Just over a year after taking over as Apple CEO, Cook donated $2.5 million to the American Red Cross as a way to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, Venture Beat reports.
The company reportedly raised millions of dollars more in donations through an iTunes-based campaign.
Tech Crunch reports that Cook shared an update on the campaign over email, stating “Apple employees and customers the world over have raised millions of dollars toward the relief effort so far,” but adding that “[Apple] can always do more.”
Over the past 10 years, Apple has contributed $130 million to (RED), about a quarter of the money it has raised to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Maria in Africa since the organization’s inception.
“We put our weight behind lots of things in the civil rights area,” Cook tells USA Today about Apple’s relationship with (RED). “Similarly, I think it’s key that people think about what they stand for and help their communities. We always say that we want to leave the world better than we found it. So, we try to thoughtfully decide how we can do that.”
“This (RED) partnership allows us to touch a group of people we normally wouldn’t.”
In 2014, Cook became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to come out as gay. In doing so, he promoted equal rights for all.
“If hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality,” he wrote in a Bloomberg essay, “then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.”
That same year, he donated an undisclosed amount to the Human Rights Campaign’s Project One America, a program to advance equality for LGBT Americans in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama, the latter being Cook’s home state.
In 2012, Cook said that Apple donated $50 million to Stanford hospital, with half of the donation going toward a new main building and the other half for a new children’s hospital, the Verge reports.
In 2015, along with dozens of tech companies, Apple participated in former President Barack Obama’s “ConnectED Initiative.” As part of the effort to provide technology for disadvantaged U.S. schools, Apple provided $100 million in iPads, MacBooks and other products, as well as professional development tools.
“I think technology has to be a key part,” Cook tells ABC’s Good Morning America in 2015. I wouldn’t be where I am today without a good public education.”
“Inclusion in diversity inspires innovation,” Cook says.
He adds his three tips for the children now receiving the technology is to “explore, discover, create.”
In a 2015 interview with Fortune Magazine, Cook said he plans to pay for his nephew to go to college and use the rest of his money to fund philanthropic projects.
He tells Fortune that he sees taking a public stand on human rights, immigration reform and putting an end to AIDS, as opportunities for leadership.
“You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change,” Cook says.
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