138. Where do Chrissy Teigen and John Legend donate their money?

In this episode, let’s explore Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s philanthropy, highlighting their commitment to social causes.

Let’s talk about their partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities, where they helped to raise funds to support families with sick children and their support of Planned Parenthood. 

Let’s also discuss their $200,000 donation to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, on behalf of the heroic gymnasts of the US Olympic Team who spoke out against abuse by their team doctor.

Finally, let’s talk about their $288,000 contribution to the ACLU in protest of immigration policies (and what it had to do with Donald Trump’s 72nd birthday).

Links from today’s episode:

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend Have a Message and a Donation for Trump’s Birthday | Time Magazine June 2018

https://time.com/5312445/chrissy-teigen-john-legend-donate-to-aclu-for-donald-trump-birthday/ 

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend Just Donated $200,000 to Fight Harassment | Global Citizen January 2018

https://www.globalcitizen.org/de/content/chrissy-teigen-john-legend-times-up-donation/ 

John Legend Shares How He and Chrissy Teigen Teach Their Kids to Give Back | People Magazine November 2023

https://people.com/john-legend-chrissy-teigen-teaching-their-kids-give-back-8402009 

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend Open Up About Their 'Grief' as They Announce New Charity Initiative | People Magazine November 2020

https://people.com/parents/chrissy-teigen-john-legend-first-interview-pregnancy-loss-good-morning-america/ 

ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:

Episode#110 The Legacy of Jazz and Philanthropy (recorded before the 2024 rebranding of this show)

Connect With Genet “GG” Gimja:

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Transcript

Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about the type of world we want, and what we do with our wallets and if there are any practical suggestions to bridge that gap. In other words, if you’ve ever rinsed out a container to put in your recycling bin and then checked your investments and seen fossil fuel companies in there, this podcast is about exploring that gap and seeing what we can do about it.

There are well over a hundred episodes on all sorts of topics, like finding out if your bank is supporting the gun lobby, how to decide how much money to donate every year, what to do if you suddenly realize you’re a gentrifier, I mean the topics are broad and a lot of them come from your letters, so please always feel free to drop an email and suggest a topic for an episode.

Today’s episode is part of the Celebrity Giving Series. This is a lot of fun to put together and I hope you’ll enjoy listening while you’re enjoying a staycation or taking a relaxing walk with your dog.

Let’s see how this goes. Sometimes talking about celebrity giving can be inspiring, sometimes it’s cringey, either way it is fun. On this series you’ve heard about donations from Serena Williams and Taylor Swift and Beyonce….

Today’s episode is about where Chrissy Teigan and John Legend donate their money….

I guess I’ll start with the funniest donation. Chrissy Teigan is, well, she’s a troll. Or she was an online troll, I think she has retired or at least scaled back. But she for a long time was a very online person and one of the people that she liked to troll was, well, Donald Trump, before he was President of the United States. In fact, he blocked her on Twitter.

And so, a year later, on Donald Trump’s 72nd birthday, Chrissy Teigan announced that each member of her family was donating $72,000 to the ACLU in protest of Trump’s immigration policies. So that’s 4 donations, one for Chrissy Teigan one for John Legend and then one for each of their two toddlers, that totals $288K and then she asked the general public to also make donations on that same day whether the amount was $72 or $7.20 to quote, Make Trump’s Birthday Great Again. And yes it is incredibly petty and I don’t think they should have brought their kids into it, but man, there is something funny about that. I guess sometimes pettiness leads to good donations.

Here’s another donation that came from this celebrity couple.

The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund: Teigen and Legend made a $200,000 donation to this fund, which provides legal support to victims of sexual violence. Their contribution was made in solidarity with and on behalf of the heroic USA Olympic gymnasts who have spoke out against the abuse they experienced perpetrated by their team doctor. This Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund was 

The Time’s Up campaign is the most successful crowdfunding initiative ever recorded on the GoFundMe platform, in the first month alone they raised around $20 million. 

Other celebrity donations include $500,000 pledges from Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Shonda Rhimes, Jennifer Aniston, Melinda Gates, and Sandra Bullock. Another celebrity couple, Jessica and Justin Timberlake, donated $20,000 to the fund, according to CNN Money. 

The money went to the National Women’s Law Center to “help survivors of sexual harassment and retaliation in all industries — especially low-income women and people of color,” according to a press release on their website. I’ll link the Global Citizen article if you want to read about that.

John Legend and Chrissy Teigan also had a partnership with the Ronald McDonald House and McDonald’s where I think every person who tagged the Ronald McDonald House, there would be a $100 donation made in that person’s name from McDonald’s to the Ronald McDonald House. The couple took their kids to the Ronald McDonald House in Los Angeles and made a recipe from Chrissy Teigan’s cookbook and did a photoshoot and served food and spent some time with the families being supported there.

There have been some other random small donations here and there from this couple.

They have donated to Planned Parenthood and to the civil rights protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

But what was harder to figure out was if they have a really clear foundation or singular focus for their philanthropy. 

And you know what, I just couldn’t find it. And I’m surprised by that. This couple is extremely wealthy and they’re not at the peak busiest times of their careers, so I did expect that they would have built a foundation with a really clear focus and message and funding priorities.

There’s clearly a through-line in their giving. They support reproductive health, immigrant advocacy, and support for victims of sexual violence. It all kind of hangs together. These are progressive causes, all donations are political but they are more openly political. And I think their passion areas have come into focus over the years. I’ve only seen John Legend in concert once in my life and it was at a poverty action conference at MIT probably back in the 1900s. There’s always been a “for the people” type of vibe to John Legend’s celebrity advocacy work and it seems like he has partnered with someone who has a similar or complementary focus. 

So I would love to see them pull something together that leans into that. They could call it the Foundation for the People. They could funnel money towards the causes they care about and organize their political advocacy, not necessarily for specific politicians but for specific political issues like women’s rights, immigrant rights, et cetera.

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:

• Chrissy Teigan and John Legend have a pretty clear point of view when it comes to their giving, they are interested in women, immigrants, the poor.
• They tend to be open about their beliefs and in that way have advocated for the things they believe in.
• There is a big opportunity for them to pull all of this together into a potentially powerful foundation, beyond a vanity project, but into something that could really move a lot of money- I’ve seen their Architectural Digest home tours- and political advocacy.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, episode 110 The Legacy of Jazz and Philanthropy. A lot of people liked that episode. I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

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I hope you’re all having a great summer wherever you are, may your summer days be relaxing, may your home be as tidy as an Architectural Digest home, and may your pettiness lead to something positive LOL

Let’s end with a quote…

“I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they’ll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive” Harvey Milk

Let’s talk again soon!