Jeff Bezos Donates Less Than 5 Minutes of His Time to Australia Wildfires

Two days ago, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, posted this controversial Instagram post showing Amazon’s so-called support for the Australian wildfires.

The post detailed Amazon’s support of 1 million Australian Dollars to the tragedies, which equals about 690,000 US Dollars.

View this post on Instagram

Our hearts go out to all Australians as they cope with these devastating bushfires. Amazon is donating 1 million AU dollars in needed provisions and services. Find more about it and learn how customers can help as well. Link in bio.

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos) on Jan 11, 2020 at 10:17pm PST

People online were outraged about Bezos’ limited support, given his vast wealth. One person even noted given the amount Bezos makes on a minute-by-minute basis, he donated less than 5 minutes of his time.

Jeff Bezos makes $149,340 a minute. So he is effectively donating 4.6 minutes of money. If he donated what he makes in a day, that would be $215 million, which would still not be enough. https://t.co/dl4R5VjdKB

— Reina Sultan رينا سلطان (@SultanReina) January 12, 2020

Jeff Bezos is worth ~$116 billion. This is approximately 0.00059% of his fortune. If you had $50,000, this would be the equivalent of donating less than $30. And winning headlines for it https://t.co/IzQlCMMozh

— Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) January 12, 2020

Amazon also posted a blog post about how to further help victims of the fires through donating products from Amazon’s own charity wish list feature. So, just how much responsibility does Amazon bear in the matter?

Is Bezos’ donation sustainable and if so, why would Amazon need to ask it’s customers for donations?