Stanford gets $150 million to fight world poverty
Monday, November 7, 2011
Stanford University will announce one of the largest cash gifts in school history today – $150 million to the Graduate School of Business to create an institute that develops creative ways to fight poverty worldwide.
It all began with $1.25.
That’s the amount of money that 1.4 billion people in developing countries live on each day, according to the World Bank. And that’s the statistic that Bob King, founder of Menlo Park investment firm Peninsula Capital, and his wife, Dottie, cite when explaining why they decided to make the gift.
“We wondered, how might we do something bold and significant,” said King, who earned his MBA at Stanford in 1960. “Something like giving light to the slums (without electricity) in Nairobi, or something to improve the health of the children born there. Something that could combat malaria or alleviate AIDS in Africa.”
King said he and Dottie considered all of the poverty-fighting charities they could support directly, but picked Stanford because it will give students and professors a platform to do research in other countries and then return to create solutions using university resources.
