Apple Donates $500,000 to 'SF Gives' Anti-Poverty Initiative

Apple has donated $500,000 to SF Gives, an anti-poverty initiative formed by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Tipping Point CEO Daniel Lurie, reports Fortune. Apple's contribution comes ahead of the SF Gives' Wednesday deadline, which looks to get 20 companies to contribute $500,000 each, or $10 million in total to fund charitable programs in the Bay Area.

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The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant joins a list of 15 corporate contributors that includes Google, LinkedIn, and Zynga. Launched in early March, SF Gives is the brainchild of Salesforce.com (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff and Daniel Lurie, CEO of the nonprofit Tipping Point.

The donation also follows a number of charitable moves made directly by Apple in the past few years, including the establishment of a donation matching program for employees which generated $2.6 million in less than a year. Since 2006, Apple has also partnered with (Product) RED to contribute a total of $70 million towards HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. Through the collaboration, Apple has sold special (RED) products, including iPhone 5s cases, iPod nanos and shuffles, iPad Smart Covers, and iPhone Bumpers.

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nwcs

68 months ago

In terms of philanthropy Apple has a pathetic record. Bill Gates has given back to the community much more than anyone at Apple.

Every silver lining must have a cloud, eh?

Rating: 11 Votes

ArtOfWarfare

68 months ago

And what exactly does this charity do? There's a lot of big problems in the world and there aren't a lot of great solutions for them, or else those solutions would have been funded and our problems solved.

There are a lot of dumb ideas for how to solve problems with charities built around them that certainly shouldn't be funded.

So is SF Gives built around a great solution or an incredibly dumb one.

Here's an idea: evenly distribute the money across the poor people.

Rating: 4 Votes

spyguy10709

68 months ago

I think Apple's Product(Red) is mildly pathetic. They offer a product in a color, they charge you a bit more, then they supposedly give the funds over to charity. I would rather choose another color and give the money to charity myself but I wouldn't ever think that Apple needs to lower prices to make it easier for me to buy crap that I likely don't need. In truth, and I assume you could be a great exception, but the savings we see isn't going to go anywhere but towards other stuff we probably don't need.

1. RED is a great charity, with a really high % of every dollar going to help prevent the spread of AIDS.
2. Apple charges the same for RED products, and takes anywhere between 10-50 dollars of it's own profit and gives it to the charity.
3. They could do more, I'll give you that. But it's something.

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So.... APPLE is giving away money (either a lot or little) to help others and people still complain? wtf?

Welcome to the world of MacRumors. I'm pretty sure Apple could come up with a cure for cancer and people here would complain about it. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:[COLOR="#808080"]

Rating: 4 Votes

Brandon263

68 months ago

In terms of philanthropy Apple has a pathetic record. Bill Gates has given back to the community much more than anyone at Apple.

I think the more apt comparison would be the donations to charity Apple as has made as a company (Product RED, this, etc.) to the donations to charity Microsoft has made.

Hopefully, this move by the companies will help reduce the anti-Silicon Valley sentiment in San Francisco...

Rating: 3 Votes

lincolntran

68 months ago

So.... APPLE is giving away money (either a lot or little) to help others and people still complain? wtf?

Rating: 3 Votes

lk400

68 months ago

Apple benefitted greatly from the unpaid contributions of legions of loyal supporters in the tech community and customers over the decades. $500,000 from multi-billion dollar company is pocket change.

I'm sure that customers are beneficial to most businesses.

Rating: 2 Votes

thefourthpope

68 months ago

That makes it sound like apple should pay back customers.

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It would be like you buying a box of Girl Guide cookies and posting that on your Facebook page,

Proportionate to income, perhaps. But not proportionate to impact.
$500k clearly does more than a box of cookies.

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Will $500k eradicate poverty? No. Neither will $5bn. But it's good that major companies are willing to help (and of course it's good for them that they are seen being willing to help). If for no other reason, Apple donating this money makes the fundraiser news. I certainly wouldn't have heard of the initiative without Apple's involvement.

Rating: 2 Votes

robd003

68 months ago

Should have given the money back to shareholders

This is retarded. The city of San Francisco is supposed to take care of it's residents, not the local companies. I wish AAPL included the $500k in it's yearly dividend instead of wasting it on another idiotic Benioff PR campaign.

Rating: 2 Votes

TechGod

68 months ago

Get rid of both the minimum wage and welfare, poverty only exists for those who choose it.

This is a stupid comment. I'm disgusted you can believe this crap

Rating: 2 Votes

wizard

68 months ago

In terms of philanthropy Apple has a pathetic record. Bill Gates has given back to the community much more than anyone at Apple.

And you have the inside information to make such a statement?

Generally such programs do nothing to fight poverty because poverty is a state of mind and often directly related to being lazy. For Apple this amounts to throwing away good money.

Rating: 2 Votes

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