“The Day 1
Families Fund will issue annual leadership awards to organizations and civic
groups doing compassionate, needle moving work to provide shelter and hunger
support to address the immediate needs of young families,” Bezos writes in a
statement.
There’s also
a Day 1 Academies Fund that will launch a network of free, Montessori-inspired
schools in low-income neighborhoods.
Bezos said
the schools will employ the “same set of principles that have driven Amazon .”
Which, for Bezos, means an intense focus on the customer.
The funds
are called the “Day 1” funds because they align with Bezos’ stated philosophy
of “maintaining a Day 1 mentality.”
Starting a
network of free schools for underprivileged children and giving out money to
help organizations that are working to alleviate the needs of the nation’s
homeless are inarguably good things, but it’s unclear whether these individual
steps can work to address more systemic problems that underlie problems of
homelessness and a lack of educational opportunity that exists more broadly in
the country.
Perhaps
Bezos was inspired to battle the nation’s homeless plight when he saw this
report on Vickie Shannon Allen, an Amazon employee who became homeless after a
workplace accident cost her her job.
It’s also a
bit rich to see Bezos tackle the issue of homelessness after his company was
the mustache twirling arch nemesis of a bill in Seattle that would have created
a tax to finance homeless shelters and low-income housing.
Fortune has
more on Amazon’s work to kill the measure:
Amazon opposed the tax, originally floated
at $500 a year for each of its Seattle employees. To signal its displeasure,
the company halted construction on a new tower, and suggested it might sublet
722,000 square feet it had just leased in a signature downtown building. When
the council approved a reduced $275 tax, Amazon restarted construction on the
tower. But it also joined Starbucks and other local employers to fund a group,
No Tax on Jobs, that raised over $300,000 to pay for signature gatherers for a
referendum to repeal the head tax. In a statement after the vote, Amazon vice
president Drew Herdener said, “Today’s vote by the Seattle City Council to
repeal the tax on job creation is the right decision for the region’s economic
prosperity.”
With the new
fund, Bezos joins a long line of incredibly mega-rich people (cf.
Chan-Zuckerberg and Gates Foundations… and Warren Buffett) who are taking it
upon themselves to fund programs for social good.
It’s part of
philanthropy’s long history of ignoring broader structural issues as a way for
billionaires to treat their contributions as a gift rather than an obligation.
Here’s
Bezos’ tweet announcing the new funds.
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) September 13, 2018
Comments