Jeff Bezos has promised to give away the vast majority of his $124bn (\u00a3110bn) fortune during his lifetime, but admitted that ensuring that the most worthy causes benefit is proving as difficult as building his Amazon empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 58-year-old, the world\u2019s fourth richest person, according to Forbes billionaires list, made the pledge after giving $100m to the country singer Dolly Parton to give to charities of her choice as part of Bezos\u2019s annual Courage and Civility award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cConflict travels, conflict is interesting and people do focus on conflict,\u201d said Bezos, discussing the award to the 9 to 5 singer in an interview with CNN. \u201c[I] want to bring a little bit of light, a little bit of amplification to these people who use unity instead of conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bezos, who has built Amazon from a startup in a rented garage into a $1tn global business, has in the past been criticised for his relative lack of largesse toward charitable causes compared with some fellow billionaires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bezos is not a signatory to the Giving Pledge, which encourages the world\u2019s wealthiest to give half their net worth to philanthropy and was set up by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It has attracted more than 230 signatories including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bezos and his partner, the journalist turned philanthropist Lauren S\u00e1nchez, who he began dating in 2019 shortly after announcing\u00a0his divorcey from his wife of 25 years, said they were considering the best way to distribute his wealth to good causes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way – it is not easy,\u201d he said. \u201cBuilding Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work and a bunch of very smart teammates. Philanthropy is very similar. It is really hard and there are a bunch of ways you can do ineffective things, too. We are building the capacity to be able to give away this money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bezos and Sanchez announce Dolly Parton as recipient of Courage and Civility award<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The $100m donation to Parton is the third Bezos has made as part of his Courage and Civility award, after similar grants to the chef Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s and the climate advocate Van Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll she wants to do is bring light into other people\u2019s worlds,\u201d said S\u00e1nchez. \u201cAnd so we couldn\u2019t have thought of someone better than to give this award to Dolly, and we know she\u2019s going to do amazing things with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bezos has not said what proportion of his fortune is likely to go to philanthropy, or provided details of exactly which causes are likely to be his biggest focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He has committed $10bn over 10 years to the Bezos Earth Fund, which S\u00e1nchez co-chairs, and Amazon is one of 300 companies that have promised to reduce their carbon footprint by 2040 in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bezos\u2019s ex-wife ,MacKenzie Scott, who in September\u00a0filed for divorce from her second husband\u00a0Dan Jewett, received a record $38bn settlement from Bezos, making her the world\u2019s fourth richest woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 52-year-old, who has\u00a0signed the Giving Pledge, recently\u00a0gave away $3.8bn to 465 organisations\u00a0in less than a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2018,Bezos topped the Philanthropy 50 list, a ranking of the US\u2019s biggest donors compiled by\u00a0the Chronicle of Philanthropy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Critics have suggested Bezos should focus as much on\u00a0pay and conditions for his global Amazon workforce\u00a0as donating money to charitable causes. On Monday it was reported that Amazon was preparing to announce\u00a010,000 job cuts\u00a0this week, the latest tech giant to announce big cuts amid signs of an economic slowdown for the sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeff Bezos has promised to give away the vast majority of his $124bn (\u00a3110bn) fortune during his lifetime, but admitted that ensuring that the most worthy causes benefit is proving as difficult as building his Amazon empire. The 58-year-old, the world\u2019s fourth richest person, according to Forbes billionaires list, made the pledge after giving $100m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":27325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[5310,11941,9328,11962,10767,10876,6157,2925,9292,4119,1271,5718,9643,6566,11493,5690,5139,6030,11743,332,5612,7259,11973,1253,6027,268,6838,9881,10236,11957,6348,5273,10415,36,594],"class_list":["post-27324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-amazon","tag-bill","tag-carbon","tag-chef","tag-conflict","tag-dating","tag-divorce","tag-dolly-parton","tag-earth","tag-elon-musk","tag-ex-wife","tag-forbes","tag-fund","tag-grants","tag-interview","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-jones","tag-journalist","tag-majority","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-money","tag-musk","tag-one","tag-paris","tag-pledge","tag-sanchez","tag-singer","tag-smart","tag-tech","tag-unity","tag-us","tag-woman","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}