Plenty of rich individuals plan to donate most of their fortunes to philanthropic causes. Jeff Atwood says he’ll truly do it throughout the subsequent 5 years.
Atwood, the co-founder of pc programing platform Stack Overflow — which was acquired by world funding group Prosus for $1.8 billion in 2021 — plans to provide away greater than half his wealth throughout the subsequent 5 years, he wrote in a blog post final week.
It’s unclear what portion of the Stack Overflow sale was deposited straight into Atwood’s checking account. But his household has already made eight $1 million donations to nonprofits together with Team Rubicon, The Trevor Project and First Generation Investors, he wrote.
“I’m involved we could lose sight of the American Dream,” wrote Atwood, citing wealth focus, voter registration challenges and rising prices of housing, healthcare and schooling as obstacles to success for a lot of Americans.
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Atwood himself barely scrapped collectively sufficient cash to pay $3,000 per 12 months for school in 1992 — a discount, by right this moment’s tuition requirements — by a mixture of grants, scholarships and part-time work, he wrote.
“It was solely after I attained the dream that I used to be in a position to totally see what number of Americans have so little or no,” wrote Atwood. “This a lot wealth begins to unintentionally distance my household from different Americans. I not trouble to have a look at how a lot gadgets value, as a result of I haven’t got to … The extra wealth you attain, the extra unmistakably clear it turns into how unequal life is for therefore many people.”
‘I would like everybody to have a good shot’
Atwood’s announcement echoes The Giving Pledge, a marketing campaign began by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages rich individuals to donate most of their fortunes throughout their lifetimes or of their wills. Multiple tech billionaires have joined, together with Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, in keeping with the marketing campaign’s web site.
The Stack Overflow co-founder’s pledge differs largely in its timeline: By distinction, Buffett has said his intention to job his three kids with step by step distributing 99.5% of his wealth philanthropically upon his loss of life. The 94-year-old Berkshire Hathaway CEO has a net worth of $146.2 billion, in keeping with Forbes.
Atwood’s sense of urgency is fueled by a U.S. federal authorities that “appears to be slower and slower at delivering change because of the elevated polarization of our two celebration system,” he wrote. “I like Buffett, however even having solely a tiny fraction of his … fortune, to me this pledge was incomplete. When would this wealth be transferred?”
His personal monetary success needs to be replicable for different Americans, he added.
“The American Dream is not about simply getting wealthy. It’s about everybody succeeding,” Atwood told the Associated Press on Friday, including: “Some unfairness is OK. I’m not saying we’re socialists right here … however I would like everybody to have a good shot.”
The problem of large-scale philanthropy
In current years, a few of the world’s wealthiest individuals have spoken in regards to the difficulties of donating successfully — figuring out organizations that may use their cash nicely and persistently champion causes they assist.
“It’s really hard” to donate large sums impactfully, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos instructed CNN in 2022. “Building Amazon was not straightforward. It took a variety of onerous work, a bunch of very sensible teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m discovering … that charity, philanthropy, could be very related.”
MacKenzie Scott, Bezos’ ex-wife, has publicly devoted herself to that very job, maximizing the affect of enormous monetary donations. Her philanthropic initiative Yield Giving has a “quiet analysis” course of during which it finds and examines teams serving to individuals in underserved communities — principally anonymously, to keep away from distracting the nonprofits from their work — and offers them an “fast reward to be used nonetheless they select,” according to its website.
“MacKenzie Scott is essentially the most exemplary philanthropist within the nation now,” Benjamin Soskis, a senior analysis affiliate on the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, told CNBC Make It in 2022. “She has developed a mannequin which is extremely highly effective and has gained extra acclaim than any main mega-donor.”
Scott has given away greater than $19.25 billion since 2019, the identical 12 months the couple divorced, in keeping with Yield Giving’s web site. Her current net worth is $31.9 billion, in keeping with Forbes.
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