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Major-Gift Fundraising

Airbnb Founders Sign Giving Pledge Along With 14 Others

June 1, 2016 | Read Time: 1 minute

Seventeen more families and individuals have signed the Giving Pledge, including:

  • Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, a cloud-computing company, and his wife Lynne
  • All three co-founders of Airbnb: Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk and his wife Elizabeth, a pediatrician
  • Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family
  • Niu Gensheng, founder of the Mengniu Dairy Company, who is the first from China’s mainland to join the effort.

The Giving Pledge was launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates to encourage the world’s richest people to give at least half of their wealth to charity. It was originally created with 40 families in the United States and now includes 154 individuals and families in 16 countries.

Several others have just signed the pledge.

From the United States:

From elsewhere:


  • Margaret and Sylvan Adams, of Israel
  • Henry Engelhardt and Diane Briere de L’Isle-Engelhardt, of Britain
  • Tom and Marion Hunter, of Britain
  • Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, of India
  • P.N.C. and Sobha Menon, of the United Arab Emirates

About the Author

Maria Di Mento

Senior Reporter

Maria directs the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual Philanthropy 50, a comprehensive report on America’s most-generous donors. She writes about wealthy philanthropists, family and legacy foundations, next generation philanthropy, arts organizations, key trends and insights related to high-net-worth donors, and other topics.