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The 2012 most generous billionaire philanthropist died way back in 2006

According to the newly-released Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of 50 most generous donors, a woman who had been dead since 2006 beat the likes of Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros for the number 1 spot. I know you’ll be wondering how that came to be. Well, the late Margaret Cargill, who inherited the Cargill agribusiness fortune, willed all her shares of Cargill stock to be split between the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation and the Anne Ray Charitable Trust. After her death in 2006, the two nonprofit organizations could not receive the fund totaling roughly $6 billion because of complexities in the payout structure. Luckily, the officials at the foundation and the trust managed to sort things out last year. In effect, this has made the two philanthropies set up by Ms. Cargill the wealthiest grant makers in the US.