Comment by gtowey

So I know you're trying to shame my by pointing out my hypocrisy here, but I assure you that I wouldn't have made the original comment there if I didn't have a leg to stand on.

I am not a high net worth individual. With a 20 year career as an IC in the tech industry though, I'm quite comfortably middle class. But even I have donated $10k to charity in a single year many times. Many tech companies offer charity gift-matching programs. I take full advantage of those by having a donor advised fund so I can capture the full gift match amount every year and then disburse those funds as desired. When I was briefly at Microsoft, they had an oddly generous gift match of up to $15k per year. I literally put up $15k of my own money each year to capture that $30k/year into a charity account for several years.

That's why I feel like I can comment critically on this. I'm a regular dude who grew up dirt-poor and ended up modestly successful in life and even I can manage to donate amounts of 10's of thousands annually.

Compared to the much more successful executive, CEO, founder class who you mentioned were among your donors. To the kind who own houses in the Los Altos hills worth 10 million plus, those numbers seem kind of paltry.

I'm not trying to take away from the success of your organization and its mission. I congratulate you on your fundraising efforts and I know you can't afford to be critical of your donors lest those donors sour on you. But truly, it does strike me how some of the wealthiest among us, who have benefited the most from these common goods, can give so little.