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Mayor Bloomberg contributed an eye-bulging $420 million to his charitable foundation last year, catapulting it to the 17th largest in the United States, with assets of more than $2.2 billion, according to IRS filings released yesterday.
“His gift will certainly rank among the largest gifts to a foundation in 2009,” said Steven Lawrence, director of research at the Foundation Center here in the city.
To add to the pot, the mayor chipped in the $250,000 that he was awarded with the Lasker Prize for Public Service.
Bloomberg reported giving away $180 million, largely to combat tobacco use around the world, but also to promote international road safety and to help women in war-torn regions rebuild their lives.
The Salaam Bombay Foundation in India, which received $1.5 million to host a conference on tobacco and health, couldn’t spend it all. It refunded $285,682.
The filings listed the mayor as devoting 2.5 hours a week to his philanthropic duties, while First Deputy Mayor Patti Harris — the foundation’s president and CEO — was reported putting in an average of five hours each week.
Foundation officials had previously refused to say how much time Harris was spending at the foundation, located a block from the mayor’s East 79th Street townhouse, even though she received clearance from the city’s ethics board to do double duty.
Maria DiMento, assistant editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the sums Bloomberg is pumping into his private foundation at the same time he’s serving as mayor of the nation’s largest metropolis certainly make him stand out in the charity world.
“Everything Bloomberg does is a little unusual,” she observed.
According to the list compiled by the chronicle, Bloomberg’s foundation ranks 17th largest in the nation based on 2009 assets, right below the Robert Woodruff Foundation at $2.4 billion and right above the $2.1 billion Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
Officials declined to discuss the foundation’s thick filing of more than 100 pages. But in many cases the numbers told the story.
The consulting fee for the mayor’s investment adviser, Quadrangle Investment Management LP overseen by longtime pal Steve Rattner, ran to $8.2 million alone.
The foundation’s investments spanned the world from the Premier Gold Mines in Thunder Bay, Canada, to Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings in Hong Kong.
More than $75 million was invested in offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Mauritius and Bermuda, allowing the foundation to legally duck some US taxes.
Bloomberg has defended the practice, saying it generates more money for charity.
The foundation claimed that it has no paid employees earning $50,000 or more, even though at least two former six-figure city employees are top officials there: Jim Anderson, the mayor’s former communications director, and Verna Eggleston, who used to run the Human Resources Administration.