User:Vipul/Jim Greenbaum

Jim Greenbaum is a former telecom entrepreneur who made a fortune through his telecom company Access Long Distance, and then switched to full-time philanthropy through his foundation, the Greenbaum Foundation.

Telecom executive
In 1985, Greenbaum founded and became the CEO of Access Long Distance, a telecommunications company. The company, initially started in Louisiana, expanded into and moved its headquarters to Utah. In 1992, a profile of the company in Deseret News noted that Greenbaum and his colleagues attributed the company's success to the spirit of teamwork between the team members originating from former collaboration on the football field. By 1993, the company was in eight states in the Western United States: Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and California. In 1999, after reaching annual revenue of $100 million, the company sold to McLeod USA for $250 million.

Philanthropy
Greenbaum carries out his philanthropic activities through his foundation, the Greenbaum Foundation, which is registered in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and currently focuses on alleviating suffering, with particular emphasis on children, non-human animals, and global health. The Foundation's tag line is "Being a bystander to suffering is not an option."

From a young age, Greenbaum was interested in making the world a better place, and initially hoped to do so by getting a law degree and becoming a human rights lawyer. Some of his formative experiences in this direction included witnessing racial and religious bigotry in the Deep South and learning about the Holocaust. However, after he was rejected from top law schools, he decided to instead make a huge amount of money by the age of 40 and then work full-time on efficient philanthropy with the money.

The Greenbaum Foundation was created by Greenbaum in 1992. Although philanthropy was something that interested him even while he was building a business, he deliberately chose to focus on growing the business and delay most of his philanthropy. After the successful sale of Access Long Distance, Greenbaum's finances grew to $133 million. He switched to working full-time on the Greenbaum Foundation, using his wide reading about the world as a starting point for his experimentation.

His initial focus was on rescuing kids from bad conditions in orphanages, and he poured money into KidSave International, a project focused on doing so in the former Soviet Republics. He gradually became more interested in the problem of human trafficking, and donated to a number of charities to combat it. In 2007, he discovered Tostan, that he praised for trying to engender behavior change in communities to have a long-term impact on issues ranging from female genital mutilation to child marriage. Other organization he has supported in the human rights domain include La Conscience, End Slavery Now, Rescue Foundation, Polaris Project, Truckers Against Trafficking, and HumaneAfrica.

In 2009, he married Lucie Berreby-Greenbaum, who convinced him of the importance of animal welfare as a cause. Since 2012, the Greenbaum Foundation has been making donations to animal welfare charities including Animal Recovery Mission, Mercy for Animals, The Humane League, Love Animals, and Carnism.org. Although both Jim and Lucie are passionate about animal welfare, Lucie oversees the animal welfare side of the foundation's grants.

Greenbaum has also donated to global health causes such as the response to the ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and more long-run human health causes.

A profile of Greenbaum in 2003 noted that, unlike many other donors, he preferred to keep a low profile. When he donated $600,000 to Congregation Kol Ami for youth programs, they offered to have the religious school named after him, but he declined. In 2013, he watched a TED talk by Peter Singer about effective altruism, and began identifying as an effective altruist. Inspired by the talk, he decided to be more public about his giving. He committed to spending down at least 85% of his holdings on philanthropy before his death (this would amount to over $100 million).

Media coverage
Greenbaum's early foray into philanthropy was covered by the Associated Press in 2003.

The Greenbaum Foundation's work on animal welfare has been profiled by Inside Philanthropy.

Inside Philanthropy has also profiled the Greenbaum Foundation's overall approach to philanthropy. Based off of an email exchange with Greenbaum, it identified three things he looks for when making funding decisions:

Greenbaum's Giving What We Can pledge to donate his money has also been covered in press on Giving What We Can.