Jack Dorsey's $1 Billion Start Small Pledge for COVID-19 Relief

Originally published 2020-04-16.

On 7 April 2020, Twitter co-founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he was moving $1 billion worth of his shares in the payments company Square into a new fund called Start Small LLC. The money was to pay first for COVID-19 relief and, once the pandemic eased, for girls' health and education and for experiments with universal basic income (UBI). By his own estimate the pledge equalled about 28% of his personal wealth, and at the time it was described as the largest single pledge by an individual toward the pandemic response.

What made the gift unusual was not only its size but its form, and the promise that every grant would be listed publicly. Here is how it worked, what happened to the money, and how it compared with other big pandemic donations.

The announcement in Dorsey's own words

Dorsey, who was 43 at the time, made the pledge in a short thread on his personal Twitter account rather than through a press conference. The first post set out the plan and linked to a public spreadsheet where, he said, every payment would be tracked.

I’m moving $1B of my Square equity (~28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and UBI. It will operate transparently, all flows tracked here: https://t.co/hVkUczDQmz

— jack (@jack) April 7, 2020

A follow-up post explained his timing: he wanted to see the effect of the money while he was alive, and he hoped other wealthy people would follow suit.

Why now? The needs are increasingly urgent, and I want to see the impact in my lifetime. I hope this inspires others to do something similar. Life is too short, so let’s do everything we can today to help people now. ✌🏼

— jack (@jack) April 7, 2020

In a third post he gave his reasons for the long-term focus. He described UBI as an idea that needed real-world testing, and girls' health and education as essential for a fairer world.

Why UBI and girl’s health and education? I believe they represent the best long-term solutions to the existential problems facing the world. UBI is a great idea needing experimentation. Girl’s health and education is critical to balance: https://t.co/dC3dU6hvxB

— jack (@jack) April 7, 2020

Why it was shares, not cash

Dorsey did not write a $1 billion cheque. He transferred Square stock, which Start Small could sell over time to fund grants. That has two consequences worth understanding.

• The value moves with the market. Square's share price rose strongly during 2020 and 2021. Start Small's public tracker now lists a "total value" of about $1.8 billion, well above the original $1 billion, because the shares were worth more when they were sold.
• A pledge is not the same as money paid out. The tracker shows about $634 million distributed, with the rest still listed as remaining. Announced amount, value transferred and grants actually made are three different numbers, and news reports often blur them.

Start Small is a limited liability company, not a charitable foundation. LLCs give donors more flexibility, for example to fund political or for-profit causes, but they are not bound by the payout rules that apply to private foundations in the United States. Dorsey's answer to that criticism was the open spreadsheet.

Where the money went

Start Small's tracker tags grants under four headings: COVID-19, social justice, girls' health and education, and UBI. Some of the largest single grants listed are:

• $20 million to CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), the disaster relief group co-founded by actor Sean Penn, for COVID-19 testing and relief in June 2020.
• $20 million and later $18 million to Vital Strategies' Resolve to Save Lives initiative for COVID-19 work.
• $20 million to the Clara Lionel Foundation, founded by singer Rihanna, tagged under girls' health and education.
• $10 million to the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, under social justice.

Many smaller grants went to food banks, meal programmes and groups supporting workers who lost income during lockdowns. Several guaranteed income pilots in US cities, through which residents received regular no-strings cash payments, were also backed under the UBI heading.

How it compared with other pandemic gifts

In the first weeks of the pandemic, several of the world's richest people made headline donations. The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation announced $100 million, with $20 million going to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator to search for treatments and $80 million set aside for relief for health providers, nonprofits, schools and small businesses. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was reported to have given $100 million to Feeding America, the US network of food banks, as demand for food aid surged. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had already committed money to diagnostics, vaccines and treatments from early 2020 and kept increasing its support.

Measured against personal fortunes, Dorsey's share stood out. A gift of $100 million is a small slice of a fortune in the hundreds of billions; a gift of more than a quarter of one's net worth is a different order of commitment. That is why his pledge drew attention, and also why it invited questions about how quickly the money would be spent.

The case for funding science

Many public health leaders argued at the time that the most valuable donations would be those that sped up research. Jeremy Farrar, then director of the Wellcome Trust, the London-based medical research charity, urged large companies to put money into the search for tests, treatments and vaccines, which he saw as the route back to normal life. He was quoted as saying: "The only exit strategy for this that I see is the development of diagnostics, therapies, and vaccines."

Events largely bore that out. The first COVID-19 vaccines were authorised in December 2020, less than a year after the virus was identified, helped by public funding, private philanthropy and years of earlier research. Farrar later became chief scientist of the World Health Organization in 2023.

For more context on the early months of the outbreak, see our piece on how the United States passed 2,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day.

What happened next

Dorsey stepped down as Twitter's chief executive on 29 November 2021, and Square renamed itself Block, Inc. two days later. Start Small has continued to list grants on its public tracker, which remains one of the more detailed public records of a single person's pandemic-era giving.

For anyone thinking about giving on a smaller scale, the same lessons apply:

• Look for organisations that publish where their money goes.
• Check whether a pledge is cash, shares or a promise of future funds.
• Local food banks and community groups often turn small donations into immediate help.

Sources: Start Small LLC public grant tracker; Wikipedia: Jack Dorsey; Neowin: Michael and Susan Dell Foundation donate $100M; Wikipedia: Jeremy Farrar; Jack Dorsey's posts on Twitter, 7 April 2020.