eBay Founders Omidyar and Skoll lead a revolution in philanthropy

[mandy]

The men behind EBay are leading a high-tech revolution that is turning charitable giving on its head

They seemed so young. That's what Peter Hero remembers most about the day, nine years ago, when Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll walked into his office at Community Foundation Silicon Valley with an odd idea to give away a fortune. Omidyar wore jeans and a T-shirt; his thick black hair was tied back in a ponytail. Skoll had on what looked to Hero like a varsity jacket. He couldn't still be in high school, could he? Hero thought they were smart kids, nice kids too, but he'd never heard of their company and he was unsure about its prospects. "I don't know," he said to a colleague after they left. "Would you buy something from an online auction?"

EBay was still a quirky little online network, and philanthropy a strange concept for the executives who ran it. Omidyar and his wife Pam, a college crush, shared a suburban apartment. Skoll lived in a group house while he paid off business school loans. (When he finally bought his own place, a big place, he lived in the guest apartment over the garage.) As for the company, it was profitable, but not so rich that it could divert cash to charity...

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