Apple CEO Tim Cook spent part of a recent Apple town hall meeting touting his company’s charitable donations, according to a report from The Verge. If true, it marks a new direction for the world’s wealthiest technology company, where previous Apple CEO Steve Jobs either didn’t bother with many corporate or didn’t bother talking about it.
Apple holds periodic town hall meetings for its employees where company executives talk to and with its staff. This meeting included a new discount program for employees wanting to buy new a new Mac or iPad, as well as the information about the company’s charitable doings.
According to accounts of the meeting given to The Verge, Mr. Cook said that Apple has donated some US$50 million to Stanford’s renowned hospitals, including $25 million for a new main building and another $25 million for a new children’s hospital.
Mr. Cook also talked about another charitable are that began in the Steve Jobs era, Project (RED). Championed by U2 front man Bono, (RED) gets corporations to offer special (sometimes limited edition) products co-branded with (RED), with a portion of the proceeds then going to the charity. (RED)’s purpose is to eliminate AIDS, and the effort had brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the cause.
At the meeting, Apple’s newly minted CEO said that Apple has donated more than $50 million to (RED) since Apple first began participating with a (RED) iPod nano in 2006. As noted above, that was one charitable effort begun under Steve Jobs’s reign at Apple.
Mr. Cook also announced a matching program for employee charitable donations, matching up to $10,000 per year in charitable donations from employees. This was one of the first publicly announced programs Mr. Cook made when taking over the reigns of the company in August of 2011.