A $1.8B startup sale made him wealthy—now he plans to donate half his net worth: 'The American Dream isn't just about getting rich'

Plenty of wealthy people plan to donate most of their fortunes to philanthropic causes. Jeff Atwood says he'll actually do it within the next five years.

Atwood, the co-founder of computer programing platform Stack Overflow — which was acquired by global investment group Prosus for $1.8 billion in 2021 — plans to give away more than half his wealth within the next five years, he wrote in a blog post last week.

It's unclear what portion of the Stack Overflow sale was deposited directly into Atwood's bank account. But his family has already made eight $1 million donations to nonprofits including Team Rubicon, The Trevor Project and First Generation Investors, he wrote.

"I'm concerned we may lose sight of the American Dream," wrote Atwood, citing wealth concentration, voter registration challenges and rising costs of housing, healthcare and education as barriers to success for many Americans.

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Atwood himself barely scrapped together enough money to pay $3,000 per year for college in 1992 — a bargain, by today's tuition standards — through a combination of grants, scholarships and part-time work, he wrote.

"It was only after I attained the dream that I was able to fully see how many Americans have so very little," wrote Atwood. "This much wealth starts to unintentionally distance my family from other Americans. I no longer bother to look at how much items cost, because I don't have to ... The more wealth you attain, the more unmistakably clear it becomes how unequal life is for so many of us."

Atwood's announcement echoes The Giving Pledge, a campaign started by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett that encourages wealthy people to donate most of their fortunes during their lifetimes or in their wills. Multiple tech billionaires have joined, including Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, according to the campaign's website.

The Stack Overflow co-founder's pledge differs largely in its timeline: By contrast, Buffett has stated his intention to task his three children with gradually distributing 99.5% of his wealth philanthropically upon his death. The 94-year-old Berkshire Hathaway CEO has a net worth of $146.2 billion, according to Forbes.

Atwood's sense of urgency is fueled by a U.S. federal government that "seems to be slower and slower at delivering change due to the increased polarization of our two party system," he wrote. "I admire Buffett, but even having only a tiny fraction of his ... fortune, to me this pledge was incomplete. When would this wealth be transferred?"

His own financial success should be replicable for other Americans, he added.

"The American Dream isn't about just getting rich. It's about everyone succeeding," Atwood told the Associated Press on Friday, adding: "Some unfairness is OK. I'm not saying we're socialists here ... but I want everyone to have a fair shot."

In recent years, some of the world's wealthiest people have spoken about the difficulties of donating effectively — identifying organizations that can use their money well and consistently champion causes they support.

"It's really hard" to donate large sums impactfully, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos told CNN in 2022. "Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I'm finding ... that charity, philanthropy, is very similar."

MacKenzie Scott, Bezos' ex-wife, has publicly dedicated herself to that very task, maximizing the impact of large financial donations. Her philanthropic initiative Yield Giving has a "quiet research" process in which it finds and examines groups helping people in underserved communities — mostly anonymously, to avoid distracting the nonprofits from their work — and gives them an "immediate gift for use however they choose," according to its website.

"MacKenzie Scott is the most exemplary philanthropist in the country now," Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute's Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, told CNBC Make It in 2022. "She has developed a model which is incredibly powerful and has gained more acclaim than any major mega-donor."

Scott has given away more than $19.25 billion since 2019, the same year the couple divorced, according to Yield Giving's website. Her current net worth is $31.9 billion, according to Forbes.

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