Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings Has Given $1.6 Billion This Year

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has given stock valued at nearly $1.6 billion to an unnamed charity this year, according to two filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission: one in in January and another last week. He gave Netflix stock valued at $502.4 million last week and an earlier transfusion of stock valued at almost $1.1. billion in January.

Variety reported that an anonymous source familiar with the donations said the transfers of stock went to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, where Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, have a donor-advised fund. A representative for the couple’s Hastings Fund declined to confirm whether the nonprofit received anything from the entertainment mogul, and Hastings did not respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment. Donor-advised funds allow philanthropists to take an immediate tax deduction on their gifts and do not require that they report which charities they’ve supported — two facts that have led to a surge in DAF giving in recent years.

The couple started their DAF with a $100 million donation in 2016. Through it, they have supported mostly education organizations, a cause of particular interest to Hastings, who taught high-school math in what was then Swaziland as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s. He also served as president of the California State Board of Education in the early 2000s and is a vocal supporter of charter schools.

Hastings co-founded the video-streaming platform in 1995 as a DVD subscription service. It started streaming films and television series in 2007 and later began creating its own content. He stepped down as co-CEO last year and currently serves as the company’s chairman. Forbes pegs Hastings’s net worth at about $4.5 billion.

He and Quillin signed the Giving Pledge in 2012. Including this latest donation, the couple have given to their DAF and other nonprofits nearly $2 billion since 2014.

The couple has twice appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors. The first time was in 2016 when they launched their fund. The second was in 2020, when they gave $120 million, spread in equal thirds among two historically Black colleges, Morehouse College and Spelman College, along with UNCF, a nonprofit that provides college scholarships to Black students.