Start Small is the grantmaking LLC fund of Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. ¹ Dorsey announced in April 2020 that he would be giving $1 billion of his equity in his company Square, or 28 percent of his total wealth, to the LLC to fund “global COVID-19 relief.” ² He stated at the time that after the pandemic the fund would turn to contributing to female health and education as well as to initiatives involved in advocating and researching Universal Basic Income (UBI). ³ Dorsey has also made donations to left-of-center racial-interest and social-policy groups, including Colin Kaepernick’s criminal justice advocacy group and Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research. ^{4 5}

Dorsey claims that all donations made by Start Small are tracked on the LLC’s website. ⁶

Funding

Start Small began in April 2020 with $4,205,591,224 in discretionary funds. By November 2021, it had spent $426,202,311, with a remaining $3,779,388,913. ⁷

COVID-19 Relief

The first donations made by Start Small were to COVID-19 relief groups. Dorsey gave several donations to COVID groups in the $10 million range during the month of May 2020. These included Give2SF, a San Francisco-based recovery fund to help families and businesses in the area; REFORM Alliance, a criminal justice advocacy group for its initiative to bring COVID testing to all U.S. prisons; Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) for its program of opening COVID-19 testing sites American cities and rural areas; and Project 100 for its initiative to give $1,000 to 100,000 SNAP-receiving families. In June 2020, Dorsey gave $20 million to Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Viral Strategies to support its digital tools engaged in contact tracing in the United States. That same month, he gave an additional $20 million to CORE. ⁸

Universal Basic Income

Despite Dorsey’s statement that the organization would hold off on donations to issues beyond COVID-19 for the foreseeable future, within its first operating year Start Small began making substantial contributions to other endeavors. In November 2020, Start Small made two donations of $15 million to two organizations researching UBI: Research Lab Income Project and Reinvent Stockton Foundation. ⁹

Girls Health and Education

In October 2020, Start Small gave $20 million to the Clara Lionel Foundation to support its climate change and environmentalist initiatives due to their provisions for women’s reproductive and sexual health clinics “in the aftermath of disasters.” ^{10 11}

Racial, Social, Criminal Justice

On June 1, 2020, Dorsey tweeted that there had to be “Police policy reform now” after the death of George Floyd. ¹² He then donated $3 million to Know Your Rights Camp, a criminal justice policy group founded by NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick who rose to prominence in the left-progressive “racial justice” movement in 2016 for kneeling during the national anthem. At the time, Dorsey said that the donation would “advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass mobilization to elevate the next generation of change leaders.” ¹³

In August 2020, Dorsey gave $10 million to Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, a research collective that hosts and supports academics and activists who are engaged with “racial inequity and injustice” scholarship and activism. It also funds racial research, data collection, advocacy campaigns, and “narrative-change initiatives.” The Center was founded by radical professor, activist, and author Ibram X. Kendi. ¹⁴

1. #startsmall. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://startsmall.llc/.
2. Dorsey, Jack. Twitter. April 7, 2020. Accessed November 2, 2021. https://twitter.com/jack/status/1247616214769086465?lang=en.
3. Dorsey, Jack. Twitter. April 7, 2020. Accessed November 2, 2021. https://twitter.com/jack/status/1247616214769086465?lang=en.
4. Schleifer, Theodore. “Inside Jack Dorsey’s Radical Experiment for Billionaires to Give Away Their Money.” Vox. Vox, June 11, 2020. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/6/11/21287395/jack-dorsey-start-small-billionaire-philanthropy-coronavirus-twitter-square-kaepernick-rihanna.
5. Schleifer, Theodore. “Jack Dorsey Is Giving Millions to Colin Kaepernick’s Criminal Justice Group.” Vox. Vox, June 4, 2020. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/6/3/21279839/jack-dorsey-colin-kaeperick-police-george-floyd-tech-billionaires-philanthropy.
6. #startsmall. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://startsmall.llc/.
7. #startsmall. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://startsmall.llc/. Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20211103035436/https://startsmall.llc/.
8. #startsmall. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://startsmall.llc/.
9. #startsmall. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://startsmall.llc/.
10. startsmall. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://startsmall.llc/.
11. “Emergency Response and Climate Resilience.” Clara Lionel Foundation, August 20, 2021. https://claralionelfoundation.org/climate-resilience/.
12. Dorsey, Jack. Twitter. June 1, 2020. Accessed November 2, 2021. https://twitter.com/jack/status/1267621973300875265?s=20.
13. Schleifer, Theodore. “Jack Dorsey Is Giving Millions to Colin Kaepernick’s Criminal Justice Group.” Vox. Vox, June 4, 2020. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/6/3/21279839/jack-dorsey-colin-kaeperick-police-george-floyd-tech-billionaires-philanthropy.
14.  #startsmall. Accessed November 3, 2021. https://startsmall.llc/.