Crypto Couple’s Charity Gave Almost Nothing…to Charity
"My life is devoted to this," Gisele Bündchen said about her and Tom Brady's charity, which donated less than 0.1% of their worth over more than a decade.
CelebritiesDirt BagThe public has been learning a lot about Tom Brady and ex-wife Gisele Bündchen’s financials lately, thanks to their dedicated PR team pushing out intel on the couple’s assets amidst their divorce. The former-turned-current NFL quarterback has a net worth of about $250 million, and the supermodel boasts an estimated $400 million to her name. But despite such impressive wealth, the couple’s nonprofit the Luz Foundation managed to squeeze out less than 0.1% of their worth to charity between the years 2007 and 2019.
“My life is devoted to this,” Bündchen told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2015 regarding the foundation that executed a whopping $300 donation to a Costa Rican environmental group in 2018. No offense, babe, but try to devote a little harder next time.
The majority of donations in that decade were to yoga and meditation groups, including a $25,000 donation to the David Lynch Foundation in 2017. (Psst, celebrities, yoga and meditation are great and all, but I beg you to consider donating some money to feeding and housing people.) In total, the Luz Foundation gave out $640,402 between 2007 and 2019. That amount, if I were to generously round up, is 0.1% of their net worth.
Alongside the Luz Foundation, Brady has his own separate nonprofit called TB12 Foundation. The Daily Beast reported that as recently as 2020, the organization was $7 million in debt. Despite being in the red, the TB12 Foundation managed to fund Brady’s for-profit company, TB12 LLC, with over $1.6 million, making the Foundation the LLC’s biggest contractor.
This sort of philanthropic prowess must have been what landed Bündchen the gig as director of Environmental and Social Initiatives for FTX, the now-crashed crypto Ponzi scheme she and Brady peddled just earlier this year (and are now being sued for). Before she was relieved of her duties due to the entire crypto exchange collapsing, Bündchen helped FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried announce the company’s plan to donate a billion dollars to charities over the course of the next year.
Perhaps it’s ultimately a good thing that the couple either didn’t give away their net worth, because looking down the pipeline at this FTX lawsuit by scammed investors, they might need that extra cash now more than ever.
Speaking of other good things…
- Kendall Jenner is having a baby….horse! [Page Six]
- Meghan McCain is riding out the last days of Twitter with some attitude. [Twitter]
- Andy Cohen has the same New Year’s Eve resolution he always does: Get drunk on live TV. [Vanity Fair]
- Praying for Heidi Klum during this time. [Page Six]