11. All the billions he spent on philanthropy
Michael Bloomberg is indeed living large. However, he is also giving big. He is known for all kinds of his philanthropic work, especially on environmental area. We will discuss more about his influences as environmental advocate on the following pages.
Bloomberg Philanthropies has given billions of dollars to help causes in public health, arts, government innovation, education, women’s economic development in Africa, and of course, environment. And not few of them were donated directly from Bloomberg’s personal fund.
Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign received $50 million from him. Then he gave almost the same amount to Heising-Simons family to launch the Clean Energy Initiative. For other cause, his biggest contribution is the total $4 billion he donated and pledged for gun control issue. And he paid for a Super Bowl commercial to send a message about this issue.
Bloomberg managed to donate or pledge more than $49 billion since his charity foundation was founded. It has become the 12th largest charity foundation in the United States. And his total donation and pledge in 2015, which was around $510 million a year, made him the third largest philanthropic donor in the United States.
