When Ted Turner pledged $1 billion to the United Nations in September 1997, his promise stunned the world: A single person was donating almost the entire sum the U.S. owed the U.N. in unpaid dues. He declared he would dole it out over 10 years in $100 million chunks. Skeptics predicted he’d never deliver, and a perilous decline in the value of AOL Time Warner stock in 2002 renewed their doubts. (Turner was then the vice chairman, with much of his wealth tied up in the company.)

So it has been 10 years. Did he ever make good? It turns out that Turner is $345 million short of his stated goal. His annual giving has never quite reached $100 million. He gave about $83 million in both 1998 and 1999, his most generous years. Last year, the amount he handed over dropped to $49.8 million.

As of June, he had given just under $642 million, with another payment of $12.5 million planned for September, which would bring the total to almost $655 million. Full payment of the pledge now isn’t expected until 2015—eight years past the original end date. Through a spokesperson, Turner says, “I pledged $1 billion to U.N. causes. That was the plan; so far, I’ve given over $600 million. It is one of the best investments I ever made.”

Technically, Turner’s personal payments aren’t made directly to the U.N., since individuals can’t assume the U.S.’s debt. Instead, he gives to two foundations he established. One, the United Nations Foundation, makes grants to U.N. agencies. The other, the Better World Fund, is an advocacy organization that awards grants to help raise public awareness of the U.N. and lobbies Congress on its behalf. It urges, among other things, that the U.S. pay its dues (which, as of July, amounted to $669 million in peacekeeping obligations, plus another $784 million owed to the U.N.’s general budget).

The foundations—of which Turner serves as chairman—explain his delay by saying they asked him to restructure the payments to ­allow them more time to distribute the money. A spokesperson for Unicef, one of the main beneficiaries of Turner’s donations, says the organization hasn’t noticed a dip in grants. Meanwhile, the foundations have reached out to other funding sources. Together, they say, they have raised and distributed a total of more than $1.2 billion. That includes Turner’s money as well as gifts from the Bill and ­Melinda Gates Foundation, Expedia, and the Nike Foundation.

If you’re wondering how much world betterment $1.2 billion buys you, it’s actually a little hard to tell: The foundations don’t publish a compendium of their grants, though some ­information about them is available online. From 1998 through spring 2007, they awarded 1,285 grants. The bulk of that money went toward children’s health­, from providing immunization against measles to treating ­vitamin A deficiencies in Nigerian toddlers.