^Never before has it been more on trend to do good with your dollars. Coined at a Rockefeller Foundation event in 2007, the term “impact investing” is defined as investing in ventures that both make money and have a positive social or environmental impact. It’s a strategy that’s been embraced by many, including billionaires, pop stars and athletes. As of April, there were more than 1,340 organizations managing $502 billion in impact investing assets worldwide, according to the Global Impact Investing Network. That’s more than double last year’s total.

Forbes has put together The Impact 50 to highlight some of the most notable impact investors. To compile the list, Forbes reporters researched all the U.S. billionaires as well as members of Forbes’ lists of the highest-paid athletes, highest-earning celebrities and most successful self-made women. To qualify, these impact investors had to have been at it for a year or more, either with deployed capital or personal investments, and be respected in the field. The list was vetted by a panel that included Forbes editors and two impact investing experts.

By Jon Ponciano and Kristin Stoller 

NET WORTH: $106 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Healthcare, Poverty

For the past decade the couple has been doing impact investing through their eponymous foundation. It’s put about $2 billion into 70 initiatives and businesses that primarily address healthcare and poverty. In the past year it’s backed Indonesian app and website Haladoc, which connects patients with doctors for online consultations, and India-based firm CropIn, which uses data to analyze crops. It also put $55 million into German company BioNTech, which is working to develop vaccines and immunotherapy for HIV and tuberculosis. Any profits from the investments are plowed back into the foundation.

NET WORTH: Combined $103 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Education

Longtime proponents of charter schools, the siblings are spearheading a program that will issue $300 million in bonds to help these schools invest in new or renovated facilities. The goal is for their low-cost financing to reduce the amount that schools spend—an average of 15% of funding—on securing facilities. “This effort will allow resources that were spent on facilities to be directed back into the classrooms, back to the teachers and back to where it should be—with the students,” Alice Walton said in a statement.

NET WORTH: $69.6 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Education

The Facebook cofounder and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have invested $110 million in more than a dozen startups via their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a limited liability company that backs for-profit firms plus makes grants to nonprofits. In the past year, CZI has invested in childcare software provider Brightwheel and inclusive college graduate recruiting platform Handshake; it also upped its stake in Andela, a recruitment platform that links technology companies to teams of engineers who work remotely and full-time from Africa.

NET WORTH: $51.7 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Diversified

The former Microsoft CEO invested heavily in education, health and social services in 2018. In May that year, Ballmer and his wife, Connie, along with Prudential Financial, put $30 million into the Community Outcomes Fund, which finances state and local health and social services that also produce financial returns. The fund has invested, for example, in a program that delivers workforce development services to about 2,000 adults in the Boston area with limited knowledge of spoken English. Also last year, the Ballmers invested $59 million in Social Solutions, a software company that helps organizations digitize files and conduct data analytics for the communities they serve.

NET WORTH: $32.3 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Education, International

In a move similar to that of the Gates Foundation, Michael and Susan Dell’s foundation has made investments in and loans to for-profit companies whose missions are aligned with their foundation’s aims; any profits revert to the foundation. In the U.S., it has invested $1 million in BetterLesson, an education tech company that enables accomplished teachers to share their resources online; in India, it’s loaned nearly $1.3 million to Blowhorn, a Bengaluru-based intra-city logistics company, and invested in Kings Learning, which offers spoken English instruction online and offline.

NET WORTH: $21.3 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Diversified

As founder of the philanthropic, investment and advocacy entity Emerson Collective, Powell Jobs partners with entrepreneurs, policymakers and advocates to promote social change. Emerson Collective has backed English learner-focused software startup Ellevation, public sector budgeting software OpenGov, and environmental sensor network Aclima. She also sits on the board of The Rise Fund, which focuses on social and environmental impact. In late 2018, Emerson Collective acquired Pop-Up Magazine Productions, home of The California Sunday Magazine, to further its investment in journalism that pursues truth and sparks action.

NET WORTH: $18.7 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Tech, Healthcare

With his family, the founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, has put nearly $100 million into impact investments. Dalio is particularly focused on trying “to find ways of doing it in support of the oceans,” like funding documentaries. He’s also backed the Global Health Investment Fund, which provides financing for drugs and vaccines for diseases that occur disproportionately in poorer countries, and the Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, which invests in companies that bring financial services to underserved consumers in emerging markets.

NET WORTH: $14.2 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Environment

Through their Schmidt Family Foundation, former Google chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy, have put about $50 million into investments seeking to advance the "wiser use of energy and natural resources." The foundation has joined funding rounds for startups such as Aclima, which collects and analyzes climate data related to air pollution, and BlocPower, a Brooklyn-based firm that helps underserved communities in New York City finance projects to improve buildings' energy efficiency.

NET WORTH: $13.1 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: International

Through his Omidyar Group, the eBay founder has invested more than $700 million, including $116 million in 2018, into startups that work toward goals like income and gender equality and accessible healthcare. Omidyar Group organizations led the seed round in early 2018 for Kaleidofin, an Indian digital savings platform that works with low-income customers, mostly women. In March, it backed Healofy, an Indian social media platform where expectant mothers can go to share concerns and get advice.

NET WORTH: $11.6 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Diversified

The Asana founder and Facebook cofounder, Moskovitz, and his wife, Cari Tuna, moved their Good Ventures foundation beyond grantmaking. Just like the Gates Foundation and the Schmidt Foundation do, any profits from Good Ventures’ impact investments return to the foundation. In 2016 it invested in vegan meat alternative Impossible Foods. Early this year it backed healthcare company Sherlock Biosciences, which is working to readily detect human viruses.

NET WORTH: $8.5 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Environment

After learning that the world’s fish are fast disappearing from the ocean—decades of overfishing has brought many species to the brink of extinction—Walton launched investment fund Cuna del Mar (“Cradle of the Sea”) in 2011. She backs companies that are working to develop a sustainable supply of seafood, like red snapper farmer Earth Ocean Farms and oyster farmer Sol Azul Maricultivos.

NET WORTH: $7.5 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Diversified

An early backer of cleantech companies, the venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins is now an investor in G2VP, a $350 million cleantech fund. Doerr says impact investing to him means backing “extraordinary” entrepreneurs who can change the world at scale. In May he backed San Francisco-based Mos, an application portal for student financial aid that comes equipped with financial advisors. Over the years he's also invested in fuel-cell company Bloom Energy and K-8 math platform DreamBox.

NET WORTH: $7 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Urban Renewal

After a wave of job losses hit Beloit, Wisconsin, as manufacturing declined in America's heartland, Hendricks stepped in to revive the little town of 37,000. Starting in 2009 she repurposed an old factory campus into a modern working space with a startup incubator—now housing roughly 1,000 employees—and renovated and opened a convention center and country club to attract business executives. "I want this city to be exciting, the way that Beloit used to be," says Hendricks, who launched four new businesses—a boutique hotel, a taco-and-cocktail bar, a European-style cafe and a coffee shop—in the fall of 2018.

NET WORTH: $6.5 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Environment, Healthcare

Marc Benioff, the CEO of software firm Salesforce, and his wife Lynne invested in recycling and waste reduction firm Rubicon Global and biodegradable water bottle startup Cove. They’ve also backed health and well-being startups Carrot, which aims to help millions worldwide quit smoking, and Zipline, which delivers life-saving medicine by drone in places like Rwanda. Meanwhile, Salesforce launched a $50 million impact fund in 2017 that has invested in such companies as Ellevest, an investing platform that seeks to bring gender equality to investing, and Angaza, which helps manufacturers and distributors make clean energy products more affordable.

NET WORTH: $6.5 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Urban Renewal

Gilbert and his companies, which he calls “for-more-than-profit,” have committed $5.6 billion to the revitalization of Detroit’s downtown, which includes a plan to bring 24,000 jobs to the city. His first step was moving his Quicken Loans headquarters to Detroit from the suburbs in 2009 and trying to entice recent grads to give the city a try. He’s since invested in industrial projects like the city’s QLINE streetcars and has purchased scores of buildings in the Motor City. In May, his Jack Gaming sold Detroit’s Greektown Casino-Hotel for $1 billion after reportedly buying it for $600 million in 2013; proceeds from the sale of the renovated casino will go toward further Detroit redevelopment, per the company.

NET WORTH: $6.1 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Civic Engagement, Poverty/Inequality

Roberts, who cofounded private equity firm KKR in the 1970s, launched venture philanthropy outfit REDF (for Roberts Economic Development Fund) in 1997 with the aim of generating jobs. Since then, it’s issued grants to more than 175 social enterprises. In 2017, REDF launched an impact lending program that aims to deploy $5 million in capital by 2020. Its first loan was to Wash Cycle Laundry, a for-profit laundry service in Philadelphia focused on employing those who've been homeless or incarcerated.

NET WORTH: $5 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Environment

Skoll, who built a fortune as eBay’s first president, is committed to investing in companies that fight climate change. He does so through Capricorn Investment Group, which has $5 billion in assets from Skoll himself, his nonprofit Skoll Foundation and a few other high-net-worth folks. Capricorn was an early venture capital investor in electric car maker Tesla and has also backed Joby Aviation, which is creating electric-powered air taxis. In June, Capricorn put money into a new $40 million private equity fund, Encourage Solar Finance, which will invest in small and medium-size lenders and banks in India to help them provide financing to small businesses for rooftop solar installations.

NET WORTH: $5 Billion

AREA OF IMPACT: Diversified

“If you’re going to have true social change, true environmental change, if you’re going to try to improve the quality of life of every living thing on this planet, you have to start with where people work,” says Jones, a longtime hedge fund manager who cofounded JUST Capital in 2013, a research outfit that ranks every company on the Russell 1000 by their impact on their communities, employees, customers and others. The nonprofit partnered with Goldman Sachs to launch an exchange-traded fund in June 2018, which holds stocks of companies that performed in the top half of their industry as ranked by JUST. Jones has invested in the fund, which has $133 million in assets and is up 8% since its launch.