Earlier this summer, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett officially laid down the gauntlet to their financial peers and challenged them to give away the majority of their wealth before they died by taking what they dubbed The Giving Pledge.
When the names of the first 40 individuals and families who had signed on were announced Wednesday, the list included many of the usual suspects -- those who have given away hundreds of millions of dollars. On the list were at least a dozen Jews. Their names are certainly familiar to the broader philanthropic world: Michael Bloomberg, Eli and Edith Broad, Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg, Larry Ellison, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, George Kaiser, Lorry Lokey, Bernie and Millie Marcus, Bernard and Barbro Osher, David M. Rubenstein, Herb and Marion Sandler, Jeff Skoll, Sanford and Joan Weill and Shelby White."
