Elon Musk's $150 million charity spending spree

[babylonsister]

Elon Musk’s $150 million charity spending spree
Texas schools. A food bank. Now a climate-change prize. The Tesla founder discovers Big Philanthropy.
By Theodore Schleifer@teddyschleifer Apr 22, 2021, 8:00am EDT


Elon Musk is on a philanthropy spending spree.

In the months immediately after briefly becoming the world’s richest person, Musk has been transforming his profile as a philanthropist, appearing seemingly every few weeks bearing gifts — in public. That represents a departure from Musk’s penchant for privacy and his relatively thin history as a major donor, despite being one of the country’s wealthiest people for a decade.

In the last few months, the Tesla founder appears to have been on the most aggressive streak of charitable giving in his life, moving so fast that he sometimes fails to give the recipients a heads-up. He is making his largest public donations ever and at a pace that seems to outstrip any other point in his career. All of that activity will be highlighted on Thursday when Musk speaks at a buzzy rollout for his single-biggest donation, a $100 million jackpot for the winner of a climate contest he created.

Over just the first four months of 2021, Musk has committed almost $150 million directly to charities, according to Recode reporting and public announcements. That more than doubles Recode’s best estimate of all his charitable giving before 2021, which amounted to about $100 million based on available information.

And that’s not all. Behind the scenes over the last few months, Musk’s foundation has been spending more time reaching out to other major philanthropists and intermediaries to try and find ideas for grants and learn best practices, Recode is told.

more...

https://www.vox.com/recode/22394867/elon-musk-foundation-philanthropy-xprize-tesla-spacex

[5X]

1. What is that, like 2 minutes of earnings?

[USALiberal]

2. I predicted someone would whine about the amount. How about being happy about the donation? Nt

[babylonsister]

4. Thank you, agreed. nt

[lagomorph777]

6. +1

And, unlike some billionaires, Musk is advancing our civilization in multiple ways: green transportation, green energy, green and cheap space travel, universal connectivity...

[Miguelito Loveless]

7. Musk is some folks favorite villain

Not to say that he cannot be a major jackass who really should keep his mouth shut on topics which he lacks expertise in, but he is not Evil Incarnate™. His companies and tech is causing HUGE headaches for the fossil fuel industry, the insurance industry, the telecom/cable industry, the aerospace industry, electric/gas utility monopolies, and of course, the legacy auto industry. I disagree with some of his predictions (robotaxis, level 5 self-driving cars, the current business model for The Boring Company), but I have been following him and his companies for ten years, and he is dragging the U.S. kicking and screaming into the 21st Century on sustainable energy transition.

[5X]

8. Its like I gave a buck fifty to a homeless person and felt the need to brag.

Not impressed, myself.

[USALiberal]

9. So you would suggest he not donate $150,000,000?

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. His earning, last I checked,

were $1 a year. Now he gets a lot of stock options when he hits certain financial goals, but he must still buy the stock, with his own money, and the stock is locked (cannot be sold) for years.

So, while he is worth a LOT of money on paper, if he were to try and substantially tap that money by selling stock, Wall Street would see that as him bailing on the company, causing the stock to tank, and Musk's holdings to plummet in value a well.

[Goonch]

3. ;-{)

[BannonsLiver]

10. Still a libertarian creep.

Sorry, I’m not a Tesla fanboy like some of the bootlickers up thread.