Twitter’s Jack Dorsey gifts $3.5M to San Francisco artists UBI program

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — simply @Jack on Twitter — has donated $3.46 million to a pilot program designed to provide San Francisco artists a guaranteed income.

The program: Made via his #StartSmall charity, Dorsey’s donation will support the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Guaranteed Income Pilot for the City and County of San Francisco. With the addition of Dorsey’s gift, the program will boost its impact from 130 people to now 180 San Francisco-area artists with a guaranteed income of $1,000 per month.

The impact: Dorsey’s gift will fund a new collaboration between YBCA and five historically underfunded San Francisco arts organizations to select an additional 50 artists to receive the monthly payments. The organizations will focus on Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander, disabled, immigrant, and LGBTQ applicants.

The artists: Artist applicants in the program had to live one of 13 zip codes identified as being the hardest hit during the pandemic and make less than $60,900 a year. ArtNet reports that recipients were chosen at random and 95 percent were either persons of color, LGBTQ, immigrants, or disabled.

“The ability to extend and expand this program means we can provide guaranteed income to more artists and we can work with leading arts and culture organizations to build our collective capacity. The learnings from this expanded pilot will ensure that we can pave the way for local, state and national policies and models that are equitable and resilient.”—Yerba Buena CEO Deborah Cullinan

Survey says: 54 percent of U.S. adults opposed the idea of the federal government providing a universal income of $1,000 per month for all adult citizens, according to an August 2020 study by the PEW Research Center. 45 percent favored the proposal.

Biden tries UBI: The $1.9-trillion COVID-19 relief bill — signed into law by President Biden in March — is providing U.S. parents with grants akin to universal basic income. Beginning in July, parents of children ages 17 and younger will get monthly payments of up to $300 per child without any strings attached.

Jack’s altruism: Dorsey, whose net worth is around $12.5 billion, announced in April 2020 that he’d be moving $1 billion of his fortune toward #StartSmall to fund global relief of the COVID-19 pandemic.

StartSmall: Dorsey, 44, created a publicly available spreadsheet to track #StartSmall’s gifts. The program has already donated more than $403 million to organizations working in girl's health and education, social justice, public health, and COVID-19 relief around the world.

Benevolent billionaires: Dorsey’s $1B+ charitable efforts place him among the most generous humans in modern history. Dorsey has a ways to go before catching up with the likes of Warren Buffett (who’s donated $42.8 billion) and Bill and Melinda Gates ($29.8 billion).