Social entrepreneurship

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute have formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010 that aimed to encourage people to reduce waste and live in a more environmentally conscious way.

 

Social entrepreneurship is the use of start-up companies and other entrepreneurs to develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a variety of organizations with different sizes, aims, and beliefs. For-profit entrepreneurs typically measure performance using business metrics like profit, revenues and increases in stock prices, but social entrepreneurs are either non-profits or blend for-profit goals with generating a positive "return to society" and therefore must use different metrics. Social entrepreneurship typically attempts to further broad social, cultural, and environmental goals often associated with the voluntary sector in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care and community development. 

At times, profit-making social enterprises may be established to support the social or cultural goals of the organization but not as an end in itself. For example, an organization that aims to provide housing and employment to the homeless may operate a restaurant, both to raise money and to provide employment for the homeless. 

In the 2010s, social entrepreneurship is facilitated by the use of the Internet, particularly social networking and social media websites. These websites enable social entrepreneurs to reach a large number of people who are not geographically close yet who share the same goals and encourage them to collaborate online, learn about the issues, disseminate information about the group's events and activities, and raise funds through crowdfunding.

Modern definition

Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus (left) with two young social entrepreneurs (right).

 

In the 2000s, scholars and practitioners have debated which individuals or organizations can be considered to be social entrepreneurs. Thus far, there has been no firm consensus on the definition of social entrepreneurship, as so many different fields, disciplines and organization types are associated with social entrepreneurship, ranging from for-profit businesses to hybrid models combining charitable work with business activities, to non-profit charities, voluntary sector organizations and non-governmental organizations. Philanthropists, social activists, environmentalists, and other socially-oriented practitioners are often referred to as social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs can include a range of career types and professional backgrounds, ranging from social work and community development to entrepreneurship and environmental science. For this reason, it is difficult to determine who is a social entrepreneur. David Bornstein has even used the term "social innovator" interchangeably with social entrepreneur, due to the creative, non-traditional strategies that many social entrepreneurs use. For a clearer definition of what social entrepreneurship entails, it is necessary to set the function of social entrepreneurship apart from other voluntary sector and charity-oriented activities and identify the boundaries within which social entrepreneurs operate. Some scholars have advocated restricting the term to founders of organizations that primarily rely on earned income (meaning income earned directly from paying consumers), rather than income from donations or grants. Others have extended this to include contracted work for public authorities, while still others include grants and donations.

Social entrepreneurship in modern society offers an altruistic form of entrepreneurship that focuses on the benefits that society may reap. Simply put, entrepreneurship becomes a social endeavor when it transforms social capital in a way that affects society positively. It is viewed as advantageous because the success of social entrepreneurship depends on many factors related to social impact that traditional corporate businesses do not prioritize. Social entrepreneurs recognize immediate social problems, but also seek to understand the broader context of an issue that crosses disciplines, fields, and theories. Gaining a larger understanding of how an issue relates to society allows social entrepreneurs to develop innovative solutions and mobilize available resources to affect the greater global society. Unlike traditional corporate businesses, social entrepreneurship ventures focus on maximizing gains in social satisfaction, rather than maximizing profit gains. Both private and public agencies worldwide have had billion-dollar initiatives to empower deprived communities and individuals. Such support from organizations in society, such as government-aid agencies or private firms, may catalyze innovative ideas to reach a larger audience. 

Prominent individuals associated with social entrepreneurship include Pakistani Akhter Hameed Khan and Bangladeshi Muhammad Yunus, a leader of social entrepreneurship in South Asia. Yunus was the founder of Grameen Bank, which pioneered the concept of microcredit for supporting innovators in multiple developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Others, such as former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith addressed social efforts on a local level by using the private sector to provide city services.

Characteristics

Bill Drayton founded Ashoka in 1980, an organization which supports local social entrepreneurs. Drayton tells his employees to look for four qualities: creativity, entrepreneurial quality, social impact of the idea, and ethical fiber. Creativity has two parts: goal-setting and problem-solving. Social entrepreneurs are creative enough to have a vision of what they want to happen and how to make that vision happen. In their book The Power of Unreasonable People John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan identify why social entrepreneurs are, as they put it, unreasonable. They argue that these men and women seek profit in social output where others would not expect profit. They also ignore evidence suggesting that their enterprises will fail and attempt to measure results which no one is equipped to measure. About this, the Schwab Foundation says that entrepreneurs have, "A zeal to measure and monitor their impact. Entrepreneurs have high standards, particularly in relation to their own organization's efforts and in response to the communities with which they engage. Data, both quantitative and qualitative, are their key tools, guiding continuous feedback and improvement." Ashoka operates in multiple countries. 

Entrepreneurial quality builds from creativity. Not only do entrepreneurs have an idea that they must implemented, they know how to implement it and are realistic in the vision of implementing it. Drayton says that, "Entrepreneurs have in their heads the vision of how society will be different when their idea is at work, and they can't stop until that idea is not only at work in one place, but is at work across the whole society." This manifests through a clear idea of what they believe the future will look like and a drive to make this come true. Besides this, entrepreneurs are not happy with the status quo; they want healthy change. This changemaking process has been described as the creation of market disequilibria through the conversion of antagonistic assets into complementarities.

Social impact measures whether the idea itself will be able to cause change after the original founder is gone. If an idea has intrinsic worth, once implemented it will cause change even without the charismatic leadership of the first entrepreneur. One reason that these entrepreneurs are unreasonable is that they are unqualified for the task they take on. Most entrepreneurs have not studied the skills needed to implement their ideas. Instead, they bring a team of qualified people around themselves. It is the idea that draws this team. 

Ethical fiber is important because leaders who are about to change the world must be trustworthy. Drayton described this to his employees by suggesting that they picture a situation that frightens them and then place the candidate in the situation with them. If they feel comfortable in this scenario, the entrepreneur has ethical fiber. One distinguishing attribute of entrepreneurs is that they rarely take credit for making change. They insist that the change they have brought about is due to everyone around them. They also tend to be driven by emotion; they are not trying primarily to make a profit but to address suffering. Muhammad Yunus says about this characteristic, "He (or she) competes in the marketplace with all other competitors but is inspired by a set of social objectives. This is the basic reason for being in the business."

Challenges

Because the world of social entrepreneurship is relatively new, there are many challenges facing those who delve into the field. First, social entrepreneurs are trying to predict, address, and creatively respond to future problems. Unlike most business entrepreneurs, who address current market deficiencies, social entrepreneurs tackle hypothetical, unseen or often less-researched issues, such as overpopulation, unsustainable energy sources, food shortages. Founding successful social businesses on merely potential solutions can be nearly impossible as investors are much less willing to support risky ventures. 

The lack of eager investors leads to the second problem in social entrepreneurship: the pay gap. Elkington and Hartigan note that “the salary gap between commercial and social enterprises… remains the elephant in the room, curtailing the capacity of [social enterprises] to achieve long-term success and viability.” Social entrepreneurs and their employees are often given diminutive or non-existent salaries, especially at the onset of their ventures. Thus, their enterprises struggle to maintain qualified, committed employees. Though social entrepreneurs are tackling the world's most pressing issues, they must also confront skepticism and stinginess from the very society they seek to serve.

Another reason social entrepreneurs are often unsuccessful is because they typically offer help to those least able to pay for it. Capitalism is founded upon the exchange of capital (most obviously, money) for goods and services. However, social entrepreneurs must find new business models that do not rely on standard exchange of capital in order to make their organizations sustainable. This self-sustainability is what distinguishes social businesses from charities, who rely almost entirely on donations and outside funding.

History

Social entrepreneurship is distinct from the concept of entrepreneurship, yet still shares several similarities with its business cousin. Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), a French economist, defined an entrepreneur as a person who "undertakes" an idea and shifts perspectives in a way that it alters the effect that an idea has on society. An entrepreneur is further defined by Say as someone who "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield." The difference between "entrepreneurship" and "social entrepreneurship", however, stems from the purpose of a creation. Social entrepreneurs seek to transform societies at large, rather than transforming their profit margin, as classic entrepreneurs typically seek to do. Social entrepreneurs use a variety of resources to bring societies into a better state of well-being.

The concept of "social entrepreneurship" is not a novel idea, but in the 2000s, it has become more popular among society and academic research, notably after the publication of "The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur" by Charles Leadbeater. Many activities related to community development and higher social purpose fall within the modern definition of social entrepreneurship. Despite the established definition nowadays, social entrepreneurship remains a difficult concept to define, since it may be manifested in multiple forms. A broad definition of the concept allows interdisciplinary research efforts to understand and challenge the notions behind social entrepreneurship. No matter in which sector of society certain organizations are (i.e. corporations or unincorporated associations, societies, associations or cooperatives), social entrepreneurship focuses on the social impact that an endeavor aims at. Whether social entrepreneurship is altruistic or not is less important than the effect it has on society. 

The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were used first in the literature in 1953 by H. Bowen on his book "Social Responsibilities of the Businessman". The terms came into widespread use in the 1980s and 1990s, promoted by Bill Drayton, Charles Leadbeater, and others. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the politician Michael Young was a leading promoter of social entrepreneurship and in the 1980s, he was described by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard University as the "world's most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises". Young created more than sixty new organizations worldwide, including the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) which exists in the UK, Australia, and Canada and which supports individuals to realize their potential and to establish, scale, and sustain, social enterprises and social businesses. Another notable British social entrepreneur is Andrew Mawson OBE, who was given a peerage in 2007 because of his urban regeneration work including the Bromley by Bow Centre in East London. Although the terms are relatively new, social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship may be found throughout history. A list of a few noteworthy people whose work exemplifies the modern definition of "social entrepreneurship" includes Florence Nightingale, founder of the first nursing school and developer of modern nursing practices; Robert Owen, founder of the cooperative movement; and Vinoba Bhave, founder of India's Land Gift Movement. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some of the most successful social entrepreneurs straddled the civic, governmental, and business worlds. These pioneers promoted new ideas that were taken up by mainstream public services in welfare, schools, and health care.

2000s

Major organizations

A panel discusses social entrepreneurship in the health care sector in 2015.

 

Groups focused on social entrepreneurship may be divided into several categories: community-based enterprises, socially responsible enterprises, social services industry professionals, and socio-economic enterprises. Community-based enterprises are based on the social ventures aimed at and involving an entire community. These enterprises build on the community's culture and capital (e.g., volunteer resources, financing, in-kind donations, etc.) to empower the enterprise and the community. Socially responsible enterprises focus on creating sustainable development through their inside organization acts that focus mostly on creating societal gains for the community. Social service industry professionals such as social workers and public health nurses work in social services, either for a government or a non-profit organization. They aim to expand social capital for individuals, communities, and organizations. Socio-economic enterprises include corporations that balance earning profits with nonprofit goals, such as seeking social change for communities. Some social entrepreneurship organizations are not enterprises in a business sense; instead, they may be charities, non-profit organizations or voluntary sector organizations.

In addition, there are support organizations dedicated to empowering social entrepreneurs, connecting them with mentors, strengthening their enterprise models, and preparing them for capital investments. These incubators and accelerator organizations provide office and meeting space (often free), mentoring and coaching for social enterprise founders and leaders to help them develop their enterprises by improving the effectiveness of their business model, marketing, and strategy. Some accelerator organizations help social entrepreneur leaders to scale up their organization, either by taking it from a local scale to a national scale or from a national scale to a global scale. Some entrepreneurship support organizations also provide mentoring and coaching to social entrepreneurs.

One well-known social entrepreneur from South Asia is Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank in 1976. He is known as the "father of microcredit," and established the microfinance movement, which aims to help millions of people rural communities to access small loans. For his work, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The work that Yunus did through Grameen Bank has been described as a major influence on later social entrepreneurs. Larger countries in Europe and South America have tended to work more closely with public organizations at both the national and local level.

Types

In The Power of Unreasonable People, John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan describe social entrepreneurs' business structures as falling under three different models, applicable in different situations and economic climates:

1. Leveraged non-profit: This business model leverages financial and other resources in an innovative way to respond to social needs.
2. Hybrid non-profit: This organizational structure can take a variety of forms, but is distinctive because the hybrid non-profit is willing to use profit from some activities to sustain its other operations which have a social or community purpose. Hybrid non-profits are often created to deal with government failures or market failures, as they generate revenue to sustain the operation without requiring loans, grants, and other forms of traditional funding.
3. Social business venture: These models are set up as businesses that are designed to create change through social means. Social business ventures evolved through a lack of funding. Social entrepreneurs in this situation were forced to become for-profit ventures, because loans and equity financing are hard to get for social businesses.

There are also a broader range of hybrid profit models, where a conventional business invests some portion of its profits on socially, culturally or environmentally beneficial activities. The term "Philanthropreneurship" has been applied to this type of activity. Corporate employees can also engage in social entrepreneurship, which may or may not be officially sanctioned by the company. This has been described as corporate social entrepreneurship.

One private foundation has staked the ground of more precise lexicon following the Newman's Own model having coined the phrase "Commercial Philanthropy" where commercial businesses are held and operated with all net proceeds going to serve social service needs.

International presence

Organizations such as the Skoll Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Tasamy, Athgo, New Profit Inc., National Social Entrepreneurship Forum, Echoing Green, and the Global Social Benefit Institute among others, promote and providing resources to advance the initiatives of social entrepreneurs. The North American organizations tend to have a strongly individualistic stance focused on a handful of exceptional leaders. For example, The Skoll Foundation, created by eBay's first president, Jeff Skoll, makes capacity-building "mezzanine level" grants to social entrepreneurial organizations that already have reached a certain level of effectiveness.

Role of technology

The Internet, social networking websites and social media have been pivotal resources for the success and collaboration of many social entrepreneurs. In the 2000s, the Internet has become especially useful in disseminating information to a wide range of like-minded supporters in short amounts of time, even if these individuals are geographically dispersed. In addition, the Internet allows for the pooling of design resources using open source principles. Using wiki models or crowdsourcing approaches, for example, a social entrepreneur organization can get hundreds of people from across a country (or from multiple countries) to collaborate on joint online projects (e.g., developing a business plan or a marketing strategy for a social entrepreneurship venture). These websites help social entrepreneurs to disseminate their ideas to broader audiences, help with the formation and maintenance of networks of like-minded people and help to link up potential investors, donors or volunteers with the organization. This enables social entrepreneurs to achieve their goals with little or no start-up capital and little or no "bricks and mortar" facilities (e.g., rented office space). For example, the rise of open-source appropriate technology as a sustainable development paradigm enables people all over the world to collaborate on solving local problems, just as open source software development leverages collaboration from software experts from around the world.

Public opinion

Controversy

Many initiatives carried out with social entrepreneurs while innovative, have had problems becoming sustainable and effective initiatives that ultimately were able to branch out and reach the larger society as a whole (versus a small community or group of people). Compromises in social initiatives were developed, which often did not reach large audiences or help larger communities. Since the concept of social entrepreneurship has been popularized in the 2000s, some advocates suggest that there needs to be some standardization of the process in scaling up social endeavors to increase the impact of these ventures across the globe.

Policymakers around the globe may need to learn more about social initiatives, to increase the sustainability, effectiveness, and efficiency of these projects. Involvement and collaboration between private corporations and government agencies allows for increased support for carrying out social entrepreneurship initiatives, increased accountability on both ends, and increased connections with communities, individuals, or agencies in need. For example, private organizations or nonprofit organizations have tackled unemployment issues in communities. One challenge is that in some cases, social entrepreneurs may only propose short-term solutions, or that they are unable to scale up their virtual, online organization to a larger degree to maximize the number of people who are helped. Government program are able to tackle large issues; however, there is often little collaboration between governments and social entrepreneurs, which may have limited the effectiveness of social entrepreneurship. This lack of inter-sectoral collaboration may lead to stagnation, if the motives and goals of social enterprises and of those in policy-making and programs are not aligned. Those in policy-making and the development of delivery of government programs tend to have different priorities than social entrepreneurs, resulting in slow growth and expansion of social initiatives.

Since social entrepreneurship has only started to gain momentum in the 2000s, current social entrepreneurs are encouraging social advocates and activists to develop into innovative social entrepreneurs. Increasing the scope and scale of social entrepreneurship may increase the likelihood of an efficient, sustainable, and effective initiative; although it may also render social entrepreneurship more challenging. Increased participation draws more attention to social entrepreneurship ventures from policymakers and privately owned corporations. The increased involvement from corporations and governments may help to strengthen social entrepreneurship, as it may lead to policy changes and to the development of training programs and leadership development programs for social entrepreneurs. Simultaneously, research shows that as social entrepreneurs attempt to widen their impact and scale their efforts, external institutions will have a key role to play in their success.

Philanthropy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philanthropy means the love of humanity. A conventional modern definition is "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life", which combines an original humanistic tradition with a social scientific aspect developed in the 20th century. The definition also serves to contrast philanthropy with business endeavors, which are private initiatives for private good, e.g., focusing on material gain, and with government endeavors, which are public initiatives for public good, e.g., focusing on provision of public services. A person who practices philanthropy is called a philanthropist.

Philanthropy has distinguishing characteristics separate from charity; not all charity is philanthropy, or vice versa, though there is a recognized degree of overlap in practice. A difference commonly cited is that charity aims to relieve the pain of a particular social problem, whereas philanthropy attempts to address the root cause of the problem—the difference between the proverbial gift of a fish to a hungry person, versus teaching them how to fish.

Etymology

In the second century CE, Plutarch used the Greek concept of philanthrôpía to describe superior human beings. During the Roman Catholic Middle Ages, philanthrôpía was superseded by Caritas charity, selfless love, valued for salvation and escape from purgatory. Philanthropy was modernized by Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s, who is largely credited with preventing the word from being owned by horticulture. Bacon considered philanthrôpía to be synonymous with "goodness", correlated with the Aristotelian conception of virtue, as consciously instilled habits of good behaviour. Samuel Johnson simply defined philanthropy as "love of mankind; good nature". This definition still survives today and is often cited more gender-neutrally as the "love of humanity."

Europe

Great Britain

The Foundling Hospital. The building has been demolished.

 

In London prior to the 18th century, parochial and civic charities were typically established by bequests and operated by local church parishes (such as St Dionis Backchurch) or guilds (such as the Carpenters' Company). During the 18th century, however, "a more activist and explicitly Protestant tradition of direct charitable engagement during life" took hold, exemplified by the creation of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and Societies for the Reformation of Manners.

In 1739, Thomas Coram, appalled by the number of abandoned children living on the streets of London, received a royal charter to establish the Foundling Hospital to look after these unwanted orphans in Lamb's Conduit Fields, Bloomsbury. This was "the first children's charity in the country, and one that 'set the pattern for incorporated associational charities' in general." The hospital "marked the first great milestone in the creation of these new-style charities."

Jonas Hanway, another notable philanthropist of the era, established The Marine Society in 1756 as the first seafarer's charity, in a bid to aid the recruitment of men to the navy. By 1763, the society had recruited over 10,000 men and it was incorporated in 1772. Hanway was also instrumental in establishing the Magdalen Hospital to rehabilitate prostitutes. These organizations were funded by subscription and run as voluntary associations. They raised public awareness of their activities through the emerging popular press and were generally held in high social regard—some charities received state recognition in the form of the Royal Charter.

19th century

Philanthropists, such as anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce, began to adopt active campaigning roles, where they would champion a cause and lobby the government for legislative change. This included organized campaigns against the ill treatment of animals and children and the campaign that succeeded in ending the slave trade throughout the Empire starting in 1807. Although there were no slaves allowed in Britain itself, many rich men owned sugar plantations in the West Indies, and resisted the movement to buy them out until it finally succeeded in 1833.

Financial donations to organized charities became fashionable among the middle-class in the 19th century. By 1869 there were over 200 London charities with an annual income, all together, of about £2 million. By 1885, rapid growth had produced over 1000 London charities, with an income of about £4.5 million. They included a wide range of religious and secular goals, with the American import, the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) as one of the largest, and many small ones such as the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Association. In addition to making annual donations, increasingly wealthy industrialists and financiers left generous sums in their wills. A sample of 466 wills in the 1890s revealed a total wealth of £76 million, of which £20 million was bequeathed to charities. By 1900 London charities enjoyed an annual income of about £8.5 million.

Led by the energetic Lord Shaftesbury (1801–1885), philanthropists organized themselves. In 1869 they set up the Charity Organisation Society. It was a federation of district committees, one in each of the 42 Poor Law divisions. Its central office had experts in coordination and guidance, thereby maximizing the impact of charitable giving to the poor. Many of the charities were designed to alleviate the harsh living conditions in the slums. such as the Labourer's Friend Society founded in 1830. This included the promotion of allotment of land to labourers for "cottage husbandry" that later became the allotment movement, and in 1844 it became the first Model Dwellings Company—an organization that sought to improve the housing conditions of the working classes by building new homes for them, while at the same time receiving a competitive rate of return on any investment. This was one of the first housing associations, a philanthropic endeavor that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century, brought about by the growth of the middle class. Later associations included the Peabody Trust, and the Guinness Trust. The principle of philanthropic intention with capitalist return was given the label "five per cent philanthropy."

Switzerland

In 1863, the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant used his personal fortune to fund the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, which became the International Committee of the Red Cross. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Dunant personally led Red Cross delegations that treated soldiers. He shared the first Nobel Peace Prize for this work in 1901.

The French Red Cross played a minor role in the war with Germany (1870–71). After that it became a major factor in shaping French civil society as a non-religious humanitarian organization. It was closely tied to the army's Service de Santé. By 1914 it operated one thousand local committees with 164,000 members, 21,500 trained nurses, and over 27 million francs in assets.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) played a major role in working with POW's on all sides in World War II. It was in a cash starved position when the war began in 1939, but quickly mobilized its national offices set up a Central Prisoner of War Agency. For example, it provided food, mail and assistance to 365,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians held captive. Suspicions, especially by London, of ICRC as too tolerant or even complicit with Nazi Germany led to its side-lining in favour of the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) as the primary humanitarian agency after 1945.

France

In France, the Pasteur Institute had a monopoly of specialized microbiological knowledge allowed it to raise money for serum production from both private and public sources, walking the line between a commercial pharmaceutical venture and a philanthropic enterprise.

By 1933, at the depth of the Great Depression, the French wanted a welfare state to relieve distress, but did not want new taxes. War veterans came up with a solution: the new national lottery proved highly popular to gamblers, while generating the cash needed without raising taxes.

American money proved invaluable. The Rockefeller Foundation opened an office in Paris and helped design and fund France's modern public health system, under the National Institute of Hygiene. It also set up schools to train physicians and nurses.

Germany

The history of modern philanthropy the European Continent is especially important in the case of Germany, which became a model for others, especially regarding the welfare state. The princes and in the various Imperial states continued traditional efforts, such as monumental buildings, parks and art collections. Starting in the early 19th century, the rapidly emerging middle classes made local philanthropy a major endeavor to establish their legitimate role in shaping society, in contradistinction to the aristocracy and the military. They concentrated on support for social welfare institutions, higher education, and cultural institutions, as well as some efforts to alleviate the hardships of rapid industrialization. The bourgeoisie (upper-middle-class) was defeated in its effort to it gain political control in 1848, but they still had enough money and organizational skill that could be employed through philanthropic agencies to provide an alternative powerbase for their world view. Religion was a divisive element in Germany, as the Protestants, Catholics and Jews used alternative philanthropic strategies. The Catholics, for example, continued their medieval practice of using financial donations in their wills to lighten their punishment in purgatory after death. The Protestants did not believe in purgatory, but made a strong commitment to the improvement of their communities here and now. Conservative Protestants Raised concerns about deviant sexuality, alcoholism and socialism, as well as illegitimate births. They used philanthropy to eradicate social evils that were seen as utterly sinful. All the religious groups used financial endowments, which multiplied in the number and wealth as Germany grew richer. Each was devoted to a specific benefit to that religious community. Each had a board of trustees; these were laymen who donated their time to public service. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, an upper class Junker, used his state-sponsored philanthropy, in the form of his invention of the modern welfare state, to neutralize the political threat posed by the socialistic labor unions. The middle classes, however, made the most use of the new welfare state, in terms of heavy use of museums, gymnasiums (high schools), universities, scholarships, and hospitals. For example, state funding for universities and gymnasiums covered only a fraction of the cost; private philanthropy became the essential ingredient. 19th century Germany was even more oriented toward civic improvement then Britain or the United States, when measured in terms of voluntary private funding for public purposes. Indeed, such German institutions as the kindergarten, the research university, and the welfare state became models copied by the Anglo-Saxons. The heavy human and economic losses of the First World War, the financial crises of the 1920s, as well as the Nazi regime and other devastation by 1945, seriously undermined and weakened the opportunities for widespread philanthropy in Germany. The civil society so elaborately build up in the 19th century was practically dead by 1945. However, by the 1950s, as the "economic miracle" was restoring German prosperity, the old aristocracy was defunct, and middle-class philanthropy started to return to importance.

War and postwar: Belgium and Eastern Europe

The Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) was an international (predominantly American) organization that arranged for the supply of food to German-occupied Belgium and northern France during the First World War. It was led by Herbert Hoover. Between 1914 and 1919, the CRB operated entirely with voluntary efforts and was able to feed 11,000,000 Belgians by raising the necessary money, obtaining voluntary contributions of money and food, shipping the food to Belgium and controlling it there. For example, the CRB shipped 697,116,000 pounds of flour to Belgium. Biographer George Nash finds that by the end of 1916, Hoover "stood preeminent in the greatest humanitarian undertaking the world had ever seen." Biographer William Leuchtenburg adds, "He had raised and spent millions of dollars, with trifling overhead and not a penny lost to fraud. At its peak, his organization was feeding nine million Belgians and French a day.

When the war ended in late 1918, Hoover took control of the American Relief Administration (ARA), with the mission of food to Central and Eastern Europe. The ARA fed millions. U.S. government funding for the ARA expired in the summer of 1919, and Hoover transformed the ARA into a private organization, raising millions of dollars from private donors. Under the auspices of the ARA, the European Children's Fund fed millions of starving children. When attacked for distributing food to Russia, which was under Bolshevik control, Hoover snapped, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"

United States

The first corporation founded in the 13 Colonies was Harvard College (1636), designed primarily to train young men for the clergy. A leading theorist was the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather (1662–1728), who in 1710 published a widely read essay, Bonifacius, or an Essay to Do Good. Mather worried that the original idealism had eroded, so he advocated philanthropic benefaction as a way of life. Though his context was Christian, his idea was also characteristically American and explicitly Classical, on the threshold of the Enlightenment.

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was an activist and theorist of American philanthropy. He was much influenced by Daniel Defoe's An Essay upon Projects (1697) and Cotton Mather's Bonifacius: an essay upon the good. (1710). Franklin attempted to motivate his fellow Philadelphians into projects for the betterment of the city: examples included the Library Company of Philadelphia (the first American subscription library), the fire department, the police force, street lighting and a hospital. A world-class physicist himself, he promoted scientific organizations including the Philadelphia Academy (1751) – which became the University of Pennsylvania – as well as the American Philosophical Society (1743) to enable scientific researchers from all 13 colonies to communicate.

By the 1820s, newly rich American businessmen were initiating philanthropic work, especially with respect to private colleges and hospitals. George Peabody (1795–1869) is the acknowledged father of modern philanthropy. A financier based in Baltimore and London, in the 1860s he began to endow libraries and museums in the United States, and also funded housing for poor people in London. His activities became the model for Andrew Carnegie and many others.

Andrew Carnegie's philanthropy. Puck magazine cartoon by Louis Dalrymple, 1903

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) was the most influential leader of philanthropy on a national (rather than local) scale. After selling his steel corporation in the 1890s he devoted himself to establishing philanthropic organizations, and making direct contributions to many educational cultural and research institutions. His final and largest project was the Carnegie Corporation of New York, founded in 1911 with a $25 million endowment, later enlarged to $135 million. In all, Carnegie gave away 90% of his fortune.

John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller in 1885

 

Other prominent American philanthropists of the early 20th century included John D. Rockefeller, Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) and Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage (1828–1918). Rockefeller (1839–1937) retired from business in the 1890s; he and his son John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874–1960) made large-scale national philanthropy systematic, especially with regard to the study and application of modern medicine, higher, education and scientific research. Of the $530 million the elder Rockefeller gave away, $450 million went to medicine. Their leading advisor Frederick Taylor Gates launched several very large philanthropic projects staffed by experts who sought to address problems systematically at the roots rather than let the recipients deal only with their immediate concerns. By 1920, the Rockefeller Foundation was opening offices in Europe. It launched medical and scientific projects in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. It supported the health projects of the League of Nations. By the 1950s the Rockefeller Foundation was investing heavily in the Green Revolution, especially the work by Norman Borlaug that enabled India, Mexico and many poor countries to dramatically upgrade their agricultural productivity.

Ford Foundation

With the acquisition of most of the stock of the Ford Motor Company the late 1940s, the Ford Foundation became the largest American philanthropy, splitting its activities between the United States, and the rest of the world. Outside the United States, it established a network of human rights organizations, promoted democracy, gave large numbers of fellowships for young leaders to study in the United States, and invested heavily in the Green Revolution, whereby poor nations dramatically increased their output of rice, wheat and other foods. Both Ford and Rockefeller were heavily involved. Ford also gave heavily to build up research universities in Europe and worldwide. For example, in Italy in 1950 it sent a team to help the Italian ministry of education reform the nations school system, based on the principles of ‘meritocracy" (rather than political or family patronage), democratisation (with universal access to secondary schools). It reached a compromise between the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, to help promote uniform treatment and equal outcomes. The success in Italy became a model for Ford programs and many other nations.

The Ford Foundation in the 1950s wanted to modernize the legal systems in India and Africa, by promoting the American model. The plan failed, because of India's unique legal history, traditions, and profession, as well as its economic and political conditions. Ford therefore turned to agricultural reform. The success rate in Africa was no better, and that program closed in 1977.

Oceania

Australia

Philanthropy in Australia is influenced by the country's regulatory and cultural history, and by its geography. Structured giving through foundations is slowly growing, although public data on the philanthropic sector is sparse. There is no public registry of philanthropic foundations as distinct from charities more generally. The sector is represented by Philanthropy Australia, the peak membership body for grant-making trusts and foundations. 

Two foundation types for which some data is available are Private Ancillary Funds (PAFs) and Public Ancillary Funds (PubAFs).

Recent national research supported by the Prime Minister's Community Business Partnership examined giving in Australia, one decade on from the first national study. Giving Australia 2016 provides comprehensive, up-to-date information from individuals, charitable organisations, philanthropists and businesses in Australia about giving and volunteering behaviours, approaches and trends.

New Zealand

Philanthropy New Zealand is the peak membership body supporting and representing philanthropy and grantmaking in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Jeff Bezos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jeff Bezos
Bezos in January 2018
Born	Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen January 12, 1964 (age 55) Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Residence	Medina, Washington, U.S.
Education	Princeton University (BS)
Occupation	Technology entrepreneur investor philanthropist
Known for	Founding Amazon and Blue Origin
Net worth	US$161 billion (May 2019)
Title	Chairman, CEO, and President of Amazon
Spouse(s)	MacKenzie Tuttle (m. 1993; div. 2019)
Children	4

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and president of Amazon.

Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields from 1986 to early 1994. He founded Amazon in late 1994 on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has expanded to a variety of products and services, including video and audio streaming. It is currently the world's largest online sales company, as well as the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services via its Amazon Web Services arm.

Bezos added to his business interests when he founded aerospace company Blue Origin in 2000. A Blue Origin test flight successfully first reached space in 2015, and Blue has plans to begin commercial suborbital human spaceflight in 2019. He purchased The Washington Post in 2013 for US$250 million in cash. Bezos manages other business investments through his venture capital fund, Bezos Expeditions.

On July 27, 2017, he became the world's wealthiest person when his estimated net worth increased to just over $90 billion. Bezos's wealth surpassed $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, and he was formally designated the wealthiest person in the world by Forbes on March 6, 2018, with a net worth of $112 billion. The first centi-billionaire on the Forbes wealth index, he was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018.

Early life

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Chicago, Illinois, native Ted Jorgensen. At the time of his birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student, and his father was a bike shop owner. After Jacklyn divorced Ted, she married Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos in April 1968. Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old Jorgensen, whose surname was then changed to Bezos. The family moved to Houston, Texas, where Mike worked as an engineer for Exxon after he received a degree from the University of New Mexico. Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade.

Bezos is the maternal grandson of Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. Gise retired early to his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Bezos would spend many summers in his youth. Bezos would later purchase this ranch and grow it from 25,000 acres (10,117 ha) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha). His maternal grandmother was Mattie Louise Gise (née Strait), through whom he is a cousin of country singer George Strait. Bezos often displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency; he once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.

The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Bezos attended Miami Palmetto High School. While Bezos was in high school, he worked at McDonald's as a short-order line cook during the breakfast shift. He attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. In 1986, he graduated from Princeton University with a 4.2 grade point average and Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. While at Princeton, he was also elected to Tau Beta Pi and was the president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

Business career

Early career

After Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986, he was offered jobs at Intel, Bell Labs, and Andersen Consulting, among others. He first worked at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international trade. Bezos was promoted to head of development and director of customer service thereafter. He transitioned into the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust; he worked there from 1988 to 1990. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly founded hedge fund, in 1990 and worked there until 1994. Bezos became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice-president at the age of 30.

Amazon

Bezos (center) at a cooperative for robotics in 2005

 

In late 1993, Bezos decided to start an online bookstore. He left his job at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in his garage on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a trip from New York to Seattle. Bezos initially named his new company Cadabra but later changed the name to Amazon after the Amazon River in South America, in part because the name begins with the letter A, which is at the beginning of the alphabet. He accepted an estimated $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon. He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore, Bezos had always planned to expand to other products. Three years after Bezos founded Amazon, he took it public with an initial public offering (IPO). In response to critical reports from Fortune and Barron's, Bezos maintained that the growth of the Internet would overtake competition from larger book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.

In 1998, Bezos diversified into the online sale of music and video; by the end of the year, he had also expanded the company's products to include a variety of consumer goods. Bezos used the $54 million raised during the company's 1997 equity offering to finance aggressive acquisition of smaller competitors. In 2002, Bezos led Amazon to launch Amazon Web Services, which compiled data from weather channels and website traffic. In late 2002, rapid spending from Amazon caused it financial distress when revenues stagnated. In 2000, Bezos borrowed $2 billion from banks, as its cash balances dipped to only $350 million. After the company nearly went bankrupt, he closed distribution centers and laid off 14% of the Amazon workforce. In 2003, Amazon rebounded from financial instability and turned a profit of $400 million. In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle. According to a 2008 Time profile, Bezos wished to create the same flow state found in video game simulations in books; he wished readers would fully engage with books. In 2013, Bezos secured a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of Amazon Web Services. In October that year, Amazon was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer in the world.

In May 2016, Bezos sold slightly more than one million shares of his holdings in the company for $671 million, the largest sum he had ever raised from selling some of his Amazon stock. On August 4, 2016, Bezos sold another million of his shares for $756.7 million. A year later, Bezos took on 130,000 new employees when he ramped up hiring at company distribution centers. By January 19, 2018, his Amazon stock holdings had appreciated to slightly over $109 billion; months later he began to sell stock to raise cash for other enterprises, in particular, Blue Origin. On January 29, 2018, he was featured in Amazon's Super Bowl commercial. On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $2 billion. Due to the growth of Alibaba in China, Bezos has often expressed interest in expanding Amazon into India.

In March 2018, Bezos dispatched Amit Agarwal, Amazon's global senior vice president, to India with $5.5 billion to localize operations throughout the company's supply chain routes. Later in the month, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon–and Bezos, specifically–of sales tax avoidance, misusing postal routes, and anti-competitive business practices. Amazon's share price fell by 9% in response to the President's negative comments; this reduced Bezos's personal wealth by $10.7 billion. Weeks later, Bezos recouped his losses when academic reports out of Stanford University indicated that Trump could do little to regulate Amazon in any meaningful way. During July 2018, a number of members of the U.S. Congress called on Bezos to detail the applications of Amazon's face recognition software, Rekognition. Additionally, statements by the Trump administration, in favor of overturning the antitrust law known as the Paramount Decree, have been predicted to help Amazon acquire the Landmark Theaters chain.

Criticism of Amazon's business practices continued in September 2018 when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act and accused Amazon of receiving corporate welfare. This followed revelations by the non-profit group New Food Economy which found that one third of Amazon workers in Arizona, and one tenth of Amazon workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, relied on food stamps. While preparing to introduce the bill, Sanders opined: "Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the moon, how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers a living wage?" He later said: "Bezos could play a profound role. If he said today, nobody who is employed at Amazon will receive less than a living wage, it would send a message to every corporation in America." Sanders's efforts elicited a response from Amazon which pointed to the 130,000 jobs it created in 2017 and called the $28,446 figure for its median salary "misleading" as it included part-time workers. However, Sanders countered that the companies targeted by his proposal have placed an increased focus on part-time workers to escape benefit obligations. On October 2, 2018, Bezos announced a company-wide wage increase, which Sanders applauded. The American workers who were being paid the minimum wage had this increased to $15 per hour — a decision that was interpreted as support for the Fight for $15 movement.

Blue Origin

Bezos giving NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver (fourth from left) a tour of Blue Origin's crew capsule in 2011.

 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter meets with Bezos in 2016 at The Pentagon.

 

In September 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company. Bezos has long expressed an interest in space travel and the development of human life in the solar system. He was the valedictorian when he graduated from high school in 1982. His speech was followed up with a Miami Herald interview in which he expressed an interest to build and develop hotels, amusement parks, and colonies for human beings who were in orbit. The 18-year-old Bezos stated that he wanted to preserve Earth from overuse through resource depletion.

After its founding, Blue Origin maintained a low profile until 2006, when it purchased a large tract of land in West Texas for a launch and test facility. After the company gained the public's attention during the late 2000s, Bezos additionally indicated his interest in reducing the cost of space travel for humans while also increasing the safety of extraterrestrial travel. In September 2011, one of the company's unmanned prototype vehicles crashed during a short-hop test flight. Although the crash was viewed as a setback, news outlets noted how far the company went from its founding-to-date in advancing spaceflight. In May 2013, Bezos met with Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Galactic, to discuss commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies. He has been compared to Branson and Elon Musk as all three are billionaires who prioritize spaceflight among their business interests.

In 2015, Bezos announced that a new orbital launch vehicle was under development and would make its first flight in the late-2010s. Later in November, Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle successfully rocketed into space and reached its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas. In 2016, Bezos allowed select journalists to visit, tour, and photograph his facility. He has repeatedly called for increased inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to decrease the negative costs associated with business-related pollution.

In December 2017, New Shepard successfully flew and landed dummy passengers, amending and pushing its human space travel start date into late 2018. To execute this program, Blue Origin built six of the vehicles to support all phases of testing and operations: no-passenger test flights, flights with test passengers, and commercial-passenger weekly operations. Since 2016, Bezos has spoken more freely about his hopes to colonize the solar system, and has been selling $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to capitalize Blue Origin in an effort to support this endeavor. In May 2018, Bezos maintained that the primary goal of Blue Origin is to preserve the natural resources of Earth by making the human species multi-planetary. He announced that New Shepard would begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space by November 2018. In July 2018, it was announced that Bezos had priced commercial spaceflight tickets from $200,000 to $300,000 per person.

The Washington Post

On August 5, 2013, Bezos announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million in cash. To execute the sale, he established Nash Holdings, a limited liability holding company that legally owns the paper. The sale closed on October 1, 2013, and Nash Holdings took control. In March 2014, Bezos made his first significant change at The Washington Post and lifted the online paywall for subscribers of a number of U.S. local newspapers in Texas, Hawaii, and Minnesota. In January 2016, Bezos set out to reinvent the newspaper as a media and technology company by reconstructing its digital media, mobile platforms, and analytics software. Throughout the early years of ownership, Bezos was accused of having a potential conflict of interest with the paper. Bezos and the newspaper's editorial board have dismissed accusations that he unfairly controlled the paper's content and Bezos maintains the paper's independence. After a surge in online readership in 2016, the paper was profitable for the first time since Bezos made the purchase in 2013.

Bezos Expeditions

Bezos makes personal investments through his venture capital vehicle, Bezos Expeditions. He was one of the first shareholders in Google, when he invested $250,000 in 1998. That $250,000 investment resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock, worth about $3.1 billion in 2017. He also invested in Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm hoping to slow or stop the process of aging. Bezos is involved in the healthcare sector, which includes investments in Unity Biotechnology, Grail, Juno Therapeutics, and ZocDoc. In January 2018, an announcement was made concerning Bezos's role within a new, unnamed healthcare company. This venture, later named Haven, is expected to be a partnership between Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway.

Public image

Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times has described the public persona and personality of Bezos as that of "a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan". During the 1990s, Bezos earned a reputation for relentlessly pushing Amazon forward, often at the expense of public charity and social welfare. His business practices projected a public image of prudence and parsimony with his own wealth and that of Amazon. Bezos was a multi-billionaire who hung his clothes on a rack in his Amazon headquarters office and drove a 1996 Honda Accord. Throughout the early 2000s, he was perceived to be geeky or nerdy, often wearing ill-fitting clothing and making a variety of social missteps.

Bezos was seen by the public as needlessly quantitative and data-driven. This perception was detailed by Alan Deutschman who described him as "talking in lists" and "[enumerating] the criteria, in order of importance, for every decision he has made." Select accounts of his persona have drawn controversy and public attention. Notably, journalist Brad Stone wrote an unauthorized book that described Bezos as a demanding boss as well as hyper-competitive. Bezos has been stereotyped as a notoriously opportunistic CEO who operates with little concern for obstacles and externalities. This depiction has been challenged by Bezos himself, his wife, Amazon employees, and the public as a mischaracterization.

During the early 2010s, Bezos solidified his reputation for aggressive business practices, and his public image began to shift. Bezos started to wear tailored clothing; he weight trained, pursued a regimented diet and began to freely spend his money. His physical transformation has been compared to the transformation of Amazon; he is often referred to as the metonym of the company. His physical appearance increased the public's perception of him as a symbolically dominant figure in business and in popular culture, wherein he has been parodied as an enterprising super villain. Since 2017, he has been portrayed by Kyle Mooney and Steve Carrell on Saturday Night Live, usually as an undercutting, domineering figure. Bezos eats exotic foods, such as octopus and roasted iguana. In May 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation named Bezos the "World's Worst Boss", with its general secretary Sharan Burrow saying: "Jeff Bezos represents the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the North American corporate model." During the late 2010s, Bezos reversed his reputation for being reluctant to spend money on non-business-related expenses. His relative lack of philanthropy compared to other billionaires has drawn a negative response from the public since 2016. Bezos has been known to publicly contest claims made in critical articles, as exemplified in 2015 when he sent a memo to employees denouncing a New York Times piece.

Leadership style

"Day 1" Management Philosophy

Day 1: start up
Day 2: stasis
Day 3: irrelevance
Day 4: "excruciating, painful decline"
Day 5: death

Bezos has stated "it is always Day 1" to describe his growth mindset.

Bezos used what he called a "regret-minimization framework" while he worked at D. E. Shaw and again during the early years of Amazon. He described this life philosophy by stating: "When I'm 80, am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes." During the 1990s and early 2000s at Amazon, he was characterized as trying to quantify all aspects of running the company, often listing employees on spreadsheets and basing executive decisions on data. To push Amazon forward, Bezos developed the mantra "Get Big Fast", which spoke to the company's need to scale its operations and establish market dominance. He favored diverting Amazon profits back into the company in lieu of allocating it amongst shareholders in the form of dividends.

Bezos uses the term "work–life harmony" instead of the more standard work–life balance because he believes balance implies that you can have one and not the other. He believes that work and home life are interconnected, informing and calibrating each other. Journalist Walt Mossberg dubbed the idea that someone who cannot tolerate criticism or critique shouldn't do anything new or interesting, "The Bezos Principle". Bezos does not schedule early morning meetings and enforces a two-pizza rule–a preference for meetings to be small enough to where two pizzas can feed everyone in the board room. When interviewing candidates for jobs at Amazon he has stated he considers three inquiries: can he admire the person, can the person raise the common standard, and under what circumstances could the person become exemplary.

He meets with Amazon investors for a total of only six hours a year. Instead of using PowerPoints, Bezos requires high-level employees to present information with six-page narratives. Starting in 1998, Bezos publishes an annual letter for Amazon shareholders wherein he frequently refers to five principles: focus on customers not competitors, take risks for market leadership, facilitate staff morale, build a company culture, and empower people. Bezos maintains the email address "jeff@amazon.com" as an outlet for customers to reach out to him and the company. Although he does not respond to the emails, he forwards some of them with a question mark in the subject line to executives who attempt to address the issues. Bezos has cited Warren Buffett (of Berkshire Hathaway), Jamie Dimon (of JPMorgan Chase), and Bob Iger (of Walt Disney) as major influences on his leadership style.

Recognition

In 1999, Bezos received his first major award when Time named him Person of the Year. In 2008, he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders. Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. In 2011, The Economist gave Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle. In 2012, Bezos was named Businessperson of the Year by Fortune. He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and the 2013 conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He was a member of the Executive Committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012. In 2014, he was ranked the best-performing CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review.

He has also figured in Fortune's list of 50 great leaders of the world for three straight years, topping the list in 2015. In September 2016, Bezos received a $250,000 prize for winning the Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization, which he donated to the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. In February 2018, Bezos was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "leadership and innovation in space exploration, autonomous systems, and building a commercial pathway for human space flight". In March 2018, at the Explorers Club annual dinner, he was awarded the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award in recognition of his work with Blue Origin. He received Germany's 2018 Axel Springer Award for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in their 2018 listing.

Wealth

Annual estimates of Jeff Bezos's net worth
Year	Billions	Change	Year	Billions	Change
1999	10.1	0.0%	2009	6.8	17.7%
2000	6.1	40.5%	2010	12.6	85.2%
2001	2.0	66.6%	2011	18.1	43.6%
2002	1.5	25.0%	2012	23.2	28.2%
2003	2.5	66.6%	2013	28.9	24.5%
2004	5.1	104.0%	2014	30.5	5.5%
2005	4.1	5.8%	2015	50.3	60.9%
2006	4.3	10.4%	2016	45.2	10.1%
2007	8.7	102.3%	2017	72.8	61.6%
2008	8.2	5.7%	2018	112.0	53.8%
Main data source: Forbes World's Billionaires Estimates Additional reference(s): Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Bezos first became a millionaire in 1997 after raising $54 million through Amazon's initial public offering (IPO). He was first included on Forbes The World's Billionaires list in 1999 with a registered net worth of $10.1 billion. His net worth decreased to $6.1 billion a year later, a 40.5% drop. His wealth plummeted even more the following year, dropping 66.6% to $2.0 billion. He lost $500 million the following year, which brought his net worth down to $1.5 billion. The following year, his net worth increased by 104% to $2.5 billion. From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net worth to $8.7 billion. After the financial crisis and succeeding economic recession, his net worth would erode to $6.8 billion—a 17.7% drop. His wealth rose by 85.2% in 2010, leaving him with $12.6 billion. This percentage increase ascended him to the 43rd spot on the ranking from 68th.

After a rumor broke out that Amazon was developing a smartphone, Bezos's net worth rose to $30.5 billion in 2014. A year later, Bezos entered the top ten when he increased his net worth to a total of $50.3 billion. Bezos rose to be the 5th richest person in the world hours before market close; he gained $7 billion in one hour. By the time the Forbes list was calculated in March 2016, his net worth was registered at $45.2 billion. However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $16.2 billion to $66.5 billion unofficially ranking him the third richest person in the world behind Warren Buffett. After sporadic jumps in Amazon's share price, in July 2017 he briefly unseated Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates as the wealthiest person in the world.

The net worth of Jeff Bezos from 1999 to 2018 as estimated by Forbes magazine, in the nominal U.S. dollar. His net worth is calculated in the billions by March of each year.

 

Bezos would continue to sporadically surpass Gates throughout the month of October 2017 after Amazon's share price fluctuated. His net worth surpassed $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, after Amazon's share price increased by more than 2.5%. When the 2017 list was issued, Bezos's net worth was registered at $72.8 billion, adding $27.6 billion from the previous year. Bezos was officially ranked as the third wealthiest person in the world up from the 5th spot in 2016. His wealth's rapid growth from 2016 to 2017 sparked a variety of assessments about how much money Bezos earned on a controlled, reduced time scale. On October 10, 2017, he made an estimated $6.24 billion in 5 minutes, slightly less than the annual Gross Domestic Product of Kyrgyzstan.

On March 6, 2018, Bezos was officially designated the wealthiest person in the world with a registered net worth of $112 billion. He unseated Bill Gates ($90 billion) who was $6 billion ahead of Warren Buffett ($84 billion), ranked third. He is considered the first registered centi-billionaire (not adjusted for inflation).

His wealth, in 2017–18 terms, equaled that of 2.7 million Americans. Bezos's net worth increased by $33.6 billion from January 2017 to January 2018. This increase outstripped the economic development (in GDP terms) of more than 96 countries around the world. During March 9, Bezos earned $230,000 every 60 seconds. The Motley Fool estimated that if Bezos had not sold any of his shares from its original public offering in 1997, his net worth would sit at $181 billion in 2018. According to Quartz, his net worth of $150 billion in July 2018 was enough to purchase the entire stock markets of Nigeria, Hungary, Egypt, Luxembourg, and Iran. Following the report by Quartz, Amazon workers in Poland, Germany, and Spain participated in demonstrations and labor strikes to draw attention to his growing wealth and the lack of compensation, labor rights, and satisfactory working conditions of select Amazon workers. On July 17, 2018 he was designated the "wealthiest person in modern history" by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Fortune, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.

Bezos's wealth may be considerably reduced by his divorce with wife MacKenzie Bezos. According to Forbes, if the Washington state common law applies for their divorce without a prenuptial agreement Bezos's wealth will be split 50–50 with his ex-wife. In this case, she would become the wealthiest woman in the world.

Personal life

In 1992, Bezos was working for D. E. Shaw in Manhattan, New York City, when he met novelist MacKenzie Tuttle, who was a research associate at the firm; the couple married a year later. In 1994, they moved across the country to Seattle, Washington, where Bezos founded Amazon. He and his wife are the parents of four children: three sons, and one daughter adopted from China.

In March 2003, Bezos was one of three passengers in a helicopter that crashed in West Texas after the craft's tail boom hit a tree. Bezos sustained minor injuries and was discharged from a local hospital the same day.

In 2016, Bezos played a Starfleet official in the movie Star Trek Beyond, and joined the cast and crew at a San Diego Comic-Con screening.

On January 9, 2019, Bezos and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, announced on Twitter their intent to divorce after a "long period" of separation. On April 4, 2019, the divorce was finalized, with Bezos keeping 75% of the couple's Amazon stock and MacKenzie getting the remaining 25% ($35.6 billion) in Amazon stock. However, Bezos would keep all of the couple's voting rights.

On February 7, 2019, Bezos published an online essay in which he accused American Media, Inc. owner David Pecker of "extortion and blackmail" for threatening to publish intimate photos of Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, if he did not stop his investigation into how his text messages and other photos had been leaked to the National Enquirer.

Politics

According to public campaign finance records, Bezos supported the electoral campaigns of Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two Democratic U.S. Senators from Washington. He has also supported U.S. representative John Conyers, as well as Patrick Leahy and Spencer Abraham, U.S. Senators serving on committees dealing with Internet-related issues. Bezos and his wife support the legalization of same-sex marriage, and in 2012 contributed $2.5 million to Washington United for Marriage, a group supporting a yes vote on Washington Referendum 74, which affirmed a same-sex marriage law enacted in the state. Bezos donated $100,000 towards a movement against a higher Washington state income tax in 2010. In 2012, he donated to Amazon's political action committee (PAC), which has given $56,000 and $74,500 to Democrats and Republicans, respectively.

After the 2016 presidential election, Bezos was invited to join Donald Trump's Defense Innovation Advisory Board, an advisory council to improve the technology used by the Defense Department. Bezos declined the offer without further comment. Trump has repeatedly attacked Bezos via Twitter, accused Bezos of avoiding corporate taxes, gaining undue political influence, and undermining his presidency by spreading "fake news." Bezos has repeatedly joked about using his rocket company to send Donald Trump into outer space.

In 2014, Amazon won a bid for a cloud computing contract with the CIA valued at $600 million. A 2018, $10 billion contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project, this time with the Pentagon, was allegedly written up in a way that favors Amazon. Controversy over this was raised when General James Mattis accepted a headquarters tour invitation from Bezos and co-ordinated the deal through Sally Donnelly, a lobbyist who previously worked for Amazon. Despite Bezos's support for an open borders policy towards immigrants, Amazon has actively marketed facial recognition software to the ICE.

In March 2018, Bezos met in Seattle with Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030.

Philanthropy

Bezos funded the retrieval of this F-1 engine from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 2015, eventually donating it to the Seattle Museum of Flight.

 

Bezos supports philanthropic efforts through direct donations and non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions. Bezos used Bezos Expeditions to fund several philanthropic projects, including an Innovation center at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute. Bezos donated to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center several times between 2009 and 2017. In 2013, he pledged $500,000 to Worldreader, a non-profit founded by a former Amazon employee. Also in 2013, Bezos funded the recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. They were positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission's S-1C stage from July 1969.^[219][220] The engine is currently on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. His philanthropic efforts have been negatively compared to those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

On May 23, 2017, Bezos gave $1 million to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides pro bono legal services for American journalists. On June 15, 2017, he posted a message on Twitter asking for ideas for philanthropy: "I'm thinking about a philanthropy strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time—working on the long term". At the time of the post, Bezos's lifetime spending on charitable causes was estimated to be $100 million. Multiple journalists responded by asking Bezos to pay higher wages to Amazon warehouse workers. A year later in June, he tweeted that he would announce two philanthropic foci by the end of summer 2018. Bezos announced in September 2018 that he would commit approximately $2 billion to a fund to deal with American homelessness and establish a network of non-profit preschools for low income communities. As part of this announcement, he committed to establishing the "Day 1 Families Fund" to finance "night shelters and day care centers for homeless families" and the "Day 1 Academies Fund" for early childhood education.

In January 2018, Bezos made a $33 million donation to TheDream.US, a college scholarship fund for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors. In June 2018, Bezos donated to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a private philanthropic fund founded by Bill Gates aimed at promoting emissions-free energy. In September 2018, Bezos donated $10 million to With Honor, a nonpartisan organization that works to increase the number of veterans in political office.