Amazon’s Bezos launches $2-billion fund for homeless
Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie Bezos launched a US$2 billion fund to help homeless families and create a network of non-profit preschools in low-income communities.
The move catapults the world’s richest person into a rarefied group of billionaire megadonors at a time when his company, Amazon.com Inc., faces growing scrutiny over its rising power and impact on the economy.
The Bezos Day One Fund will focus on two initiatives, the billionaire announced in an online post Thursday. The first will fund existing non-profit and issue annual awards to organizations doing “compassionate, needle-moving work” to shelter and support the immediate needs of young families. The second will operate a network of high-quality, full-scholarship Montessori-inspired preschools. The fund’s vision statement comes from non-profit Mary’s Place in Seattle: No child sleeps outside.
“We’ll use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon,” wrote Bezos. “Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer.”
With a personal fortune of US$163.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Amazon chief executive had been largely invisible in the world of philanthropy. His net worth has risen by US$64.7 billion this year alone as Amazon’s shares surged. Bezos’s relative silence was a stark contrast to peers like Bill Gates, whose foundation is the world’s largest, and Warren Buffett, who has vowed to give away the majority of his wealth.
Last year, Bezos solicited advice from the public via Twitter, asking how he could best use his wealth to help people “right now.” He had said he was interested in projects that address urgent need and produce lasting impact. It set off a frenzy of responses, including pleas to support health care, loan forgiveness and even appeals to back a leather fetish museum in Chicago.