The Giving Back Fund released the 2006 Giving Back 30, which lists the top 30 most charitable individuals in sports and entertainment. Tiger Woods was the top athlete on the list, with $9.5M in donations but the next most charitable athlete had most people surprised — Carmelo Anthony sits at #8 with his donations to CAF Youth Center in Baltimore, AAU
Basketball, Syracuse University Recreational Center, and other charities, totalling $4.3M.
This comes as somewhat of a surprise because Carmelo Anthony seems to be such a punk, with that sucker punch in the Knicks-Nuggets brawl, and especially because he appeared in that Stop Snitchin video. While a lot of people will cynically think that all the charitable donations are meant to repair his image, we’re going to give Melo the benefit of the doubt and give him his kudos for helping out. If you want to donate money just for the PR, you donate something like $10,000, not $4.2M. It doesn’t matter how big his contract it, that’s a lot of scratch.
Other athletes on the list are: The Rock ($2M), Andre Agassi ($1M), Tiki and Ronde barber ($1M), Tony Stewart ($1M), Mike Sexton ($560k), and Lance Armstrong ($500k). These figures are only the publicly announced donations. There might be athletes who donated privately.
Links:
[The Giving Back Fund]: The Giving Back 30
