Apple launches matched giving programme
Howard Lake | 12 September 2011 | News
Technology giant Apple has launched a matched giving programme for its US employees, pledging to match individuals’ donation up to $10,000 a year to US non-profit 501(c)(3) organisations. The company plans to extend the programme to employees in other countries, and presumably non-US charitable organisations.
The new programme was announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who recently succeeded Apple founder Steve Jobs. The announcement via email was published by MacRumors. It quotes Cook: “We are all really inspired by the generosity of our co-workers who give back to the community and this program is going to help that individual giving go even farther.”
The programme starts on 15 September 2011.
MacRumors added that it had received confirmation of the programme from an Apple spokesperson.
The limited public evidence of Steve Jobs philanthropy was debated last week after a report in the New York Times (The Mystery of Steve Jobs’s Public Giving). For example, “in 1997, when Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, he closed the company’s philanthropic programs… Despite the company’s $14 billion in profits last year and its $76 billion cash pile today, the giving programs have never been reinstated.”
Apple has dimmed some charities’ hopes for mobile donations by refusing to approve in-app donations via its iPhone.
Photo: Wayne Dixon on flickr.com
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.