You know that scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker burns the mountain of cash and says "it's not about the money, it's about sending a message"? Yeah. American billionaire philanthropy is looking more and more like that — except nobody really knows who's burning what, for whom, and whether any of it is real.

The ranking and the screaming absences

The Chronicle of Philanthropy dropped its annual ranking of the 50 biggest philanthropists in the U.S. In 2025, this group donated $22.4 billion to charity. Michael Bloomberg led for the third straight year, with $4.3 billion going to the arts, public health, and other causes.

So far, so pretty. Great headline for the PR team.

But what really grabs your attention isn't who's on the list. It's who isn't.

MacKenzie Scott — Bezos's ex-wife who has donated over $26 billion since 2020 — was left out. She herself announced in December that she distributed $7.2 billion in 12 months to roughly 225 organizations. And yet, nothing. Zero. Off the ranking.

The reason? Her representatives refused to confirm how much she put into so-called donor-advised funds (DAFs), those financial vehicles the rich use to organize donations — and, let's be honest, to grab an immediate tax break without necessarily releasing the cash to its final destination right away.

The Chronicle counts donations to DAFs and foundations but doesn't count disbursements from those funds, to avoid double-counting. Without Scott's confirmation, no spot on the list.

Musk and Ellison: centibillionaire ghosts

Now here's the part that'll make you laugh — or cry, depending on your cynicism level.

Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet according to Forbes, doesn't appear in the ranking. He revealed in a regulatory filing that he donated roughly 210,000 Tesla shares, valued at nearly $100 million, to "certain charities" in December. Certain charities. No name, no address, no nothing.

The Chronicle couldn't count it because, without knowing who received the money — and whether the recipients had ties to lobbying or political campaigns — the donation sits in limbo. And keep in mind we're talking about a centibillionaire. The guy has over $200 billion and we can't track where $100 million went.

Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, is another ghost. In 2010, he signed the famous Giving Pledge promising to donate at least 95% of his fortune. Beautiful on paper. But last year, he changed the pledge to focus on "technology research" instead of traditional nonprofits.

"It's not really clear what he's giving or to whom," said Maria Di Mento, senior editor at the Chronicle, who has been working on these rankings for 21 years.

Damn. Twenty-one years covering this circus.

The rich are afraid of being... rich

This is where things get really interesting. According to Di Mento, the ultra-wealthy are becoming increasingly more secretive about their donations. Not out of Christian humility — far from it.

First: public resentment toward billionaires has grown "by leaps and bounds" in recent years. Second: every time some rich guy puts his name on a donation, he gets bombarded by fundraisers from other nonprofits asking for money. It's like posting your Venmo handle on social media.

Only 19 of the 400 members of the Forbes list show up in the top 50 philanthropists ranking. Less than 5%.

And then Di Mento drops the most honest line in the entire article: "Many of the ultra-wealthy aren't giving as much as they could, but there's also no law requiring them to disclose their donations."

The inconvenient truth

The billionaire philanthropy game is, to a large extent, a game of public relations with tax benefits. Donor-advised funds allow immediate tax deductions with no obligation as to when — or if — the money will reach its final destination. Public pledges like the Giving Pledge have zero legal force. And rankings like the Chronicle's depend on the goodwill of billionaires to open up their numbers.

Nassim Taleb would ask: where's the skin in the game? Promising to donate 95% of your fortune and then changing the terms of the promise is the moral equivalent of writing a postdated check with a date after you're already dead.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg — who at least puts his money on the table with his full name attached — leads for the third year running.

The question that lingers: if you need the billionaire's cooperation to find out whether he's generous, is he actually generous — or does he just have a good PR team?