Gift overview in 2006

Biggest beneficiary: Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Other key beneficiaries: Harvard University; Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; International House; Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics; Historic Hudson Valley
Donor's background: Mr. Rockefeller retired as chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank; his inheritance is from the Standard Oil Company, which his grandfather founded.

Donations in 2006

Mr. Rockefeller, 91, pledged $225-million to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in New York, to establish the David Rockefeller Global Development Fund.

The development fund will further the foundation's support for projects focused on international finance and trade, fighting poverty, improving access to health care, and supporting sustainable development.

Mr. Rockefeller and his four brothers set up the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1940 to pool their money and give more effectively to nonprofit groups in which they shared a common interest. Their father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., gave the foundation $57.7-million in 1952 to establish its endowment, which has since grown to more than $800-million.

Although he awarded his largest gift to establish a specific fund, Mr. Rockefeller has said he prefers to make donations to a group's endowment without putting a lot of restrictions on his gifts. "If you pick a good cause that's run by capable people," he said, "they?re apt to know more about what is needed and how it should be used than an outside giver. Therefore it seems to me to give flexibility to good managers at causes is a good idea."

To that end, Mr. Rockefeller gave five additional gifts, all of which are either unrestricted or will go toward endowment.

He pledged $10-million -- of which $1-million has been paid -- to Harvard University for the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, which he helped establish with a $15-million gift in 1995. He gave $5-million to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a historic-preservation group in Virginia; and pledged $5-million -- of which $2-million has been paid -- to International House, a New York postgraduate residential program that seeks to bring together graduate students and interns from all over the world.

He also pledged $5-million -- of which $1-million has been paid -- to the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, in New York; and he pledged $2-million -- of which $500,000 has been paid -- to Historic Hudson Valley, a historic-preservation group in Tarrytown, N.Y.