Chief Executive Officer of Twitter and Square Jack Dorsey said on Tuesday that he would donate $1billion to help fund coronavirus relief efforts. $1billion is a tad less than one-third or makes up for 28 per cent of his net worth.
Dorsey made his announcement via Twitter on Tuesday. The funds come from his stake in Square Inc., the mobile payments company he co-founded.
I’m moving $1B of my Square equity (~28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and UBI. It will operate transparently, all flows tracked here: https://t.co/hVkUczDQmz
— jack (@jack) April 7, 2020
Dorsey’s move is one of the more significant efforts by a tech billionaire to fight the pandemic.
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Dorsey said he would put shares worth $1 billion from Square into a limited liability company that he had created, called Start Small, reads a New York Times report. Dorsey said he was creating a limited liability company for flexibility and pledged to use the Google document to update the public on its latest grants, stock transfers and sales.
So far, the Google sheet shows $100,000 donated to America’s Food Fund, which was started by Laurene Powell Jobs, executive and the founder of Emerson Collective, a social impact organisation and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
Last week, the Amazon chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said he would donate $100 million to American food banks through a nonprofit, Feeding America.
Oprah Winfrey Donated more than $10 million of her personal wealth to COVID-19 relief efforts. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan organised relief campaigns through Facebook and his own philanthropic organisation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
And while Zuckerberg received flak for the action by saying it allowed Zuckerberg to engage in private lobbying, for-profit investment and political donations. Zuckerberg pushed back, saying a limited liability company gave him more control on how their resources would be put to use.
