Amazon CEO reveals new charity organisation the Bezos Day One Fund

FOR years, the phenomenally wealthy Amazon founder has been slammed over his legendary stinginess. But not anymore.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has revealed details of his new charity, the Bezos Day One Fund. Picture: Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP

AS AMAZON genius Jeff Bezos’ incredible wealth soared, so to did rumours of his tight-fistedness.

With a net worth of around $US161.6 billion, the 54-year-old is officially the richest person in the world — and yet he is also well known for being strict with his cash.

In previous media interviews he has revealed he still does the dishes every night, and wife MacKenzie famously drove their four kids to school in a Honda Accord every day until 2013.

And while fellow billionaires Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have long made headlines for their various charity organisations and donations, Ms Bezos has never spent big on philanthropy — until now.

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The father-of-four has just revealed plans to launch a new charity — the Bezos Day One Fund.

To begin with, Mr Bezos will invest around $2 billion from his own wealth into the fund, which will go towards homelessness charities that are already up and running, as well as helping develop early childhood education centres.

pic.twitter.com/2GlgjztK1u

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) September 13, 2018

In his note announcing the organisation’s launch on Twitter, Mr Bezos explained the idea behind it.

“By so many important measures the world keeps getting better, and it’s one of the fantastic aspects of human nature that we humans never stop looking for (and finding) ways to improve things,” he wrote.

“Our lives are better than our great grandparents’ lives, and their lives were better than their great grandparents’ lives before them.

“If our own great grandchildren don’t have lives better than ours, something has gone very wrong.”

However, while the fund seems admirable, it has also sparked an outpouring of backlash from critics, including writer James Bloodworth, who recently went undercover to expose the reality of Amazon’s working conditions.

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are famously low-key when it comes to their incredibly vast wealth. Picture: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Mr Bloodworth told the BBC there was “something slightly ironic” about Mr Bezos’ announcement.

“There have been credible reports of Amazon warehouse workers sleeping outside in tents because they can’t afford to rent homes on the wages paid to them by the company,” he told the organisation.

“Jeff Bezos can tout himself as a great philanthropist, yet it will not absolve him of responsibility if Amazon workers continue to be afraid to take toilet breaks and days off sick because they fear disciplinary action at work.”

There has also been a significant amount of backlash levelled against the CEO right across social media.

At amazon, I actually do earn a proper wage, I make roughly around double minimum wage and am also able to get great benefits and retirement. What do you think we should be paying people? also, can you please tell me what a melt is?

— Stephen - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@AmazonFCStephen) September 13, 2018

-pay your employees a living wage
-let them use the bathroom when they need to
-let them go to the hospital when they're bleeding profusely
-stop trying to take over every single industry

— marisa kabas (@MarisaKabas) September 13, 2018

Others have also complained about Amazon’s attempts to cut its tax bill as well as the company’s intervention which led to a US law designed to raise millions to address homelessness to be scrapped.

However, Mr Bezos has made some charitable donations in the past.

In 2012, he donated $US3 million towards legalising same-sex marriage and has made much larger donations to the Bezos Family Foundation, which is run by his parents, as well as to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre.

But he’s also so far failed to sign up to The Giving Pledge, a commitment by the world’s wealthiest people to dedicate most of their wealth to giving back to the world.

The Giving Pledge has been supported by other household names such as Richard Branson, Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates.

The announcement of Mr Bezos’ new fund follows a call out he made last June when he asked the public for suggestions regarding how he could best help the world.

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