Can someone please change the title to say "has donated", since "had donated" implies he is dead. Or that the took the money back.
That's not what the pluperfect tense implies in English. It simply means something that took place prior to a moment in the past [1]. There is still some ambiguity that could lead a reader to infer that Gates is finished donating money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_aspect#English
True, but that implies that there exists such a moment with particular significance. Otherwise, you wouldn't use that tense. In other words, it leaves you thinking Bill Gates donated 36 billion dollars before X, where X is his death, an alien invasion, the collapse of the dollar, etc.
I don't know if there is a rule of thumb as to what tense to use, but "had donated" in this context feels plain wrong. That kind of dissonance is captured perfectly by this Mitch Hedberg quote:
>I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.