Osili Una O, Ackerman Jacqueline, Kong Chin Hua, Light Robert P, Börner Katy
Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America.
Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 May 26;12(5):e0176738. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176738. eCollection 2017.
The Million Dollar List (MDL, online at http://www.milliondollarlist.org) is a compilation of publicly announced charitable donations of $1 million or more from across the United States since 2000; as of December 2016, the database contains close to 80,000 gifts made by U.S. individuals, corporations, foundations, and other grant-making nonprofit organizations. This paper discusses the unique value of the Million Dollar List and provides unique insights to key questions such as: How does distance affect giving? How do networks impact million-dollar-plus gifts? Understanding the geospatial and temporal dimensions of philanthropy can assist researchers and policymakers to better understand the role of private funding in innovation and discovery. Moreover, the results from the paper emphasize the importance of philanthropy for fueling research and development in science, the arts, environment, and health. The paper also includes the limitations of the presented analyses and promising future work.
