For 41 years, the majority of my time and money has been put into the company. As I start a new chapter in my life, it is gratifying that I have the opportunity to devote more time and resources to philanthropy.George Lucas • Revealing that he plans to give nearly all of the $4 billion raised by his sale of LucasFilms to charity — specifically, a charity focused on educational issues. (Lucas was one of the signers of the Giving Pledge in 2010.) You may be mad about Lucas’ decision to sell to Disney — the heartburn was pretty high yesterday — but you have to admit that’s pretty awesome. To my fellow writer Scott: We found the good.
» Portfolio includes Facebook, Skype, Instagram, Zynga: Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen’s Andreessen Horowitz, which in just three years has become one of Silicon Valley’s best-known venture capital firms, plans to take some of its expected future profits and put them to the good of the world at large. While the firm isn’t at the point where it has massive profits yet, considering it’s had at least two major buyouts already — Skype to Microsoft and Instagram to Facebook — their track record is looking solid and the end result of the firm’s work could mean tens of millions going to charity, at least. The six partners don’t have a set timetable or preferred non-profits in mind, but we suggest the one that made this video as a starting point.
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No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet. But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet.Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation global development program president Sylvia Mathews Burwell • Offering two things: One, an opportunity for toilet humor (we’ll pass), and two, an honest argument by Bill Gates’ group that perhaps the sanitation industry hasn’t gone far enough in the third world. So they want to figure out a way to take a device which the first world has taken for granted and improve its weaknesses, so that it works without a nearby sanitation mechanism, it’s cheap and human waste is treated and somehow recycled or changed into a form which is harmless and doesn’t spread disease. He has the money to do it, guys — let’s just hope there aren’t any blue screens of death that hit when you have to go. source (via • follow)
The motto of the foundation is that every life has equal value. There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer. When you die of malaria aged three it’s different from being in your seventies, when you might die of a heart attack or you might die of cancer. And the world is putting massive amounts into cancer, so my wealth would have had a meaningless impact on that.Bill Gates • Discussing his philanthropy organization, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and why it chooses to focus on malaria over cancer. Gates, the world’s second-richest man, doesn’t give a lot of interviews, but when he does, he makes them count. In this Daily Mail piece, he avoids focusing too much on his past and more on what he’s doing now — working to ensure his money gets used in ways that can positively affect people’s lives. His 85-year-old dad even helps. And he doesn’t do it from a distance, either: “It is important to see places. When you go into a ward with kids who have cholera, it’s horrific. They are losing their vital fluids and their brains are shutting down. As a father, as a human, it’s just horrific.” Gates’ work as a philanthropist could one day overshadow his work with Microsoft. It’s that important. source (via • follow)
» The only name people care about: Is it us, or does the Mark Zuckerberg one seem designed to make people look for ulterior motives? Because it seems that’s what people are already doing. You know, nobody ever questioned BILL GATES for this, and he had a lot more public relations work to do after that antitrust stuff than Zuckerberg ever did.
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