Amazon’s Jeff Bezos makes biggest charitable donations of 2020

By Ruchira Sonawat On January 5, 2021 16:02 IST

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top donations, Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos made a $10 billion gift that is intended to help fight climate change. This was the single-largest charitable contribution in 2020.

The world’s richest man whose real-time worth by Forbes magazine estimates at roughly $188 billion, used the contribution to launch his Bezos Earth Fund. The fund, which supports non-profits involved in the climate crisis, has paid out $790 million to 16 groups so far.

Bezos’ wealth surged by 63 per cent from $113 billion to $184 billion from March 18 through December 7, 2020.

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, delivered the fourth-largest donation on the Chronicle’s list. A $250 million gift to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which worked on voting security issues in the 2020 election. Zuckerberg, whose wealth nearly doubled to $105 billion in the March-to-December period has been widely criticized and been called to testify before Congress for his company’s handling of disinformation in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Bezos’ and the Zuckerbergs made up the next spots on last year’s top 10 list, with $100 million donations Bezos for Feeding America to aid food banks across the country and the Zuckerbergs to the same election security group.

Two billionaires who donated heavily to charity last year MacKenzie Scott, Bezos’ former wife, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter did not make the Chronicle’s list because no single donation of theirs was large enough to qualify. In February, the Chronicle will publish its list of the 50 biggest donors, which counts cumulative donations, not individual gifts.

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