Tech entrepreneur Jeff Atwood is photographed at his home Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, in Alameda, Calif.Godofredo A. Vásquez | AP
After becoming wealthy through a $1.8 billion business sale, he intends to contribute half of his wealth: “Being rich isn’t the only aspect of the American Dream.”
Many wealthy people intend to allocate the majority of their money to charitable activities. According to Jeff Atwood, he plans to complete it in the next five years.
In a blog post last week, Atwood, co-founder of the computer programming platform Stack Overflow, which was purchased by international investment firm Prosus for $1.8 billion in 2021, stated that he intends to donate almost half of his fortune over the course of the next five years. What percentage of the Stack Overflow sale went straight to Atwood’s bank account is unknown. However, he noted, his family has already donated eight $1 million to charity organizations, such as First Generation Investors, Team Rubicon, and The Trevor Project.
Atwood remarked, “I’m concerned we may lose sight of the American Dream,” pointing to growing housing, healthcare, and educational prices, wealth concentration, and difficulties with voter registration as obstacles to achievement for many Americans.
Through a combination of grants, scholarships, and part-time employment, Atwood himself barely scraped together enough money to pay $3,000 per year for college in 1992—a steal by today’s tuition standards, he wrote.
According to Atwood, “I didn’t realize how many Americans have so little until I achieved the dream.” “Unintentionally, having this much money starts to alienate my family from other Americans.” Since I don’t have to, I no longer bother to check the prices of things. It becomes increasingly evident how unfair life is for many of us as one’s wealth increases.
“I want everyone to have an equal opportunity.”
The Giving Pledge, a movement founded by Warren Buffett, Melinda French Gates, and Bill Gates that encourages affluent individuals to contribute the majority of their fortunes during their lifetimes or in their wills, is echoed by Atwood’s declaration. According to the campaign’s website, several tech millionaires have joined, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman.
The timeframe of the Stack Overflow co-founder’s pledge is significantly different: Buffett, on the other hand, has declared his plan to leave 99.5% of his fortune to his three children in a progressive charitable distribution after his passing. Forbes estimates that the 94-year-old CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is worth $146.2 billion.
The U.S. federal government “seems to be slower and slower at delivering change due to the increased polarization of our two party system,” Atwood said, adding to his feeling of urgency. Even though I respect Buffett, I felt that my vow was lacking because I only have a small portion of his wealth. When would the transfer of this riches occur? He stated that other Americans should be able to replicate his own financial achievement.
“Being wealthy isn’t the only aspect of the American Dream. Everyone’s success is the goal,” Atwood told the Associated Press on Friday, adding that some injustice is acceptable. We’re not socialists, mind you, but I do want everyone to have an equal opportunity.
The difficulty of extensive charity Some of the richest people in the world have recently discussed the challenges of making meaningful donations, such as figuring out which charities would best utilize their funds and continuously promote the issues they believe in.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, told CNN in 2022 that it is “very difficult” to make significant donations. “Amazon was not easy to build. It required a lot of effort, a group of really intelligent colleagues, and diligent teammates, and I’m discovering that philanthropy and charity are quite similar.
Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has openly committed herself to that goal, enhancing the effect of significant monetary contributions. According to its website, her charitable project Yield Giving uses a “quiet research” method to identify and evaluate organizations that assist individuals in underprivileged areas, primarily in an anonymous manner so as not to interfere with the nonprofits’ work, and then provides them with a “immediate gift for use however they choose.”
Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center for Nonprofits and Philanthropy, told CNBC Make It in 2022 that MacKenzie Scott was the nation’s most outstanding philanthropist at the time. “She has created an extremely potent model that has received more praise than any significant mega-donor.”
According to Yield Giving’s website, Scott has donated over $19.25 billion since 2019, the year the couple got divorced. According to Forbes, she now has a net worth of $31.9 billion.
Source: CNBC
