How Jeff Bezos, richest person in modern history, spends on charity

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty
Images

• Jeff Bezos was named the richest man in modern history
  this July, with Bloomberg reporting that his fortune hit $150
  billion.
• Until this week, however, Bezos hadn’t engaged in much
  philanthropy, and he is the only American among the world’s
  five richest people to not join the Giving Pledge.
• On Thursday, Bezos announced the launch of a $2 billion
  fund to support homeless families and education programs in
  underserved communities. 
• The announcement comes more than a year after Bezos
  asked his Twitter followers for input on choosing a short-term
  philanthropic strategy.

---

Jeff Bezos was
named the richest man in modern history when his fortune hit
the $150 billion mark in July. But he had not engaged in much
philanthropy — at least publicly — until this week. 

Bezos announced two philanthropic goals on Thursday,

launching a $2 billion fund to support homeless families
and education programs in underserved communities. The Bezos Day
One Fund will form a support network for homeless families and
build early education program that Bezos called
“full-scholarship, Montessori-inspired preschools.”

The announcement comes more than a year after
Bezos requested
input from his Twitter followers for creating a short-term
philanthropy strategy. 

“I’m thinking I want much of my philanthropic activity to
be helping people in the here and now — short term — at the
intersection of urgent need and lasting impact,” Bezos
wrote.

He cited the example of Mary’s Place in Seattle, which

provides shelter and employment training to people who are
homeless. Amazon
partnered with Mary’s Place in 2016, turning an old hotel
into a shelter for more than 200 family members. That space was
later demolished to make room for two new Amazon office towers,
but the company committed to giving Mary’s Place a permanent
home. Bezos himself
has donated $1 million to the nonprofit. 

In a June 2017 letter published
in Forbes, philanthropy adviser Jake Hayman criticized Bezos for
focusing on short-term solutions and deciding to seek suggestions
on Twitter.

“The answer is not to provide shelter and employment
services to homeless families everywhere but instead to fix the
systems that have consistently and repeatedly failed people to
the point at which they rely on charity,” Hayman wrote.

Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider’s parent
company, Axel Springer, sat down with Bezos in April for
an
 interview
that revealed more details about the billionaire’s thought
process for philanthropy.

During the interview, Bezos said he is interested in
addressing transient homelessness and helping people without
family or a support system.

“You only have to help them for six to nine months,” Bezos
said. “You get them trained. You get them a job. They are
perfectly productive members of society.”

Amazon is one of the top
employers
 whose
workers receive food stamps. 
Bezos is also
the only American in Bloomberg’s ranking of the five richest
people in the world to
not join the Giving Pledge, which people sign to commit a
majority of their fortune to charity. 

Other billionaires, such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Netflic
CEO Reed Hastings, have
signed the pledge and taken up philanthropic causes while
serving in executive roles.

Still, some notably charitable billionaires didn’t get
as involved while running their companies. Microsoft co-founder
Bill Gates, for example, did not create the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, which has more than $40 billion in its
endowment, until after stepping down as CEO of his
company.

Before Thursday’s announcement, Bezos made a significant
donation in January, when he
and his
wife gave $33
million to the nonprofit TheDream.US, which provides support to
children who came to the United States as undocumented
immigrants. 
The money is being used to finance
college scholarships for 1,000 high school graduates who were
granted stay in the US under the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals program. 

In the donation announcement, Bezos said the gift was made
in honor of his father, who came to the US from Cuba in the 1960s
as one of thousands of unaccompanied children. The
co-founder of TheDream.US is Don Graham, who was the publisher of
The Washington Post when Bezos
bought the newspaper in 2013. 

Gates now ranks second in the Bloomberg Billionaires
Index, trailing Bezos by roughly $66 billion. When adjusted
for inflation, Bezos is still worth more than Gates was at the
peak of the dot-com boom. 
His net worth on the
Bloomberg index has risen to $164 billion since July.