Microsoft Employees Raised $946 Million For Charities Since 1983

Sites include Microsoft.com . Published on February 21st, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is world renowned as charity powerhouse, but little is known about the fact that Microsoft itself has in it a culture of benevolence. Microsoft gave a glimpse of the extent of that culture with the recent announcement that over $100.5 million was raised in 2011 by its employees. The year of charity fundraising, saw over 18,000 organizations benefit from the efforts of the Microsoft employee giving campaign.

Microsoft actually matches the contributions made by employees, so the figure of $100.5 million, when added to all donations since 1983, comes to a whopping $946 million. This level of giving is of course no match for the man himself, Bill Gates. Since 2007 Gates has given over 48% of his net worth to charity, a figure which puts him in the elite company of people like Warren Buffet.

Giving too seems to be a part of the tech culture in general, because Apple also has a matching system for the charity work carried out by its employees. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced back in November that the company had matched over $1.3 million in donations over a two month period.

Overall though, Microsoft rules the charity space as a tech company and since 1983, it has given over $5.5 billion in cash, software and other forms to charities all over the world.