Jeff Bezos awards 40 grants value $123 million to battle homelessness

On Tuesday, the Bezos Day One Fund introduced $123 million in grants to 40 organizations throughout the U.S. The Fund mentioned it hoped the donations would “assist households transfer from unsheltered homelessness and shelters to everlasting housing with the providers they require to realize stability.” The Day One Fund, launched in 2018, is a $2 billion dedication by Bezos to assist homeless households and construct preschools in low-income areas.

Bezos vowed to offer away most of his fortune together with his girlfriend Lauren Sánchez throughout a CNN interview on Nov. 12. On the time, neither Bezos nor Sánchez supplied specifics on the place they deliberate to donate the cash.

Billionaire philanthropy

Bezos has been slower to announce his philanthropic plans than different billionaires, like Microsoft founder Invoice Gates and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett. 

Gates earlier this yr pledged to “give just about all of my wealth” to the Invoice and Melinda Gates Basis, promising to “transfer down and finally off of the checklist of the world’s richest folks.” 

Bezos has not signed the Giving Pledge, which is a promise by a whole bunch of the world’s richest folks to offer away most of their wealth throughout their lifetime. 

Bezos did give the biggest donation of 2020: a $10 billion dedication over 10 years to fight local weather change. Bezos and Sánchez have additionally given grants to different philanthropists, reminiscent of a current $100 million grant to Dolly Parton, earmarked for the singer’s personal charity. “We couldn’t have considered somebody higher than to offer this award to Dolly,” Sánchez defined on CNN on Nov. 12.

Throughout his CNN interview, Bezos tried to elucidate his slower strategy, suggesting that he needed to make sure the cash was used “in a levered means.” The Amazon founder added that “there are a bunch of the way… that you may do ineffective issues” with giant donations. 

A couple of days after Bezos’s interview, Mackenzie Scott, the world’s richest lady and the previous spouse of the Amazon founder, introduced on Medium that she had given away $2 billion to nearly 350 organizations in simply seven months.