For a few years now, we’ve been tracking the emerging philanthropy of Airbnb’s billionaire cofounders, who’ve only grown richer in the last few years. Brian Chesky, Joseph Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk launched the peer-to-peer room and home rental company in 2008 as “AirBed & Breakfast.” In December 2020, Airbnb went public in a blockbuster IPO. Now the trio are worth more than $22 billion combined, as of this writing.
The founders each signed the Giving Pledge in 2016 while in their 30s — emblematic of other young winners of the tech sector who aren’t waiting until their 50s or later to commit to giving in a large-scale way. During the pandemic era, when many tech investors and execs saw their fortunes swell, several young billionaire philanthropists came onto the scene.
The Airbnb founders’ Giving Pledge letters offered insights into where their philanthropy might be heading, as did some of Airbnb’s civic and community work, such as BelongAnywhere, a campaign that aims to draw attention and financial support to refugees as they integrate into new communities. Earlier in the year, Airbnb announced that it would offer free, short-term housing to up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine.
Over the summer, though, we got some pretty big news from one of the trio. Brian Chesky announced a $100 million gift to the Obama Foundation for a two-year scholarship program that aims to give college students pursuing careers in public service a leg up. The Voyager Scholarship, the Obama-Chesky scholarship for public service, is directed at students from across the United States in their junior and senior years of college who plan to work in public service after they graduate.
What does this big gift reveal about the direction of Chesky’s philanthropy? And where do we expect him to go from here? Here are three takeaways:
Young people will likely be a priority
The son of two social workers, Chesky has spoken about introducing young people to entrepreneurship. “My parents exposed me to a lot of things, but the one thing I wasn’t exposed to was entrepreneurism. I never met a CEO and I didn’t think that was possible,” he told Fortune.
Chesky’s Giving Pledge letter, meanwhile, focuses on the theme of “untapped potential”: “We all live with unknown potential. The younger you are, the more unknown it is. But the clock ticks by each day of your life. And each day [that] someone young isn’t exposed to what is possible, their potential slowly dims.”
The Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service seems to appeal to the “untapped potential” side of things. In a video about the scholarship program, he talks about the dual benefit of removing the financial burden from the next generation of leaders, while also giving them opportunities to broaden their horizons across the country and abroad. Chesky himself says he didn’t travel a lot as a kid and only really started experiencing it when he was at Airbnb.
Students in the Voyager Scholarship program will receive $25,000 annually for tuition in their final two years of college and a $10,000 stipend and free Airbnb housing to create a summer work-travel experience between their junior and senior years. The summer travel must be related to the field they hope to enter after they graduate.
The travel aspect of the scholarship extends beyond the summer. Students in the Voyager program will also receive a travel stipend of $2,000 a year for 10 years to continue to see more of the world and forge connections with others in their fields.
More conventional than you might think
Tech donors often have a reputation for using their philanthropy to hack and disrupt. There’s some precedent for that, particularly when it comes to effective altruists, but it’s athat we’ve often pushed back against.
Sure, it’s what made them the big bucks during their careers. But that isn’t necessarily how their philanthropy ends up playing out. For every Pierre and Pam Omidyar, you have a Steve and Connie Ballmer, focusing on traditional causes largely in their own backyard. Or consider the Benioffs and Saleforce’s growing commitment to traditional public schools.
Chesky’s first real philanthropic splash as an individual donor similarly fits in this more conventional mode. Don’t get us wrong — fostering the next generation of leaders, especially in an increasingly unstable era, is important. A lot of great philanthropy follows well-tread paths, which are often there for good reason. But Chesky’s emerging giving is another example of why we can’t just assume that tech donors will try to hack philanthropy in the same way that they hacked vacation rentals.
Like a lot of other scholarship programs, there’s also an element of community here. The program includes an annual meeting where Voyager students will meet with former President Barack Obama and Brian Chesky to discuss leadership and empathy. They’ll also hear from guest speakers on approaches to public service and connect with other scholarship recipients.
Keep an eye on powerful figures involved with the Obama Foundation
Holding nearly $440 million in assets and giving away about $3.2 million in a recent tax year, the Obama Foundation was launched in 2017. Its huge project, the Obama Presidential Center, is still under construction in historic Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago.
The foundation states that its mission “is to inspire, empower and connect people to change their world.” The Obama Foundation also runs a growing suite of programming, including My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, targeting young men of color, a similar program called Girls Opportunity Alliance started by former First Lady Michelle Obama, and the Obama Foundation Fellowship, which supports young leaders around the world.
The Voyager Scholarship joins this growing list of programming, and in the coming years, may evolve into the kind of multipronged powerhouse that the Clinton Foundation is. For now, though, Chesky’s involvement provides a window into the kind of powerful figures across sectors that the Obama Foundation might attract.
By the way, when Chesky was in his 20s, he and his two cofounders went to the historic Democratic Convention in 2008 to promote Airbnb. They sold novelty boxes of Obama & McCain-themed breakfast cereal for $40 a pop to pay off debt.
How quickly things can change.
