Apple held an internal town hall meeting last week after announcing all-time record earnings, at which Tim Cook announced new hardware discounts for employees. New information now suggests that Cook focused on Apple’s charitable efforts at that meeting as well.
One of the first things that Tim Cook did when he became the CEO of Apple was to institute a charitable matching program, in which Apple would back their employees’ charitable donations dollar for dollar.
According to sources speaking to The Verge, Tim Cook spend “quite a bit of time” discussing Apple’s philanthropic efforts, revealing that he had given $50 million to Stanford University’s medical centers, to be put towards both a new main hospital, as well as a new children’s hospital.
Cook also discussed Apple’s support of the (Product) RED effort to fight against AIDS. Cook noted that over $50 million had been donated to the project through the sames of the company’s (Product) RED edition iPods and accessories. One of t
The Verge disappointingly refers to these efforts as “a marked contrast” from how Steve Jobs handled charitable programs:
That’s a marked contrast from the tenure of Steve Jobs, who faced numerous questions about his philanthropic efforts during his life and, according to the new book Inside Apple, reportedly once told employees that giving away money was a waste of time. The change in tone began almost immediately with Cook, who instituted a charitable matching program for employees within weeks of taking the CEO position, and it appears he remains focused on those efforts for the company as a whole.
As AppleInsider points out, however, that’s not exactly true. Despite the common conception that Steve Jobs did not support or participate in charitable donations while at the head of Apple, the reality is that Jobs himself announced Apple’s (Project) RED campaign, which has become a very significant contribution over time.
Jobs was also deeply involved in efforts to help Stanford Medical Center build a new $2 billion hospital in a joint philanthropic effort with eBay, Intel, Intuit and Oracle.
