Jeff Bezos Donates $5 Million To Fight Milwaukee Homelessness
Support for United Way program will be given over 5 years.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos. Photo by Number 10, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s a Cyber Monday surprise.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is donating $5 million to the United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County from his Bezos Day 1 Families Fund.
“We are so grateful to the Day 1 Families Fund for this generous grant,” said Amy Lindner, president and CEO of the United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County, in a statement. “Our community has come together to provide solutions for homelessness for thousands of families throughout our community. This grant will provide continued support to our Safe & Stable Homes initiative for years to come.”
The funding will be spent over the next five years to “achieve a functional zero level of families in emergency shelter.” Following the Housing First strategy, United Way aims to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness to below the region’s monthly capacity to provide permanent housing, “keeping homelessness rare and brief.”
The organization’s Safe & Stable Homes program serves Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee counties.
The United Way is part of the eighth group of organizations to receive a donation from the fund. The latest round, announced Monday, provides 32 organizations with a combined $102.5 million.
“We know that when we work together, change is possible,” said Julie Divjak, the United Way’s vice president of community impact. “We are proud to be leaders in this work throughout the nation, and proud to offer solutions for families to stay safely in their homes or rapidly access housing when prevention isn’t possible.”
It’s the second major gift connected to Amazon that the Milwaukee nonprofit has received in the past four years. In 2021, Mackenzie Scott, Bezos’ ex-wife, announced a $25 million gift to the organization that supported new and expanded programming. In late 2022, Scott also announced multi-million-dollar grants to two Milwaukee charter schools as part of a deliberate strategy to provide billions of dollars to support underrepresented communities. As of November, Scott has given away much more of her wealth, more than $19 billion to various charitable groups, than her former husband has.
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore operating out of his garage, quickly expanding it into a broad e-commerce platform. Under his leadership, Amazon grew into one of the world’s largest companies, diversifying into streaming, logistics, cloud services and smart devices. Bezos stepped down as CEO in 2021 but remains executive chairman. He acquired The Washington Post in 2013. According to Forbes, Bezos has an estimated net worth of $244.6 billion and is the world’s fourth-richest person. According to the Day 1 Families Fund website, the organization has made more than $850 million in awards since 2018.
The Amazon founder remarried in June. The United Way donation was announced as a gift from Bezos and his new wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
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