Portland, OR. Jeff Bezos’ Day 1 Families Fund is handing out over $96 million to nonprofits providing services to homeless families. 2021 recipients include 32 organizations in 21 states, including a nonprofit in the Portland area. Portland Homeless Family Solutions received $2.5 million. Last year, the nonprofit served 909 kids and their parents.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, right, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee tour Mary’s Place Family Center, located in an Amazon building in Seattle. (Lucas Jackson Photo via Amazon)
Bezos, explained, “These grants will provide support including housing, food, clothing, and other resources to help families get back on their feet.”
The Amazon founder has given out $398 million to organizations in 38 states since launching the fund in 2018. The video below shows a few of the grantees.
The Day 1 Families Fund grantees include multiple California-based organizations and one from Washington:
$5 million for Building Changes and Africatown International, Seattle
Activists say the national homelessness crisis has grown significantly in recent years, and the greater Seattle area has large numbers of unsheltered residents. Some 11,751 people in Seattle and surrounding King County were experiencing homelessness during a 2020 survey. A study spanning 2016-2020 found that chronic homelessness had increased at an annual rate of 27% statewide and 42% in Seattle-King County.
From Day 1 Fund:
The Day 1 Academies Fund is a non-profit organization launching and operating a network of tuition-free, Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities. Directly operating the preschools creates an opportunity to learn, invent, and improve. The Fund uses the same set of principles that have driven Amazon.
Portland, OR. Artists and arts organizations in Oregon are receiving a $4 million gift from Pacific Northwest philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Her most recent donations total more than $2.7 billion for 286 nonprofits, most with missions that have historically received little from philanthropy.
Scott is the former wife of Jeff Bezos, and one of the world’s richest people. They were married for 25 years. She was one of Amazon’s first employees and was heavily involved in the company’s early days. The couple are parents to four children.
The donation to the Oregon Community Foundations (OCF) Arts and Culture Recovery Fund will help arts organizations and individual artists impacted by Covid-19, with an emphasis on communities of color, people with disabilities, immigrants and refugees, and rural, LGBTQ+ and low-income populations.
“We’re humbled and grateful for this incredibly generous contribution to support the arts and culture community across Oregon,” said Jerry Tischleder, OCF program officer for arts and culture. “The Oregon Arts and Culture Recovery Fund has provided significant support to the field so far, but the losses and need related to COVID-19 are staggering. We look forward to continue putting these much-needed funds out into the community.”
OCF was among 286 “high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked,” according to Scott’s blog post announcing the gifts.
Scott announced that she has focused the latest giving on two- and four-year colleges and universities with a record of successfully educating students who come from low-income and marginalized backgrounds and to religious and other nonprofits that are focused on working with organizations of other faiths and ethnic backgrounds to bridge divides between ethnic and religious groups.
Scott, a novelist and philanthropist, holds tens of billions of dollars in Amazon stock. In 2019 she signed the Giving Pledge to give away most of her wealth. The Giving Pledge is a commitment by the world’s richest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to giving back. It was started by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010 and other signatories such as Star Wars creator George Lucas.
In the spring of 2021 Scott married Dan Jewett, a science teacher at the private school that MacKenzie’s four children have attended.
Together Scott and Jewett spent the first quarter of 2021 identifying and evaluating equity-oriented non-profit teams working in areas that have been neglected. The result was $2,739,000,000 in gifts to 286 high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked.
Scott wrote the following: “Putting large donors at the center of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role. Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change. In this effort, we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others. Though we still have a lot to learn about how to act on these beliefs without contradicting and subverting them, we can begin by acknowledging that people working to build power from within communities are the agents of change. Their service supports and empowers people who go on to support and empower others.”
“People struggling against inequities deserve center stage in stories about the change they are creating. This is equally — perhaps especially — true when their work is funded by wealth. Any wealth is a product of a collective effort that included them. The social structures that inflate wealth present obstacles to them. And despite those obstacles, they are providing solutions that benefit us all.”
Below is a list of the recipients of the donation:
Portland, OR. In February of 2020 Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced a $10 billion commitment to funding scientists, nonprofits, and “others” that have made it their life’s work to fight climate change. Bezos discussed his plans with world leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, as seen above. However, little was known about how the fund would work. Now environmental and philanthropy experts say they hope the Bezos Earth Fund’s announcement that it has hired an established nonprofit leader will bring a more coherent strategy and greater transparency to a little-understood philanthropic organization. The nonprofit has the stated goal of spending $10 billion by the end of the decade. Andrew Steer, who leads the environmental think tank World Resources Institute, has been tapped to be the first president of Jeff Bezos’s $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund.
Andrew Steer, who leads the environmental think tank World Resources Institute, says the Bezos fund plans to give all its money away in a decade.
Bezos had little to say publicly about the hiring of Steer. In an Instagram post, Bezos praised Steer’s “decades of experience in environmental and climate science as well as economic and social policy in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa.”
Steer on Twitter said Bezos intends to spend all of the $10 billion fund by the end of the decade on “scientists, [nongovernmental organizations], activists, and the private sector to help activists, and the private sector to help drive new technologies, investments, policy change, and behavior. We will emphasize social justice, as climate change disproportionately hurts poor and marginalized communities.”
Jeff Bezos explains his initiative: “I’ve spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who’ve made it their life’s work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world. I’m inspired by what they’re doing, and excited to help them scale. Today, I’m pleased to announce the first Bezos Earth Fund recipients—16 organizations working on innovative, ambitious, and needle-moving solutions. This $791 million in donations is just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others. We can all protect Earth’s future by taking bold action now.”
From Bezos Earth Fund:
Here are the Earth Fund grantees: The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, ClimateWorks Foundation, Dream Corps Green For All, Eden Reforestation Projects, Energy Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, NDN Collective, Rocky Mountain Institute, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Solutions Project, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund.
The Bezos Earth Fund joins The Solutions Project to accelerate the transition to 100% clean energy and equitable access to healthy air, water, and land. The Solutions Project champions and invests in a climate justice movement that centers women and power-building organizations led by Black, Indigenous, Immigrant, and other people of color.
We know the people closest to the problems have the solutions but often do not have the funding to scale them or share their stories with the rest of the world. For example, pollution and climate change disproportionately impact people of color and women. Yet, only 0.6 percent of all foundation giving is targeted towards women of color, even though they are the very backbones of their communities, often solving several interconnected problems at once and creating solutions that benefit everyone. Their stories are not told in the media, where just 2% of clean energy news coverage last year referenced communities of color.
Beaverton, OR. Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny ranked 4th nationally in philanthropic giving for 2020. The couple donated $1.37 billion in charitable gifts, according to a new report from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Chronicle reports the Knights gave $465 million to the University of Oregon in 2020 and $900.7 million to the Knight Foundation, a private foundation the family formed in 1997. Additionally, the Knights supported the Oregon Community Foundation Recovery Fund, which is providing pandemic relief. They also gave Oregon Health & Science University a grant for Covid-19 testing, treatment, and containment, according to the Chronicle.
Every February, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports on the 50 donors who made the biggest gifts during the previous calendar year. Overall, donors on the top-50 list gave big to address poverty, the ongoing Covid pandemic, and racial-justice issues.
The philanthropists in the 2020 rankings gave away $24.7 billion last year, but they’re not required to publicly disclose how much they give or which causes they support. Emily Haynes from the Chronicle of Philanthropy credits her colleague Maria Di Mento for compiling the list.
Jeff Bezos topped the list by donating $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund to mitigate climate change. On February 2nd, Bezos announced he was stepping down as Amazon CEO to devote more time to philanthropy and other projects. He also contributed $100 million to Feeding America, an organization that supplies more than 200 food banks.
Below is the Chronicle of Philanthropy list of the 50 donors who made the biggest gifts in 2020.
1. Jeff Bezos
$10,150,000,000
LOCATION: Medina, Wash.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Environmental Conservation
2. MacKenzie Scott
$5,734,000,000
LOCATION: Seattle, Wash.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Human Services
3. Michael Bloomberg
$1,600,000,000
LOCATION: New York, N.Y.
WEALTH SOURCE: Media
TOP CAUSE: Various
4. Philip and Penelope Knight
$1,365,667,500
LOCATION: Portland, Ore.
WEALTH SOURCE: Manufacturing and Retail
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
5. Jack Dorsey
$1,099,237,116
LOCATION: San Francisco, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Pandemic Relief
6. John and Laura Arnold
$567,000,000
LOCATION: Houston, Tex.
WEALTH SOURCE: Energy; Finance
TOP CAUSE: Various
7. Eric and Wendy Schmidt
$469,600,000
LOCATION: Atherton, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Various
8. Pierre and Pam Omidyar
$441,000,000
LOCATION: Honolulu, Hawaii
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Various
9. Frederick and June Kummer
$300,000,000
LOCATION: St. Louis, Mo.
WEALTH SOURCE: Construction
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
10. Denny Sanford
$224,238,000
LOCATION: Sioux Falls, S.D.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance
TOP CAUSE: Various
11. Stephen Ross
$179,500,000
LOCATION: New York, N.Y.
WEALTH SOURCE: Real estate
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
12. John and Susan Sobrato
$176,750,000
LOCATION: Cupertino, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Real estate
TOP CAUSE: Various
13. Bill and Melinda Gates
$157,000,000
LOCATION: Medina, Wash.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Various
14. Reed Hastings and Patty Quillin
$151,000,000
LOCATION: Los Gatos, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Entertainment
TOP CAUSE: Financial Aid
15. Sheryl Sandberg
$122,803,653
LOCATION: Menlo Park, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Various
16. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan
$120,000,000
LOCATION: Palo Alto, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Various
17. Craig Newmark
$100,000,000
LOCATION: San Francisco, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Advertising
TOP CAUSE: Various
17. David and Barbara Roux
$100,000,000
LOCATION: Upperville, Va.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance; Technology
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
19. Phyllis Brissenden
$96,878,452
LOCATION: Springfield, Ill.
WEALTH SOURCE: Investments
TOP CAUSE: Performing Arts
20. Sergey Brin and Nicole Shanahan
$78,300,000
LOCATION: Mountain View, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Various
21. Irwin and Joan Jacobs
$66,414,006
LOCATION: La Jolla, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Telecommunications
TOP CAUSE: Various
22. George and Renee Karfunkel
$66,400,000
LOCATION: Brooklyn, N.Y.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance; Real Estate
TOP CAUSE: Religion
23. Arthur Blank
$65,700,000
LOCATION: Atlanta, Ga.
WEALTH SOURCE: Retail
TOP CAUSE: Various
24. Charles and Helen Schwab
$65,000,000
LOCATION: Atherton, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance
TOP CAUSE: Homelessness
25. Hock Tan and Lisa Yang
$64,450,000
LOCATION: San Jose, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Neuroscience
26. Wilbur (Billy) and Ann Powers
$60,000,000
LOCATION: Florence, S.C.
WEALTH SOURCE: Construction
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
27. David and Dana Dornsife
$59,000,000
LOCATION: Danville, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Manufacturing
TOP CAUSE: Clean Water
28. Robert Smith
$54,997,551
LOCATION: Austin, Tex.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance
TOP CAUSE: College-Loan Debt
29. Leon and Debra Black
$53,800,000
LOCATION: New York, N.Y.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance
TOP CAUSE: Various
30. Gail Miller
$52,800,000
LOCATION: Sandy, Utah
WEALTH SOURCE: Entertainment; Retail
TOP CAUSE: Health Care
31. Michael Jordan
$52,000,000
LOCATION: Charlotte, N.C.
WEALTH SOURCE: Professional Sports
TOP CAUSE: Racial Justice
32. Richard and Mary Templeton
$51,000,000
LOCATION: Dallas, Tex.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
33. Chris Malachowsky
$50,000,000
LOCATION: Santa Clara, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Artificial Intelligence
33. Gordon Rausser
$50,000,000
LOCATION: Berkeley, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Investments
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
33. Sheldon and Anne Vogel
$50,000,000
LOCATION: Colts Neck, N.J.
WEALTH SOURCE: Entertainment
TOP CAUSE: Health Care
36. Ronald and Eileen Weiser
$44,522,281
LOCATION: Ann Arbor, Mich.
WEALTH SOURCE: Real Estate
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
37. Bob and JoAnn Glick
$42,350,000
LOCATION: Cleveland, Ohio
WEALTH SOURCE: Retail
TOP CAUSE: Health Care
38. Jim and Thomas Duff
$41,145,000
LOCATION: Columbia, Miss.
WEALTH SOURCE: Investments
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
39. Richard and Nancy Kinder
$40,030,500
LOCATION: Houston, Tex.
WEALTH SOURCE: Energy
TOP CAUSE: Various
40. Marc and Lynne Benioff
$40,000,000
LOCATION: San Francisco, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Environmental Conservation
40. William and Joanne Conway
$40,000,000
LOCATION: McLean, Va.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance
TOP CAUSE: Nursing
40. Haslam family
$40,000,000
LOCATION: Knoxville, Tenn.
WEALTH SOURCE: Retail
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
40. Will and Cary Singleton
$40,000,000
LOCATION: Santa Monica, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Agriculture; Family wealth
TOP CAUSE: Neuroscience
44. Irvin Kanthak
$33,700,000*
LOCATION: Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Real Estate
TOP CAUSE: Financial Aid
45. Bruce and Debra Grewcock
$30,000,000
LOCATION: Omaha, Neb.
WEALTH SOURCE: Construction
TOP CAUSE: Financial Aid
45. Daniel and Jennifer Hord
$30,000,000
LOCATION: Midland, Tex.
WEALTH SOURCE: Oil; Real Estate
TOP CAUSE: Financial Aid
47. Joseph Gebbia Jr.
$27,000,000
LOCATION: San Francisco, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Homelessness
48. Richard McVey
$25,900,000
LOCATION: New York, N.Y.
WEALTH SOURCE: Finance
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
49. Warner and Debbie Lusardi
$25,050,000
LOCATION: Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Construction
TOP CAUSE: Health Care
50. Steve and Jackie Bell
$25,000,000
LOCATION: Greensboro, N.C.
WEALTH SOURCE: Real Estate
TOP CAUSE: Higher Education
50. Christopher and Lisa Jeffries
$25,000,000
LOCATION: Miami, Fla.
WEALTH SOURCE: Real Estate
TOP CAUSE: Health Care
50. Brad and Alys Smith
$25,000,000
LOCATION: Mountain View, Calif.
WEALTH SOURCE: Technology
TOP CAUSE: Economic Development
50. Helena Theurer
$25,000,000
LOCATION: Park Ridge, N.J.
WEALTH SOURCE: Real estate
TOP CAUSE: Health Care
No. 2 on the list was Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who gave $5.7 billion in 2020 to 512 organizations by asking community leaders to help identify worthy groups for seven- and eight-figure gifts, including food banks, human-service organizations, and racial-justice charities.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who ranked No. 5, put $1.1 billion into a fund that by year’s end had distributed at least $330 million to more than 100 nonprofits. The financier Charles Schwab and his wife, Helen (No. 24), gave $65 million to address homelessness in San Francisco. Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and wife, Patty Quillin (No. 14), gave $120 million for financial aid for students at historically Black colleges and universities. Michael Jordan, the basketball great (No. 31), pledged $50 million to racial and social-justice groups.
“When I look at the events of the last year, there was an awakening for the philanthropic sector,” says Nick Tedesco, president of the National Center for Family Philanthropy. “Donors supported community-led efforts of recovery and resiliency, particularly those led by people of color.”
Giving experts say they think the trend toward broader giving is likely to persist.
That’s significant given the immense sums top donors are able to contribute. The top five donors this year gave $1 billion-plus, matching last year’s record. No more than three donors gave $1 billion or more in any of the previous years.
Nearly a third of the donors on the list made their fortunes in technology. Tech billionaires’ wealth is compounding while many working people are still suffering from the pandemic’s fallout. Given that disparity, philanthropic expectations have never been higher. David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, highlighted the disparate effects of the pandemic in a January interview on the PBS NewsHour.
“During the pandemic, billionaires made $5.2 billion in increased wealth per day,” he said. “All we are asking for is $5 billion to avert famine around the world. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
Some of the ultrawealthy are nevertheless holding back on giving. Among them is Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, whose $180 billion fortune puts him neck-and-neck with Bezos for richest person in the world. Musk is not on the Philanthropy 50 and has faced criticism for his meager lifetime donations, estimated in a recent Vox article at just 0.05 percent of his current net worth.
“It’s unconscionable for someone like that to not give in a meaningful way,” says Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
Many of those who did give big chose to support small and midsize charities. But popular causes like higher education still saw sizable contributions.
Benjamin Soskis, a research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, says the most striking change in this year’s Philanthropy 50 list is that it presents a plurality of options for giving. Colleges and universities received $2.2 billion from Philanthropy 50 donors in 2020, but it’s notable that many of them were historically black colleges and universities, Soskis says.
“There’s a big difference between a hypothetical ‘Why didn’t you give to an HBCU instead of Harvard?’ and today’s list, where you can point to donors who actually did that.”
As in years past, the Philanthropy 50 list for 2020 is overwhelmingly white — but that’s no reason for major-gift officers to ignore potential donors of color. Roughly 14 percent of millionaires are people of color, and that number seems likely to grow as demographics keep changing. I put together a sampling of donors of color to watch. Many of them — such as financier Mellody Hobson, art collector Eileen Harris Norton, and biopharmaceutical entrepreneur Jie Du — gave to colleges and universities. Racial justice was another popular cause.
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