Bill Gates is famously a very charitable man. However, there's another charitable soul in Microsoft's history. Paul Allen, who helped Gates found Microsoft in the 70's but left in the 80's and officially resigned from his place on the board in 2000, is constantly donating money to different causes. Now, Allen has promised to give away the majority of his fortune when he dies.
Paul Allen is already a dedicated philanthropist. He's donated millions upon millions of dollars to the University of Washington and has made substantial multi-million dollar donations to various different charities and medical organizations. Allen has already given more than the average person can (the New York Times puts it at about $1 billion so far), but last night the Microsoft co-founder said he would be giving more than half of his $13.5 billion to philanthropy.
"I’ve planned for many years now that the majority of my estate will be left to philanthropy to continue the work of the foundation and to fund nonprofit scientific research, like the ground breaking work being done at the Allen Institute for Brain Science," NYT cites Allen as saying in a statement.
Allen's pledge is in response to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates' call for the country’s billionaires to give half their money to charity. Several other billionaires have made the same promise as Allen, including Eli and Edythe Broad and John and Ann Doerr.
