Hollywood’s Most Charitable Celebrities

Oprah, Sandra Bullock, and Denzel Washington are a few of America's most generous celebrities.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on May 04 2011

We always hear when celebrities do something bad, but it’s rare that we get a chance to celebrate famous folks who are doing something to make a difference. That’s why we’re taking a few minutes to celebrate some of the boldfaced names who donate their time and money to charity. No matter what other scandals these folks have been embroiled in, this is the one list where we give them a pass.

Sandra Bullock
Not only is she a gorgeous and talented new mother, but this Best Actress winner is charitable, too. After 9/11, Bullock donated $1 million to the American Red Cross. After the tsunami of December 2004, she gave another $1 million to the relief effort; after the Haitian earthquake in January, she donated yet another $1 million to relief organizations.

Denzel Washington
In 2006, Washington donated $1 million to Save Africa’s Children. Later that year, the A-lister gave back at home by donating $25,000 to a North Carolina charity that helps local folks pay their heating bills.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
The couple that gives together stays together. Pitt and Jolie donated $8.4 million in 2008 to their Jolie-Pitt Foundation. Of that money, $5 million went to build 150 green homes in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. This year the couple donated $1 million to Doctors Without Borders to provide emergency medical care in Haiti.

Tiger Woods
Tiger has been a busy boy. The golfer (who has an estimated net worth of more than $600 million) may not be Husband of the Year, but he’s a good human being in other regards. In 2006, he donated $9.5 million to the Tiger Woods Learning Center, Earl D. Woods Sr. Scholarship Fund, and other Tiger Woods Foundation programs. More recently, Tiger donated $3 million to Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti charity to build a mobile hospital following the earthquake earlier this year.

Rush Limbaugh
Whether you love or hate this conservative radio host, you can’t belittle his charitable donations. In 2008, Rush donated $4.2 million to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, a charity that helps support the children of Marines or federal law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty.

Oprah Winfrey
In 2005, the queen of all media gave more than $50 million to the Oprah Winfrey Foundation in Chicago, which supports education and other programs for women and children in the United States and abroad, but her lifetime charitable donations are estimated to be somewhere in the $300 million range.

Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld
In 2008, Jerry donated $3 million to organizations such as the American Red Cross, Autism Speaks, and Scholarship America. Jerry and his wife Jessica also use their star couple power for Jessica’s Baby Buggy charity, which provides New York City charities with essential childcare items.

Usher
Last year the R&B superstar pledged $1 million to create the youth grant project for his nonprofit New Look. The project awards $500 grants to inner-city kids who are looking to make a difference in their neighborhoods.

Martha Stewart
When she isn’t busy building her domestic empire, Stewart is writing checks to charity. In 2006, she donated $5 million to New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital for a center on healthy aging.

Britney Spears
In 2009, the pop princess donated $100,000 of the proceeds from her Circus tour to Miami Children’s Hospital. The “Hit Me Baby One More Time” singer has been known to let the market dictate her charitable giving, frequently donating items like a signed portrait of herself and a dress she wore at the MTV VMAs to be auctioned off for charitable causes.

Rosie O’Donnell
This funny lady donated $5.7 million in 2006 to Katrina Relief efforts, including Renaissance Village (a temporary shelter for Katrina victims), day-care centers, a rehabilitation center in San Antonio, Texas, and a Habitat for Humanity subdivision in Baton Rouge.

Nicolas Cage
The National Treasure star may be bad at handling his own finances, but in 2006 he donated $2 million to Amnesty International for a fund to help child soldiers in Africa.

Drew Barrymore
In 2007, Drew became an Ambassador Against Hunger for the World Food Programme to help feed children in Africa. In 2008, she announced on Oprah that she was donating $1 million to the program.

Barbra Streisand
Babs has donated more than $11 million to the Streisand Foundation to benefit the environment, women’s issues, civil rights, AIDS research, and advocacy.

By LearnVest. Reprinted from Divine Caroline.

Filed under: Celebrities, Non-Profits,

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