We obtained the written agreement between Jeff Bezos and the Smithsonian outlining the details of his $200 million donation. His gift agreement offers a rare glimpse into how institutions & their wealthy benefactors engineer a mutually beneficial deal.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’s name will be displayed on a new building at the National Air and Space Museum and in several additional places throughout the Smithsonian Institution for at least 50 years in exchange for his $200 million donation.
Big-dollar donations like this one are typically trumpeted by institutions , but the legally binding contracts that surround the gifts are usually kept private. Bezos’s gift agreement with the Smithsonian offers a rare glimpse into how institutions and their wealthy benefactors engineer a mutually beneficial exchange.
Bezos’s name will be etched onto a new glass sculpture Under the terms of the gift agreement, Bezos’s name will be displayed on the outside of the learning center facing Jefferson Avenue and the National Mall, on the outside of the center facing Independence Avenue, and on an entrance to the center that will be inside the National Air and Space Museum.
The agreement notes that while the Smithsonian is “deeply grateful” for the support, it maintains control over its exhibitions and mission. Bezos, for his part, gets prior written approval of any press releases or public announcements about the gift. A Smithsonian spokeswoman said those are both standard clauses in gift agreements.
But the requirement to prominently display Bezos’s name for the next 50 years comes as naming rights have been under scrutiny. Most notably, the Sackler family name has been removed from museums and other institutions they helped fund with profits from OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, which is now seen as playing a pivotal role in the opioid epidemic that’s killed some 500,000 people since 1999.
“The Rockefellers no longer control Exxon, but their wealth comes ultimately from oil, and the same is true for many fortunes around the world,” Berman said. “They come from industries we would now regard as causing direct or indirect harm: oil, mining and minerals, forest products, and all the wealth that relied on enslaved people as free sources of labor.
The lack of a morals clause in the Bezos agreement is a notable absence, said Ben Soskis, a historian of philanthropy and a senior research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. A relationship to the entire American people The Smithsonian, a nonprofit that was created by the federal government and is funded mostly by taxpayer dollars, “has a relationship to the entire American people,” Soskis said, and it’s now “formalizing a relationship in which it’s — for half a century — going to be closely tethered to the name and reputation of an entrepreneur who is highly controversial,” Soskis said.
The Smithsonian enacted the 20-year policy in 2011, because it “wanted to get away from perpetuity” in gift agreements, a spokeswoman said. “If you can keep reselling the same naming rights, then it’s the gift that keeps giving,” Sugin told MarketWatch. Potential tax benefits for Bezos Bezos plans to fulfill the $200 million pledge over four years with four equal annual payments of $50 million each, and he’s allowed to use stock transfers to do so, according to the agreement. That means he could get a tax benefit, because donating appreciated stock directly to nonprofits allows donors to claim a charitable tax deduction for the fair market value while also avoiding capital gains taxes, Sugin noted.
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