Los Angeles Lakers star (and enthusiastic shopper) Nick Young and his rapper girlfriend Iggy Azalea exchanged mega gifts this Christmas: a puffy gold heart pendant encrusted with diamonds for her, a vintage Chevy convertible for him.
Dr. Newman also used the phrase "super-mega gift" to describe what he was hoping for.
Securing mega-gifts can easily take three years, and often longer.
Raising multimillion-pound mega-gifts is probably the fastest way for a charity achieve a step change in its impact.
"We've definitely noticed a drop-off in the kind of mega-gifts that marked philanthropy during the boom years," Ms. Palmer said.
They also believe that lots of the bribes their companies engage in are merely small "facilitation payments", different in kind from mega-gifts with the power to alter the direction of large government contracts.
"The big organizations plot their fundraising strategy for mega-gifts and capital campaigns around these people," she says.
To begin let me take you back about ten years ago, the era of the mega celebrity gift basket.
The first console I ever owned was a SEGA Mega Drive, a cherished gift received from my parents when I was six.
Somehow more humiliatingly, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he'd literally change his name to "Amazon" for the privilege of helping gift the mega company at least a billion in tax subsidies.
Rove helped found American Crossroads, a big-money PAC to support Republican candidates, after the Supreme Court opened up the floodgates to unlimited gifts from mega-donors, and he published both a memoir of his Bush years and a historical account of the 1896 Presidential campaign, a longtime labor of love he had talked about for years.
