Jeff Atwood
Nearly 250 wealthy philanthropists have signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least half of their fortunes during their lifetimes or upon their death. Jeff Atwood (who's not a signatory) is doing them one better.
Atwood, whose computer programming platform Stack Overflow was acquired by a global investment group for $1.8 billion in 2021, committed in a blog post this January to giving away half of his wealth in the next five years. And he's already started with a bang, contributing $1 million each to eight nonprofits this year, from the Children's Hunger Fund, which provides resources to local churches, to Team Rubicon, which mobilizes veterans to help Americans recover from natural disasters.
Atwood's drive to give back stems from his own background, growing up poor and financing his college education through a combination of Pell grants, scholarships, and a minimum-wage job as a cashier. His next giving goal: to work with churches, community organizations and veterans groups to make direct cash payments to residents of poor counties in West Virginia, North Carolina, and Arizona. Studies have shown, he says, that this is one of the most effective ways to lift people out of poverty.
'It's not a handout,' he says. 'It's an investment in our fellow Americans.'
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