UPDATE: Guests dispute report of ‘audible groan’ when Jeff Bezos donated $500,000 at gala
To the Amazon founder, recently dubbed as the second-richest man in the world, the money is a mere percentage of what he makes in minutes
The recipient of US$500,000 donated by Jeff Bezos at a charity gala in Los Angeles is clarifying that the audience did not audibly groan when the amount was announced.
The world’s second-richest man and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez attended the A-lister fundraiser event hosted by Baby2Baby, a nonprofit providing necessities to children living in poverty, at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood on Saturday night.
Baby2Baby clarified that Bezos’ $500,000 donation made him the single largest donor at the event (when his pre-event contributions were also taken into account).
An anonymous source told Page Six that the announcement of Bezos’ donation prompted an “audible groan from the room”.
Vanity Fair said the crowd joked about Bezos donating more and quoted a gala guest who disagreed with the Page Six characterization: “I wouldn’t say there were groans from the crowd after Bezos’s donation was announced. Lots of people were saying, ‘That’s it? Only $500,000?’”
Entrepreneur quoted another guest at the gala as saying, “People were clapping and screaming when Jeff donated half a million.”
As a whole, the star-studded gala managed to raise $8.5 million for the nonprofit, with donations pouring in from celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila Alves; Jessica Alba and stylist Rachel Zoe.
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To the Amazon founder, the Baby2Baby donation is a small percentage of what he makes in minutes, given that his net worth climbs by $147,667 per minute, according to the Independent .
Forbes estimates Bezos’ current worth at $190.4 billion.
The news comes after his former wife Mackenzie Scott last week donated $50 million to a historically Black university in Texas, on top of the $6 billion she has pledged to charitable causes.
However, that’s not to say that the Blue Origins founder is completely unwilling to shed some weight off his bank account — last year, he reportedly made the single-largest charity donation of 2020, according Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top donations — giving $10 billion to fight climate change.
In 2018, he also established the Bezos Day One fund, an initiative pledged to establish a network of nonprofit preschool and organizations supporting the homeless. As of 2021, he has given just over $300 million of the $2 million pledged to the fund, Forbes reported.
