In the wake of MOCA's public outcry for help, Eli Broad has stepped up to offer $30 million to the museum. Earlier this month, Deidre Woollard reported that Broad (above with his wife Edythe) might have been planning a contemporary art museum of his own in Beverly Hills, after an acquisition spree that included pieces by Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha and Robert Rauschenberg.

Perhaps he's refocused his efforts towards saving a contemporary art museum instead. I wrote recently about art critic Christopher's Knight's open letter to MOCA's board, ordering it to raise $25 million pronto. Looks like Broad got the memo -- though in his statement of intent in the LA Times, he urges his fellow philanthropists to take part.

"This is not a one-philanthropist town," he writes, though in the contemporary art world, the Broad name is growing awfully familiar.

In an effort to give back in troubled times, Wal-Mart has just announced it will donate 90 million pounds of fresh food to America's biggest anti-hunger org, Feeding America.

The company won't seek a tax deduction for the gift and intends to increase its annual giving to 3 billion pounds of food over the next few years.

Their donation this year is the equivalent of 70 million meals, at a time when food banks have reported a 20% increase in demand.

And Wal-Mart isn't just providing food. Because it's donated protein and produce, unlike the canned goods and bags of rice you expect at the local food bank, Wal-Mart has also donated $2.5 million to buy freezer trucks and help prepare for new food storage challenges.

It's a nice start to the season of giving.

The Gates Foundation has announced it will spend several hundred million dollars over the next five years in an effort to double the current number of low-income students who graduate from college, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

On Tuesday at A Forum for Education in America, Bill Gates told guests, "According to our data, the number of low income and minority students graduating college ready today is 22 percent, and that figure is increasing far too slowly. It's unacceptable. We need to do better."

The Foundation will spend approximately $3 billion across all its education initiatives this year alone, including plans to reduce the dropout rate at the high school level and provide more teacher support. Experts suggest that with the failing economy, federal and state agencies with less and less to spend could start collaborating with the Foundation to improve education in America.

The Patterson Foundation in Sarasota, Florida has just announced it has received a bequest of $225 million from the estate of Dorothy Clarke Patterson, who died last year. The significant gift makes the Patterson Foundation the 19th largest grant-maker in the state of Florida and the largest in Sarasota.

In addition to the major gift, the former Longboat Key resident left no instructions for how she wanted the bequest managed, providing a unique opportunity for the foundation to chart its own course. In the past, the foundation Patterson founded with $3 million following her husband's death in 1997 has donated to Sarasota groups including Habitat for Humanity and a local high school and food bank. Newly appointed foundation head Debra Jacobs (at right) will certainly be hard at work defining the mission of one woman's unrestricted largesse.

Minnesota Mom Jill Youse started sending her own breast milk to Africa in 2006, soon after which she began helping other moms around the country do the same through her organization, the International Breast Milk Project (IBMP). In just the past couple of years IBMP has successfully shipped over 85,000 pounds of milk to infants in Africa, primarily babies fighting illnesses that often abate when breast milk is introduced. Youse set up a program for women who have suffered the loss of an infant through the Madison Cassady Program , so that grieving mothers who still had milk stored in their freezers didn't have to throw it all away. Also distributed in the U.S. to children born prematurely or whose mothers cannot produce milk, donations are made easy for moms. Coolers and the necessary equipment arrive shipped to their doors and are later picked up and sent to babies in need. Even FedEx has chipped in to provide transport for the mothers' milk. Recognized as one of "Earth's Mothers" by Oprah Winfrey a little over a year ago, Youse and IBMP are revolutionizing how new moms think about breastfeeding, convincing them to add a few more mouths along the way.

This past weekend I've been reading The Billionaire's Vinegar which touches on the wine collection of William Koch but it's his brother David who has been in the news most recently. David H. Koch who is said to be the wealthiest person in New York City has, according to the NY Times agreed to contribute $100 million toward the renovation of the New York State Theater. The gift will put Koch's name on the door and will also be the largest private capital donation in the Lincoln Center's history. Koch says that he has been going to the New York State Theater for 40 years (he's 68) and he was aware the theater needed modernization. As of this fall it will be known as the David H. Koch Theater making it the same big name change of a New York institution in four months for a $100 million gift. The New York Public Library will be naming its main building after the Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman in return for his donation.

Koch has an estimated net worth of $17 billion. He will donate the money over 10 years, paying the first $15 million payment this summer and then $10 million annual payment for eight years plus a final $5 million installment. The deal does specify that the theater could be renamed for a new donor after 50 years with the Koch family retaining the right of first refusal. Koch has said he believes that a naming opportunity should last for a specific amount of time so that an institution can later pursue another round of fundraising.

David Rockefeller is a big giver who is part of the trend of not waiting until death to announce large donations. He has just pledged $100-million to Harvard University, his alma mater. This is the third time he has dropped $100 million on a donation, in 2005 that he planned to give $100-million apiece to the Museum of Modern Art and to Rockefeller University. All three organizations will receive the money upon his death (Rockefeller is 92) but in the meantime he will be giving out an an annual payment of $2.5-million a year until he dies which works out to roughly the interest on the money. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that Rockefeller has given or pledged a total of at least $1-billion to nonprofit institutions over his lifetime.

Dame Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop who died in 2007, makes our Big Givers list posthumously. The Telegraph reports on the details of her estate which were recently revealed. Roddick donated her entire £51 million fortune to philanthopic causes before her death from a brain hemorrhage in September 2007. She had once referred to leaving money to your family after death as obscene and wanted her money to go toward green issues and work in developing countries. She left behind £665,747 which all went to inheritance tax because per the rules in the U.K. individuals have to pay this tax if they do not survive for seven years after making monetary gifts. She had founded The Body Shop in 1976 and sold to L'Oreal in 2006 for £625 million.