‘The hard part is figuring out how’: Jeff Bezos announces plans to give away $124bn wealth
‘It’s not easy,’ says billionaire
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Your support makes all the difference.Jeff Bezos has announced plans to give away most of his $124bn fortune.
Speaking to CNN alongside his partner, Lauren Sánchez, the Amazon founder said that they are “building the capacity to be able to give away this money”.
As the fourth wealthiest person in the world, Bezos explained that the difficulty is knowing how to go about donating his money in the most worthwhile way.
“The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way,” he said.
“It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar.”
He added: “There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too,” he added. “So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”
Bezos has already committed giving $10bn over 10 years to the Bezos Earth Fund, which intends to reduce the carbon footprint of construction-grade cement among other ecological intentions.
The announcement comes shortly after Bezos and Sánchez revealed they would be giving a $100m grant to Dolly Parton as part of her Courage and Civility Award, which Parton is expected to give to charities of her choice.
“When you think of Dolly ... look, everyone smiles, right? She is just beaming with light,” said Sánchez.
“And all she wants to do is bring light into other people’s worlds. And so we couldn’t have thought of someone better than to give this award to Dolly, and we know she’s going to do amazing things with it.”
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