Apple That

Apple CEO Tim Cook is, as one would expect, very wealthy. However, money doesn’t seem to be what is important to him. Cook has decided to use his money to pay for his nephew’s college education and then donate the rest of it to charity. There is a long list of wealthy philanthropists who donate most of their money to charity, and now he is joining in to make the list a little longer.

CNN says that his wealth is close to about a billion dollars. That is a ton of money to earn just to give it away. But, this goes along with what Steve Jobs and Apple have been about all along. Apple started out as a little indie company full of love with the desire to break down the boundaries and limits, to think outside the box, and to keep things simple and give back whenever they could. Tim Cook gave this statement on Jobs’ attitude toward everything in a recent interview with Fast Company:

“Steve felt that most people live in a small box. They think they can’t influence or change things a lot. I think he would probably call that a limited life. And more than anybody I’ve ever met, Steve never accepted that. He got each of us [his top executives] to reject that philosophy. If you can do that, then you can change things. If you embrace that the things that you can do are limitless, you can put your ding in the universe. You can change the world. That was the huge arc of his life, the common thread. That’s what drove him to have big ideas. Through his actions, way more than any preaching, he embedded this nonacceptance of the status quo into the company.”

There have been plenty of former CEOs that have given away a huge chunk of wealth to charitable causes. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both did the exact same thing. The most famous, and probably the first was Chuck Feeney, the former CEO of Duty Free Shoppers. He was famous for saving his money, wearing cheap clothes and flying coach when he obviously didn’t need to. He put $4 billion into his Atlantic Philanthropist charitable trust which will be completely depleted before his death. After he did that, he has lived quietly and modestly ever since.

According to CEO of New York City nonprofit Living Cities Ben Hecht, “We’re seeing all this new wealth, especially West Coast wealth and technology wealth, which doesn’t necessarily have a place tied to it. They just have very different sensibilities. Many of them don’t have any interest in building a perpetual institution. I think it’s not in their culture. They want to give it away, and they want to be active in giving it away.”

Content originally published here