US Billionaire Gives Envelopes, Students Shocked

Telecommunications tycoon Robert Hale has been trying to develop the personality of future generations and instilling in them the importance of sparing one’s time, energy, or lessons learned. The billionaire surprised students of UMass Boston undergraduates class of 2023 with $1000 each on their graduation day.

However, the gesture did come with a caveat. As 2500 students lined up to take their envelopes, Hale, the co-founder, and CEO of Granite Telecommunications, handed out two envelopes with the cash evenly split.

While one $500 envelope was labeled ‘gift,’ the other was labeled ‘give.’ The idea is to nudge the students to give to a cause where the money would be put to good use. This gesture is optional, though. He told them they were all leaders now and requested them to give the money to “somebody else or another organization who could use it more than you” and experience the joy of giving.

The whole amount donated came to $2.5 million, which is quite little when compared to Hale’s $5 billion fortune. But this is not the first time Hale is making the gesture. In May 2022, he gifted a similar amount with the same caveat at the Roxbury Community College in Boston and to 490 graduates of Quincy College in Quincy, Mass.

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