For Amazon boss, giving can wait
Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest person, but he hasn’t yet made an impact in the world of philanthropy
SEATTLE— Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos may have surpassed Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates to be the richest person in the world, but there’s one title he isn’t likely to claim: world’s most generous.
Even with more than $90 billion (U.S.) to his name, Bezos has yet to make a major philanthropic mark, but with the new mantle of the world’s richest, the pressure on Bezos to give will only grow.
Non-profits and other foundations are desperate to see what he’ll do, says giving consultant and researcher Amy Schiller. “Bezos has probably had philanthropy in his mental cart for a while,” she says, “and kept clicking ‘save for later.’ ”
As Gates built Microsoft, he also faced increasing pressure from the public — and even his own parents — to give more. When his mother prodded him one night, Gates snapped back, “I’m just trying to run my company!” the Wall Street Journal reported in 2009.
Gates didn’t fully throw himself into philanthropy until he stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in 2000.
Since then, he’s helped build the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation into the largest foundation in the country. A representative said Gates was unavailable to comment.
“Jeff is probably not quite ready to step down yet, but this is a guy who, like Bill, is fixated on changing the world in really important ways,” says Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, who has solicited donations from Bezos.
“It’s a full-time job. You have to imagine he will be every bit as philanthropic as Gates. Nobody has any right to make demands, and they have to give the guy time.” Amazon declined to comment. Some tech founders have made large charitable commitments while still running large businesses. Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan; Netflix Inc. CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin; and Salesforce.com Inc. CEO Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, have all signed on to the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away the majority of their wealth.
The group was started by Gates and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren Buffett. Making a major commitment takes humility and years of research to go down the right path, so for someone as work-obsessed as Bezos, “you’d really want to have a trusted partner or set of partners around you,” says Jeff Raikes, a former Microsoft executive who ran the Gates Foundation for almost six years.
He says Melinda Gates and ex-Microsoft executive Patty Stonesifer ran the Gates Foundation while Bill was still devoted to Microsoft, and Raikes says his wife, Tricia, took the lead when he was working full-time and they decided to put $100 million into their own foundation, which they now run together.
Much of the known personal giving associated with Bezos has been driven by his parents, Mike and Jackie Bezos. He sits on the board of the childhood-education focused Bezos Family Foundation, which his parents run. As of 2015, his parents had donated more than $68 million of Amazon stock to the foundation, tax filings show. Bezos had given about $6 million in stock to the foundation.
As for Amazon, after years of being largely MIA as a corporate donor in Seattle, the company has stepped up its giving, mostly around the growing inequality in the city, which some have partly blamed on Amazon.
“If you look at what they have done for the University of Washington and the recent homelessness investment when Seattle has had a serious problem with homelessness, Jeff was involved all the way,” Lazowska says.