Giving Compass' Take:

• Gaby Del Valle explains why Jeff Bezos' $2 billion philanthropic effort is an insufficient symptom treatment for the systemic problems he perpetuates through Amazon.

• How can funders work to make systemic change? How can funders work to ensure that their money is made ethically? 

• Learn more about wealthy philanthropists impeding true change. 

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, were donating $97.5 million to 24 organizations that provide homeless services across the country. The donation is part of Bezos’s $2 billion “Day 1 Fund,” a philanthropic endeavor announced in September that, according to Bezos, focuses on establishing “a network of new, non-profit, tier-one preschools in low-income communities” and funding existing nonprofits that provide homeless services.

Of those 24 organizations, 15 will receive $5 million grants; nine will receive $2.5 million. Notably, three of the grant recipients are in Washington, DC, and another is in northern Virginia, where Amazon plans to open half of its “second headquarters.” Only one organization is based in New York City, the other site of Amazon’s forthcoming HQ2 office.

It’s noteworthy that instead of dedicating the bulk of his charitable giving to organizations based in the cities that will soon house tens of thousands of Amazon employees — and, if critics’ fears are to be believed, doing so at the expense of longtime residents, many of whom are working-class — Bezos instead chose to spread his wealth around the country. More troublingly, though, the Day 1 fund suggests that Bezos, like other billionaire philanthropists before him, think the problems of homelessness, poverty, and displacement should be solved by a network of donors and nonprofits — and not by elected officials.

Bezos’s actions in Amazon’s home city of Seattle exemplify his approach to addressing problems of poverty and inequality: namely, that he prefers to do it on his own terms.

Despite supporting organizations like Mary’s Place, Amazon was instrumental in killing a bill in its home city of Seattle that would have taxed local businesses in order to fund affordable housing projects that keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. The bill, which the Seattle City Council unanimously passed in June, would have placed a $275-per-employee tax on local businesses making more than $20 million a year — businesses like Amazon.

With HQ2, New York and Virginia have chosen to give Amazon billions of dollars’ worth of tax breaks and other incentives — money that instead could have been used to increase homeless shelter space or renovate dilapidated public housing developments. Instead of taking money from Amazon and redistributing it to vulnerable people, local governments have chosen to do the opposite, contributing to Bezos’s vast fortune. In exchange, Bezos is donating a tiny fraction of his net worth to organizations that address the symptoms of inequality without tackling the root causes.

Read the full article about selfish giving by Gaby Del Valle at Vox.