When it comes to giving to charity, Mayor Bloomberg leaves rival candidate William Thompson in the dust.
Way in the dust.
Thompson gave just $885 to charity last year – about 0.5% of his $171,352-a-year salary as city controller, tax records released Sunday show. The Democrat gave $900 to charity in 2007 and just $750 in 2006.
Bloomberg, on the other hand, was named the most generous living American after it emerged he donated $235 million to charity last year, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
The gifts to more than 1,200 charitable groups amounted to about 1.17% of Hizzoner’s estimated $20 billion fortune.
Bloomberg, who earns just $1a year as mayor, donated $205million to charity two years ago, according to his tax records. In 2006, he gave $165 million. A year earlier, he gave $143 million.
A spokesman for Thompson declined to comment yesterday on the donations or which charitable groups received them.
Thompson, 56, is twice divorced and also reportedly paid off thousands of dollars in credit card debt last year.
Bloomberg, who is running on the independent and Republican Party lines, gave some of his millions to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University; the Robin Hood Foundation, and Stand Up to Cancer, records show.
He recently urged New Yorkers to try to donate more to charities struggling to stay afloat during tough economic times. “I’m in a business where revenues go down when the needs go up,” he told a conference in Atlanta in May. “The most potent force is private philanthropy and the private sector and the government.”
Bloomberg has started his own charitable foundation and said that once his tenure as mayor is over, he would focus his energies on giving away his vast fortune.
The Bloomberg Family Foundation awarded $125 million to fight tobacco use across the globe. It also gave the World Health Organization a two-year, $9 million grant to reduce traffic deaths in Vietnam and Mexico.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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4 Responses
that’s the way with the yidden. they give tzidaka
our mayer gives lots of tzidakah, because he’s a jew. It’s in him, just as it SHOULD be in you/us
we can learn from everyone, frum & not frum.give tzidaka, like every jew should.
1.17% is still a lot less than Maaser.
Probably the only way Bloomie acts like a Republican is how he gives charity, every other way he is a liberal.
FACT: Rebublicans – especially Conservatives – give more to “charitable causes” than their liberal bretheren.
This is proven over and over when candidates have to show their taxes to the public.
1.17% of his total fortune, not his annual income.