Michael and Susan Dell to put $250 million into children’s accounts.
Michael and Susan Dell announced Tuesday that they will deposit $250 into individual investment accounts for 25 million children, totaling $6.25 billion. This is one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever given directly to Americans.
This money increases the number of children receiving seed money for investment accounts known as “Trump accounts.” The federal government will give $1,000 to children born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028. Dell’s gift extends to children up to 10 years old, although it limits eligibility to those who live in ZIP codes where the median household income is less than $150,000.
The federal government is expected to set up the accounts next summer, but many details of how they will work have yet to be determined. There is no system for registration yet, and it is not clear where the accounts will be located.
Mr. Dell, chairman and chief executive of Dell Technologies, first made his fortune by selling personal computers directly to consumers rather than through retail outlets. He sees this gift in the same light.
“When I started a company 41 years ago, we built a direct model,” Mr. Dell said. “This is a kind of direct model of philanthropy.”
The Dells family hopes that other philanthropists, corporations, and state and local governments will follow their example, investing billions of dollars in the accounts. This approach could become a model for wealthy donors who want to give money but haven’t established a foundation and don’t know where to start vetting recipient groups.
The idea for what would become Trump Accounts began in 2021 with a conversation at the dining-room table between Brad Gerstner, chief executive of Altimeter Capital, and his children. Mr. Gerstner founded a nonprofit organization, Invest America, to push for the creation of accounts in which the federal government would give each child $1,000 at birth. A little later he called his friend Mr. Dale. Dales was enthusiastic about the idea.
Mr. Gerstner reached out to both the Biden administration and Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill to seek support, but the initiative didn’t gain much traction until Mr. Dale spoke with President Trump this year. Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz introduced a bill to create Invest America accounts. The name was changed to Trump Accounts in the final version of the tax bill passed this year.
Mr. Dell and Mr. Gerstner emphasized that the idea of child savings accounts has bipartisan support. “If you look at what we’re doing, I don’t think this is a partisan activity in any way,” Mr. Dale said. “It’s definitely not intended to be.”
But if the program is successful, it will launch an effort in Mr. Trump’s name.
“We have always focused on getting assistance to families as close as possible, and Invest America continues this work,” Ms. Dale said in an interview. “This is a slightly different way of doing it, but the opportunity now is to do something really big and really touch 25 million children who will really benefit from this.”
If there is money left over after the initial sign-up, Dells said, they could extend it to children over 10 years old.
As a philanthropist, Dells has largely fallen under the radar compared to names like Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Mackenzie Scott. But according to Ms. Dale, the couple has donated $3 billion over the past 26 years, most of which is for the benefit of children. Tuesday’s commitment will place him among the top donors in the country.
Philanthropists have made large gifts, such as Mr. Gates’ donation of $20 billion to his foundation in 2022. But those billions of dollars flow out of the foundation through grants to nonprofits over many years or even decades.
Similarly, Warren E. Buffett has donated billions of dollars in Berkshire Hathaway stock every year since 2006 to the Gates Foundation and foundations run by his children, which will also be distributed to nonprofit organizations over time.
In August, Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny announced a $2 billion gift to Oregon Health & Science University’s cancer research center, said to be the largest donation to a university in the United States. In 2024, Ruth Gottsman, the 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier, announced a $1 billion donation to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, where she had been a professor.
Mr. Dale said he was “still working out the details” of how the money would reach individual children. The Treasury Department will facilitate the process of finding accounts that meet the couple’s criteria.
“And then we will transfer the funds,” he added, “and the Treasury Department will immediately transfer those funds to those children’s accounts.”
Employers can contribute up to $2,500 annually to their employees’ children’s accounts, without it being counted as taxable income. Several large companies, including Dell Technologies, announced that they would match $1,000 in government contributions for the newborn children of their employees. By law, those accounts must be invested in low-cost index funds until at least the children are 18 years old.
Mr. Dale said he has spoken to other philanthropists interested in joining the effort.
“We believe that if every child can see a future worth saving for,” he said, “then we can create something much bigger than the account.”