THE DISPATCH
FINANCE
Jeff Bezos has given around $100m to charities helping homeless families. Which is nice. It’s about one per cent of what he earned in the last 12 months
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will give almost $100 million (£75 million) to charities helping homeless families in the US, it has been announced.
The second richest man in the world’s Bezos Day One Fund will donate $96.2m (£72m) to 32 nonprofits across 21 American states, with each cause receiving grants between $750,000 and $5m, equal to £560,000 and £3.75m respectively.
It’s the fourth straight year Bezos has donated the cash after setting up the fund with his then-wife MacKenzie Scott in 2018. So far just short of $400m (almost £300m) has been donated through the fund, with $2bn (£1.5bn) set to be paid out across the fund’s lifespan.
Building Changes and Africatown International based in Seattle – the home of Amazon – will share $5m (£3.75m) while All Chicago Making Homelessness History in Chicago and Adopt-A-Family of the Palm Beaches in Lake Worth, Florida will also receive the largest grants.
Reacting to the news, Yalonda Sinde, finance and development director at Africatown International, said: “This is an investment in a proven, community-based solution to our region’s homeless crisis. Support for the Centralised Diversion Fund will ensure people move quickly from homelessness into housing.”
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, Jeff Bezos is the second-richest person in the world, worth an estimated $211bn (£158bn).
In 2020, Bezos earned $75bn (£56bn) in total. That’s $6.25bn (£4.68bn) a month, $205m (£153m) a day, $8.5m (£6.3m) an hour, $142,694 (£106,743) a minute and $2,378 (£1,779) a second.
