Posted on 10/12/2005 6:15:41 AM PDT by Mannaggia l'America
Google has begun to make good on its commitment to plow a small fraction of the proceeds from its wildly successful stock offering into social investment projects.
Funding for "good works" will largely be derived from the donation of 1 percent of the equity from last year's initial public offering, along with 1 percent of its annual profits.
Google said Tuesday that it plans to organize its charitable work under the umbrella of a new organization it calls Google.org. The mission is to focus on vast issues like global poverty, energy and the environment.
"These are big problems, so our focus is to provide sustainable and scalable solutions to these problems," said Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice president of operations and advertising, who is also in charge of overseeing Google.org.
One percent of Google's stock represents about 3 million of the 300 million shares created by its IPO in August 2004.
The equity portion represents about $900 million to $1 billion in stock at current market prices, a company representative said. Over the past four quarters, Google has reported net profit of around $968 million, resulting in a contribution of just under $10 million for charitable works.
"This can grow over time as potentially our stock or our profits increase," Sandberg said.
As part of its efforts, Google is contributing cash representing about 300,000 of the 3 million share commitment to start the Google Foundation with an initial endowment of $93 million. It will invest up to another $175 million over the next three years, Sandberg said.
But Google wants to take a more broad-based approach to its charitable work than traditional philanthropy, which has a tendency to focus on nonprofit activities and big-gift giving to universities or other high-profile institutions.
One of Google's first recipients, the Acumen Fund, will get $5 million to fund big anti-poverty and health care works through targeted financing of entrepreneurial projects in the developing world.
A $400,000 grant will go to a Kenyan research project conducted by economists from Harvard University and the University of California, seeking the best way to improve rural water quality to prevent a leading cause of death in children.
Technoserve, a global development organization founded in Ghana in 1968, aims to run a business plan competition for entrepreneurs across Ghana and use a $500,000 Google.org grant to support the winning projects, said Luba Vangelova, a spokeswoman for Technoserve based in Washington D.C.
Google officials said Google.org is partly modeled on the Omidyar Network, a new model philanthropy funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Frustrated by the limits of conventional nonprofit philanthropy, Omidyar and his wife, Pam, have set up an investment group that tries to make businesses work as a tool for social good, a representative for the network said.
There are parallels with the charitable giving of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world's richest man. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was begun 11 years ago with a first year endowment of $94 million, an amount that has mushroomed--propelled by the stock market's tech boom--to $28.8 billion.
Story Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Google princpals all donate big time to DemocRATS, so I'm sure they would think that Air America is a fine "social investment"....
But I thought that was the governments job because evil corporations dont donate money
And the governement could spend it SO much better couldn't they?
Like they do for welfare- one well paid govt bureaucrat for every welfare receipient
Hey -- better their money than tax money.
Ahhh... How nice, Google's having an Oprah moment.
It all depends on what you the donations are used for. Gates funds abortions. Hardly a charity worthy of praise.
Something tells me that google will fund the same things that Soros funds.
Omidyar Network ==>> president and chief operating officer of the Omidyar Network is Iqbal Paroo ==> Iqbal Paroo served on the Board of the Aga Khan Foundation and attended Aga Khan University ==>> Karachi, Pakistan
bingo
Good works = leftist programs to weaken this country.
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