Jeff Bezos gives $US100m to Barack Obama foundation

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will donate $US100m to former president Barack Obama’s private foundation

Jeff Bezos‘s donation to the Obama foundation is the largest individual gift in the non-profit group’s seven-year-old history. Picture: Getty Images

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will donate $US100m to former president Barack Obama’s private foundation.

The donation is the largest individual gift in the non-profit group’s seven-year-old history, and is intended to help train emerging leaders in the US and abroad, the foundation said. Mr Obama served two terms as president from January 2009 to January 2017.

Mr Bezos, as part of his gift, asked that a plaza at the Obama Presidential Centre be named for John Lewis, the civil-rights leader and longtime US congressman who died last year.

“I can’t think of a more fitting person to honor with this gift than John Lewis, a great American leader and a man of extraordinary decency and courage,” Mr Bezos said in a statement.

The plaza is part of a $US700m campus that is expected to include Obama Foundation offices, a museum, a public library and recreational space. The project’s urban environment and location in a park listed on the National Register of Historic Places created complexities. It is currently under construction in Chicago’s South Side, after facing protests from some activists, as well as federal reviews and legal challenges.

Mr Bezos’s $US100m donation is one in a series of philanthropic efforts he has announced since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July.

New York University’s medical centre said on Monday that it had received a $US166m gift from the Bezos family. The donation, the largest ever made to the organisation, will be used “to aid with the health and wellness of diverse populations” across NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn, one of the university’s teaching hospitals and trauma centers, a news release said.

Last week, Mr Bezos said he would give $US96.2m in grants to organisations working to end family homelessness. In September, he pledged to donate about $US1bn in grants this year through the Bezos Earth Fund to groups working to address climate change.

Mr. Bezos’s increase in charitable giving has come as Amazon has faced criticism over how it treats warehouse workers and the company’s broader societal impact, including its effect on the environment and climate change.

The tech giant recently reached an agreement with California to rectify how the company handled Covid-19 notifications to warehouse workers and local health agencies, the state said last week.

Mr Bezos has said the company needs a better vision for its employees, and to invent solutions to reduce the number of injuries at Amazon warehouses. Amazon has also said it would work to reduce the emissions it generates.

The Wall Street Journal