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Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey donates $1B in equity to coronavirus relief
Twitter Inc. and Square Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey has donated $1 billion in equity from his Square shares to fund COVID-19 relief around the world.
Dorsey (pictured) said on Twitter today that the donation will fund coronavirus relief and that when the pandemic is over, remaining funds would be allocated to girls’ health education and universal basic income. The money is going into a limited-liability company called Start Small, the New York Times reported. The company will make grants to beneficiaries with expenditures all publicly available via a Google Docs document.
“Why now? The needs are increasingly urgent and I want to see the impact in my lifetime,” Dorsey said. “I hope this inspires others to do something similar.”
Dorsey’s $1 billion donation has been compared to other tech moguls, but many of them have donated far less of their net worth. The Verge specifically compared Dorsey’s wealth as far less than those of Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, and Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos.
The comparisons are not necessarily fair particularly given that there is no comparison in living memory to the coronavirus pandemic and there is no playbook here on how much tech oligarchs should donate.
According to CNBC, Bezos has donated $100 million to U.S. food banks and Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have donated $25 million toward creating treatments for COVID-19. The Bill Gates Foundation has also said it would spend billions on the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Dorsey was targeted to be pushed out of Twitter by activist investor firm Elliott Management Corp. March 1 but remains at the helm of Twitter following a settlement March 9. Criticism of Dorsey primarily involves his being the CEO of both Square and Twitter at the same time. Added to the mix is that before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he had also declared that he would live in Africa for six months of the year and promote cryptocurrency while there.
Twitter may have many flaws, but there’s no question that Dorsey’s donation here is staggeringly generous.
Photo: JD Lasica/Flickr
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