[jhermsmeyer]

I have talked to directors of Bay Area charities that tell me that Jobs was a generous donator personally. In fact this just happened 2 weeks ago, and the person defended him vehemently.

So there's one anecdotal data point for you.

[rprasad]

You can verify donations to public charities when they file their (publicly accessible) information returns for the tax year. If Steve Jobs was a generous donor, he will show up in their returns for 2011 or 2012 (which should become available in the next few months, or next year, respectively). A lot of research has been done by a lot of journalists looking for a Steve Jobs entry in the donor lists of many charities (in prior years, i.e., 2010 or earlier), and they haven't found any yet. (This doesn't mean that he never made any donations, it is however strong evidence that Steve Jobs did not donate much, if anything, until the last few months of his life.)