It’s a lesson that telecommunications tycoon, Robert Hale, is making an attempt to instill within the subsequent era of leaders.

The billionaire shocked college students of the UMass Boston undergraduate class of 2023 with $1,000 every on their commencement day—however the beneficiant gesture wasn’t empty.

As hundreds of scholars lined as much as obtain their present,  Hale, the cofounder and CEO of Granite Telecommunications handed out two envelopes with the money evenly break up.

One $500 envelope was labeled “gift” and the opposite “give”.

“The first $500 is for you,” Robert Hale stated. “It’s a celebration of all you have done to be here today. You’re leaders. Celebrate. The second $500 is a gift for you to give to … somebody else or another organization who could use it more than you.” https://t.co/n8xQOwF8AB

— NBC10 Boston (@NBC10Boston) May 26, 2023

“The first $500 is for you,” Hale defined, in accordance with NBC Boston. “It’s a celebration of all you have done to be here today. You’re leaders. Celebrate.”

He then entrusted college students with gifting the second $500 envelope away to “somebody else or another organization who could use it more than you” to expertise the “joy of giving”.

With a cohort of two,500 college students graduating that day, the items amassed to $2.5 million—a comparatively small dent in Hale’s estimated $5 billion fortune – however whether or not they truly donate the cash is left as much as them.

The philanthropic billionaire

Hale based Granite in 2002, lower than six months after his earlier firm, Network Plus, filed for chapter.

Fast ahead to right now, Granite is experiencing excessive ranges of success (it generated $1.6 billion in gross sales alone in 2021, per Forbes) and with a 70% stake within the enterprise, so is Hale. 

He’s been sharing that success with these much less lucky for a while now.

In 2019, The Chronicle of Philanthropy listed Hale as one of many high 15 most beneficiant Philanthropists in America, with experiences claiming that he has donated over $280 million in direction of most cancers analysis, academic establishments and different charitable causes.

Plus, this isn’t the primary time he’s turned his philanthropic efforts to college students.

In May 2022, Hale gifted $1,000 every to 150 graduates on the Roxbury Community College in Boston, per NBC Boston and the yr prior, he additionally gave $1,000 to each 490 graduates at Quincy College in Massachusetts. 

On each events, the present got here with the identical ask to donate half of the money.

The present of giving

While it isn’t unusual for billionaires to make substantial donations to high schools and universities, usually ensuing within the naming of buildings or departments of their honor, direct money donations with a set of directions for college kids are uncommon.

It’s unclear what impressed Hale to take action, however he pointed to the necessity for good as humanity faces quite a few challenges, together with synthetic intelligence displacing jobs, financial turbulence, and battle in Ukraine.

“These trying times have heightened the need for sharing, caring and giving,” Hale stated in his most up-to-date announcement speech. “Our community and our world need you, it needs us more than ever to be compassionate.” 

“If you give a little more than you get your life will be better because of it, I promise you,” he added.