Gift overview in 2006

Beneficiaries: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids; Centers for Disease Control Foundation; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health; World Lung Foundation; World Health Organization
Donor's background: Mr. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, founded Bloomberg LP, a financial-data and news-service business, in New York.

Donations in 2006

Mr. Bloomberg, 65, donated $165-million to 1,000 organizations, five of which are working to fight tobacco use worldwide. The remaining 995 groups -- which Mr. Bloomberg declined to name -- support arts, education, health care, and social services.

Mr. Bloomberg would not disclose how much money he gave to each of the five organizations -- the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in Washington; the Centers for Disease Control Foundation, in Atlanta; the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health, in Baltimore; the World Lung Foundation, in New York; and the World Health Organization, in Geneva -- but the undisclosed payments were part of $125-million pledge he announced last year.

The money will be used to provide the first two years of support for a project, coordinated by the five groups, to monitor the progress of countries that are developing programs to help people stop smoking, and that are supporting government efforts to pass and enforce laws against smoking.

Although Mr. Bloomberg would not name many of the groups to which he gave, it has been rumored that he was the anonymous donor of a $30-million donation to the Carnegie Corporation of New York in June. Counting the $30-million in 2006, Carnegie has received a total of $85-million from this same anonymous donor over the last five years.

Another supposedly anonymous donor, said to be Mr. Bloomberg in reports in both The Sun, in Baltimore, and The New York Times, gave $100-million to the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. The donor stipulated that the money be used for stem-cell research, for the renovation of a university building, for programs in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and to help pay for a new children's facility at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Officials from the university and the Carnegie Corporation say they will not confirm whether Mr. Bloomberg is the donor.