows a USD500 million donation the Knights gave to launch the science campus in 2016. The Knight Campus aims to speed up the process of transforming new scientific discoveries into medical treatments and other developments to improve people’s lives.

Phil Knight, whose net worth stands at about USD60 billion, earned a bachelor’s degree in business from the university in 1959. The couple have given the university a total of at least USD1.6 billion to date.

Also tied for number two is a USD500 million challenge pledge the financier George Soros made through his Open Society Foundations to Bard College for its endowment. The pledge aims to persuade other donors to back the college’s effort to raise USD1 billion over the next five years.

College officials announced in April that the pledge had already helped them raise USD250 million from other donors. Soros, whose net worth is pegged at USD8.6 billion, founded Soros Fund Management, a New York firm that manages hedge funds.

Next on the list is a USD480 million donation to Northwestern University from Patrick Ryan, founder of Ryan Specialty Group, an insurance services company, and his wife, Shirley. The Ryans, whose net worth stands at close to USD8 billion, gave the money to their alma mater for a variety of programmes.

The money will back education and research efforts in applied microeconomics, business, digital medicine, global health, neuroscience, and translational research programmes at the university’s Feinberg School of Medicine. A portion of the gift will also pay for building projects.

The Chronicle’s annual top 10 list of the largest gifts announced by individuals or their foundations totaled more than USD18.1 billion in 2021. (The 2021 list actually includes 11 donations because of ties.) The contributions on the 2021 list went primarily to well-established institutions. Eight of the 11 gifts are from billionaires whose cumulative wealth totals USD426.3 billion.

The Chronicle’s annual rankings are based on the 10 biggest publicly announced gifts. The tally does not include contributions of artwork or gifts from anonymous donors. In February, the Chronicle will unveil its annual ranking of the 50 biggest donors, a list based on individuals’ total contributions in 2021 rather than single gifts.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA (AP) – There was no food, water or sleep for Susan Phalen as she spent a frigid night inside her car stopped on Interstate 95 (I-95) in Virginia. Meera Rao and her husband were only 100 feet past an exit but were unable to move for 16 hours.

Senator Tim Kaine was on his way to Washington when a seemingly simple commute stretched into a 21-hour ordeal that became “a kind of survival project”.

They were among hundreds of people who got stranded on the East Coast’s main north-south highway in freezing temperatures after a winter storm snarled traffic and left some drivers stuck in place for as much as a full day.

The problems began Monday morning when a truck jackknifed on I-95, triggering a chain reaction as other vehicles lost control, state police said. Eventually lanes in both directions became blocked across a 40-mile stretch of the highway between Richmond and the nation’s capital at a time when snow was falling around two inches an hour.

Hundreds of motorists spent the night in their vehicles, worrying about a lack of food, fuel and water as temperatures fell into the teens. One family reported that they went more than 18 hours without eating.

There were no reports of serious injuries or deaths, but there was plenty of anger among drivers.

“No one came. It was just shocking,” said Rao, who was travelling home to Burtonsville, Maryland, after visiting her daughter in North Carolina when she got stuck Monday evening.

“Being in the most advanced country in the world, no one knew how to even clear one lane for all of us to get out of that mess?”

It took until Tuesday evening around 8.30pm for the Virginia Department of Transportation to re-open the interstate. Authorities had announced earlier in the evening that all stranded motorists had made it off the highway. Transportation officials then oversaw the removal of remaining abandoned vehicles and making sure the entire stretch was plowed.

As stranded motorists waited in their cars, many posted desperate messages on social media. Between midnight and 3am Tuesday, traffic came to a complete standstill, state officials said.

Governor Ralph Northam said his team responded through the night by sending emergency messages to connect drivers with help and working with local officials to set up warming shelters as needed. Officials told reporters crews were helping distribute food, water
and fuel.

Rao said they stopped their car engine at least 30 times to conserve gas and ran the heat just enough to get warm.

They had some potato chips, nuts and apples to eat, but Rao did not want to drink any bottled water because she had a sprained ankle and did not think she could reach a makeshift restroom.

Finally, around midmorning Tuesday, a tow truck driver appeared and cleared away snow, allowing the Raos and other cars back up and take the exit.

People who were stranded and their families lashed out at Northam on Twitter, asking why the Virginia National Guard was not deployed.

Northam said in an interview that he opted not to request National Guard help because the issue facing state crews was not a lack of manpower but the difficulty of getting workers and equipment through the snow and ice to where they needed to be. He said that effort was complicated by the disabled vehicles, freezing temperatures and ice.

The affected section of the interstate was not pretreated because heavy rain preceded the snow, which fell at times as fast as two inches an hour, said Marcie Parker, a state Department of Transportation engineer.

“That was entirely too much for us to keep up with,” she said.

The storm also left passengers on an Amtrak train stranded in Virginia. Amtrak’s Crescent left New Orleans on Sunday on its way to New York and got stuck near Lynchburg on Monday morning, when downed trees blocked the tracks.

Passenger Sean Thornton told AP that Amtrak provided food, but toilets were overflowing and passengers were furious. Amtrak planned for the train to complete its trip once the tracks are clear.

Up to 11 inches of snow fell in the area during Monday’s blizzard, according to the National Weather Service, and state police had warned people to avoid driving unless absolutely necessary, especially as colder nighttime temperatures set in.

Compounding the challenges, traffic cameras went offline as much of central Virginia lost power in the storm, the transportation department said.

Kaine left his home in Richmond for his usual two-hour commute to the US Capitol after Monday’s snowstorm, expecting to preside over the Senate on Tuesday morning. Instead, he spent the night alone in his car on I-95.

The Democrat told Washington radio station WTOP that he worried about all the families with children or elderly passengers who were running out of fuel and food. But Kaine also described a camaraderie as strangers connected along the highway, including a Connecticut family who walked up and down lines of stopped cars, sharing a bag of oranges they had planned to bring home from a Florida vacation.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kaine said. “I will never forget this.”

Phelan’s planned one-hour drive from her parents’ house turned into a 16-hour nightmare.

She said at some point during the gridlock, she thought she might have to start knocking on windows asking other drivers for water. But she, too, witnessed acts of kindness among the stranded drivers, saying “everybody was helping everybody.”

Kelly Hannon, a spokeswoman for the transportation department, apologised to motorists and said the department would take an “exhaustive look” at the incident.