Jeff Bezos Foundation "Day One"

“We will proceed from the same principles that led Amazon to success. The most important of these will be a genuine, strong obsession with the customer. The client will be a child. ”



Jeff Bezos and his wife Mackenzie.

On September 13, Bezos tweeted , for what charitable purposes, he is ready to allocate $ 2 billion. A year earlier, he asked opinions from his subscribers in which area of ​​philanthropy to direct their attention . Bezos chose education for low-income kids. But some media blamed Jeff for hypocrisy and greed.

Day One is the principle of Bezos, which boils down to the fact that there must always be a “first day” in life and business, because “second day” is a stagnation followed by decline and death.

Let's read what Bezos said and discuss in the comments whether he is well done or “hypocritical greedy”.

Foundation Day One

I often speak of the importance of preserving the mental attitude of Day One. It is always Day One, and I make every effort to apply this way of thinking to everything I do. It was Day One, which made me ask for advice on approaches to philanthropy last year. Thanks to such important measures, the world continues to improve, and this is one of the fantastic aspects of human nature: we, humans, never cease to look for ways to improve the situation (and find these ways!). We live better than our great-grandfathers, and they lived better than their ancestors. And if our own great-great-grandchildren will not live better than us, then something has gone wrong. Where in the world is good and how can we spread it? Where is the opportunity to improve the situation? These are exciting questions.

McKenzie and I (Bezos's wife approx. Lane ) we share the belief that everyonethere is the potential for hard work for the benefit of others. We all have that ability. Business innovators who invent products, create opportunities, authors who write inspirational books, government officials serving their societies, teachers, doctors, carpenters, artists who make us laugh and cry, parents raising children who can sympathize, and much more. In addition to Amazon, my main areas of interest included investing in the future of our planet and civilization through developing fundamental space infrastructure, supporting American democracy through managing the Washington Post and financial contributions to dedicated and innovative leaders able to solve many problems, ranging from cancer research, ending with equality in marriage, scholarships for immigrant college students,

Today we are pleased to announce the creation of the Bezos Foundation "Day One". It will start with an investment of $ 2 billion and focus on two areas: funding existing non-profit organizations that help homeless families, and building a network of new non-profit first-level pre-school institutions in low-income communities.

The Day One Foundation will annually present awards to organizations and community groups involved in charitable and hard work in order to provide shelter and food to meet the urgent needs of young families. Similar views I received inspired by Mary's Place in Seattle: no child sleeps outside.


The First Day Foundation will launch a network of high-quality, fully-funded, pre-school institutions, similar to Montessori, in underserved communities and managed by them. We will create an organization that will directly manage these preschool institutions. I am delighted with this, because it will give us the opportunity to learn, invent and improve. We will use the same set of principles we use at Amazon. The most important among them will be genuine, intensive, maximum customer focus. The child will be a customer. "Education is not filling a vessel with water, but igniting a fire." And lighting this fire at an early age is a huge help for any child.

I want to thank everyone who sent me suggestions and inspirational examples of innovation that I see every day, big and small. It fills me with gratitude and optimism that I am in a form so inclined to self-improvement.

Yes, come the first day!

Media Coverage

• No limit to greed: what is the failure of the new project Bezos
• Jeff Bezos allocated $ 2 billion to create future kindergartens
• Jeff Bezos invests $ 2 billion in Day One Fund
• The richest man in the world will spend $ 2 billion to help the homeless and children
• Jeff Bezos founded a $ 2 billion charitable foundation.
• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos opened a $ 2 billion charitable foundation

Comments from the Philtech Initiative

Bezos made two revolutions:

1. in online retail,
2. in the cloud infrastructure.

I think it makes no sense to go deep. He is not a random person. Given that both revolutions were directly related to technology, there is a high proportion of the likelihood that problem solving will be related to technology.

2 billion is still a very serious amount. There are about hundreds of organizations that deal with them (in the USA). Even if we subtract overheads, the amount for one organization is still very serious. It is likely that the volume is connected not just with the distribution of money for stews, but for technological solutions.

- Alexey Sidorenko , Director of the Greenhouse of Social Technologies

I like such a future. Billionaire philanthropists with successful entrepreneurial experience invest in education. So, finally, they will change this outdated model of knowledge cramming. I really hope that the focus will be on the development of critical thinking and an incentive to research.

Today, there seems to be a big imperfection in the development of humanity, when every next generation passes exactly the same “childish” mistakes that their fathers and grandfathers went through - in love, relationships, self-knowledge. As a result, the time to create additional capital of knowledge in the piggy bank of mankind was given much less than if new children grow up already more conscious, with less restrictions and a breadth of thought.

- Ruslan Shekurov , DonorSearch.org

Bezos while it seems to me more [super-] an effective manager than a man of the idea of ​​Humanity. If so (I hope not), then such attempts, which I saw, did not lead to good in the end. If he really dealt with the humanitarian part of the question, then there could be a very good result.

Responding to the statement “ We will create an organization that will directly manage these preschool institutions ”.

For me, the quality criterion will be the spread of his decision beyond the scope of his influence. That is, if he creates something that others voluntarily and on their own will steadily support further.

A quantitative criterion would be a reduction in the number of people willing to study in his schools, because “in low-income communities” there will be less and less of these low incomes, that is, we would see work with the reasons for the existence and appearance of such places.

I believe in education as a tool to eradicate poverty and many other big problems. But not through the construction of schools for the poor. This area is waiting for a fundamentally new solution, in which everyone will be able to learn along with everyone.

- Andrei Dunaev , Head of Product at Frank

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