Next in Line: 11 Young Giving Pledgers to Watch
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Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann (left). Photo: Web Summit, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Since its 2010 inception, the Giving Pledge has grown from 40 inaugural members to nearly 240. Pledgers include everybody from top-flight tech founders and private equity stars to energy and media moguls. They now hail from every continent except Antarctica, and range from their 30s to their 90s — all making the public commitment to give away a majority of their wealth.
One of the animating forces of the pledge is encouraging the wealthy to give more, establish their giving plans sooner, and give in smarter ways.
“Really, it’s the pledgers themselves sharing their own experiences. How they staffed up. How they think about their obligations. And everyone is in a different stage of the process. I think that was the goal of Gates and Buffett. To help get their fellow philanthropists unstuck,” John Michael Sobrato once told me. Sobrato is a Giving Pledge signatory and a member of the billionaire Sobrato family.
As this latest era of big philanthropy progresses, it’s not just people older than 50 sitting on enormous piles of wealth. Vast fortunes exist among the younger generations, too. In sports alone, Forbes reported that the top 50 sports stars combined made nearly $2.8 billion in 2021 — most of those figures are in their 20s and 30s. Tech winners are also emerging at earlier ages, with some turning to philanthropy and signing the Giving Pledge.
Consider crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, who started the FTX Foundation to focus on areas like global health and climate. It stands to reason that, as people like Bankman-Fried make the commitment, they will influence other young emerging philanthropists to do the same.
So who are some of these other younger donors who’ve already signed the Giving Pledge? And what do we know about their nascent giving? For our rundown here, we’ve focused on signatories who are primarily based in the United States. And by “younger,” we’ve focused on individuals under the age of 45.
Sam Bankman-Fried, 30
2022 Giving Pledge signatory Sam Bankman-Fried, worth $21.5 billion as of this writing, made it big in cryptocurrency via his FTX exchange and Alameda Research trading firm. The son of two Stanford law professors, Bankman-Fried studied physics at MIT and has said he wants to make as much money as possible. On the flip side, he also wants to give away most of the money he earns. FTX Foundation, a corporate philanthropy, focuses on global health and welfare, climate and community work. And its Future Fund supports groundbreaking projects in fields like biosecurity and A.I. safety. Drawn to an effective altruist mode of giving, Bankman-Fried told us that many of the other hands involved with the FTX Foundation also have a similar ethos: “Obviously, I’m involved in it, but I’m not the only person with sort of an effective altruist background at the company… A number of them, especially the earlier employees, do, and it’s how I met some of them.”
Jeff T. Green, 45
A billionaire native of Utah, Green now resides in Southern California where he leads The Trade Desk, an advertising tech firm he founded in 2009. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2021, on the heels of founding the Jeff T. Green Family Foundation in 2020 as well as an associated vehicle called Dataphilanthropy. Green hopes to “invest in projects where we can apply data to understand progress, mistakes and opportunities,” as he wrote in his Giving Pledge letter.
In 2019, Green began a philanthropic collaboration with California State University Channel Islands to develop a peer mentoring program to reduce dropout rates. Data is the name of the game for Green, and according to his foundation, “Data suggested that a single drop/fail/withdrawal grade as a freshman dropped the graduation odds to 60%. Two such grades dropped the odds to 40%.” As the mentoring program got underway, “the school has seen a double-digit increase in graduation rates among mentors and mentees.”
Ben Silbermann, 40
Yale graduate Ben Silbermann is a co-founder of photo bookmarking site Pinterest, a home for designers and other creatives. Silbermann and his wife Divya signed the pledge in 2021 — and the couple are currently worth $1.4 billion. The couple’s low-profile charity, Tambourine, has given for ALS research, including to the Golden West Chapter of the ALS Association. Tambourine has an executive director, Ariel Simon, who is also head of social impact and philanthropy at Pinterest. Divya Silbermann is a board member of I Am ALS and will be worth keeping tabs on as the couple’s giving kicks into higher gear.
Tony Xu, 37
Part of the Stanford triumvirate that founded Doordash, Xu became a billionaire after the food delivery app’s 2020 IPO. Xu and his wife Patricia Bao signed the Giving Pledge in November 2021, and in their letter, they talk about their humble beginnings. The couple have yet to engage in major giving through a foundation. But they have expressed an interest in combating anti-Asian hate, joining other business leaders to fund AAPI advocacy groups in 2021 through the Stand With Asian Americans initiative.
Jeff Lawson, 45
Billionaire Jeff Lawson and his wife Erica begin their pledge letter with a Bryan Stevenson quote: “The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” Lawson is the CEO of Twilio, a cloud communications platform. The couple do not appear to have a formal family foundation yet, but they talk about the importance of leveling the playing field regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or location. In 2018, Lawson made a $1 million donation to fund homeless services in San Francisco. The donation came through Twilio.org, Twilio’s charitable arm, which supports nonprofits and social enterprises. Twilio.org has also supported places like OpenGov Foundation, Lesbians Who Tech, and Crisis Text Line. The Lawsons have also supported Tipping Point Community.
Paul Sciarra, 41
Like his Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra is also a Giving Pledge signatory. By contrast, Sciarra’s moves tend fly under the radar. He left Pinterest all the way back in 2012, seven years before the company’s 2019 IPO. But Sciarra held onto an approximately 7% slice of Pinterest, minting him a billionaire. Since 2014, he has served as executive chairman of electric air taxi maker Joby Aviation. He and his wife Jennifer don’t have a pledge letter on file on the public-facing Giving Pledge website. And the couple’s Sciarra Foundation, launched in 2019, last posted negligible assets and giving. But with $1.3 billion to their name, this is a couple to watch for greater giving down the line.
Orion Hindawi, 42
Orion Hindawi cofounded cybersecurity firm Tanium with his father David. Hindawi and his wife Jackie wrote a letter that lays out their philanthropic interests in broad strokes, including education and supporting veterans. “We share a passion to help improve the education system that serves the community around us,” the letter reads. “We’re both products of the public education systems where we grew up, and we recognize and appreciate the hard work and dedication of the teachers and other adults who nurtured us, and helped shape us into the people we are.”
Nathan Blecharczyk, 39
In 2016, the co-founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, Joseph Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, joined the Giving Pledge and committed to giving away the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Harvard grad Blecharczyk was the short-term home rental company’s first engineer. When Nathan and Elizabeth Blecharczyk signed the Giving Pledge, they stated that their interests include “education, scientific research, medicine, space exploration, conservation of the planet and more effective governance.”
The Blecharczyks are involved with St. Mary’s Center for Women and Children, where Elizabeth volunteered during medical school. Elizabeth also serves on the board of advisors at Tufts University School of Medicine and the board of trustees at Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart. The couple contributed to College Track, a California-based nonprofit that supports college-bound students from underserved communities.
Brian Chesky, 40
Next up, Airbnb’s CEO, Brian Chesky, a former bodybuilder who attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In 2022, Chesky pledged to give $100 million to the Obama Foundation for a scholarship program that will support college students pursuing careers in public service. Chesky has said that he wants to show more young people what entrepreneurship looks like. “My parents exposed me to a lot of things, but the one thing I wasn’t exposed to was entrepreneurism,” he said. “I never met a CEO and I didn’t think that was possible.” While Chesky has made an early commitment to giving away the majority of his wealth, don’t expect money to move immediately. As he puts it, “The commitment is not made slowly — we’re ready — but how we want to give is something we want to be careful about. It’s a huge responsibility. You want to make sure you’ve thought it through.”
Joe Gebbia, 40
Another RISD graduate, Gebbia serves on the board of trustees of his alma mater. In 2014, he donated $300,000 to RISD to establish a $50,000 term scholarship and an endowed fund. It seems likely that Gebbia’s philanthropy will also focus to some degree on entrepreneurs. He has also donated $12.5 million apiece to Rising Up Larkin Street Youth Services and All Home to help with homelessness-related economic relief and recovery associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In his Giving Pledge letter, he states that his “philanthropic contributions will aim to build pathways for future creatives and entrepreneurs, no matter their age, gender or location, to achieve their dreams.”
Jared Isaacman, 39
Pilot and entrepreneur Jared Isaacman is the founder and CEO of payment processing firm Shift4 Payments. He started the firm at age 16 in New Jersey in 1999. He’s also another billionaire space aficionado — he served as the mission commander of Inspiration4, a SpaceX flight that carried the first pediatric cancer survivor, the youngest American to fly into orbit, and the first Black female pilot into space. Inspiration4 raised some $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with $100 million of that coming from Isaacman.
Isaacman’s pledge letter, co-authored with his wife Monica, highlights Make-A-Wish Foundation as well as St. Jude, and the two cite a commitment to “supporting causes that help children and families in incredibly difficult situations.” The letter also mentions STEM education and an interest in backing “intellectually stimulating experiences” for young people. Isaacman recently made a $10 million gift to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center Education Foundation for a new training facility at the Rocket Center to support Space Camp programs. Monica Isaacman is from Chile, so perhaps some global health and development philanthropy is coming down the pike, as well.
