Nike Co-Founder Is Donating Most Of $25 Billion Fortune To Charity

Phil Knight has already made hefty donations to advance health research and to address climate change.
Nike co-founder Phil Knight speaks during the 2012 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts, September 7, 2012. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter (UNITED STATES - Tags: SPORT BASKETBALL BUSINESS)
Nike co-founder Phil Knight speaks during the 2012 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts, September 7, 2012. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter (UNITED STATES - Tags: SPORT BASKETBALL BUSINESS)
Dominick Reuter / Reuters

Just did it.

Nike co-founder Phil Knight is donating most of his $125 billion fortune to charity, the mogul told CBS on Sunday.

"By the time, you know, the lives of my children and their kids run out, I will have given most of it to charity," Knight told the news outlet.

Knight, 78, has long been known for giving money to causes he’s passionate about.

He and his wife, Penny, have already donated more than $1 billion.

The couple has given over $500 million to Stanford University, where Knight first conceived the idea for Nike. He committed $400 million to developing a fellowship at the university to train the next generation of “global leaders” in addressing such critical issues as climate change, poverty and disease, according to the Oregonian.

He’s also donated a generous amount to the University of Oregon.

In 2008, the Knights donated $100 million to the Oregon Health Sciences University Cancer Institute, which was the largest gift in the university’s history at the time, according to Forbes. The center was renamed the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.

The couple surpassed that donation in 2012 when they donated $125 million to the university to advance cardiovascular health.

“I can get pretty emotional about this place, too,” Knight told CBS of his relationship to the University of Oregon, where he was a mid-distance runner. “After all, I was born here.”

Knight, who announced last summer that he’s stepping down as Nike’s chairman, also discussed in his CBS interview some of the controversies the company has faced throughout the years. That included its issues related to using cheap labor overseas.

“I never thought we had bad factories, in fact, it was just the opposite, good factories,” he told CBS. “We tried to find the best factories you could work with and good shoes come out of good factories. The fact that they could be better is what we should have concentrated on and what we ultimately did concentrate on.”

The Huffington Post

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