Paul Allen

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported Monday that Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was the third most generous donor in America last year, and the most generous one still alive.

This is Allen’s 10th year on the list. Only two donors have made the list more times: software billionaire Larry Ellison, and Eli and Edythe L. Broad, whose background is in finance and real estate.

Last year, Allen committed $372.6 million to a variety of foundations, including $295 million to his own Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which supports the arts, culture, education and social service programs.

Allen, whose Vulcan Inc. is now involved in real estate, professional sports, and the EMP music museum, among other things, started his foundation in 1990. Since then, it has awarded $438 million to nonprofit organizations, primarily in the Northwest, with 60 percent of funds going to organizations in Washington state.

In 2011, the foundation gave $500,000 to the Historical Society of Seattle and King County for a new museum at Lake Union Park; $400,000 to the Lake Washington School District to develop a science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum; and $225,000 to FareStart, a Seattle nonprofit restaurant that employs homeless and low-income people.

In January, the foundation announced $3.3 million in grants for organizations in Washington state, including an increased emphasis on support for Native American communities.

Bill Gates, Allen’s former business partner at Microsoft, gave the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about $67.9 million last year, but did not make the Chronicle’s list because the money was payment on a pledge Gates and his wife made in 2004.

Last year Allen also donated $70 million to the Allen Institute for Brain Science, an organization he established in 2003 to research neuroscience and genomics, and $7.6 million to the Experience Music Project, which he established in 2000.

Margaret A. Cargill, an agribusiness heiress, topped the Chronicle’s list with a $6 billion bequest to two foundations she set up to support the arts. Cargill died in 2006, but the Minnesota-based foundations were not able to liquidate her assets until last year.

The second most generous donor was William S. Dietrich II, a steel executive from Pittsburgh, who died of cancer in October 2011 at the age of 73. Dietrich left $500 million to establish the Dietrich Foundation supporting more than a dozen Pittsburgh nonprofits.

No. 50 on the Chronicle's list were Jack O. and Barbara Bovender of Nashville, both of whom worked in the hospital industry and donated $26 million, all of it to Duke University.

Emily Parkhurst covers technology for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal. She can be reached at 206-876-5441 or eparkhurst@bizjournals.com. Follow her on Twitter: @emilyparkhurst.