Business

Apple tries to fix rep as ‘stingest’ company

They give — finally.

Tech titan Apple at last donated something to charity worth talking about: $100 million.

In a surprising break with tradition, CEO Tim Cook is determined to change the company’s stingy reputation — as one of the few major American corporations that before had barely donated before to charity, The Post has learned.

The iconic Steve Jobs, Apple’s late leader and founder, had unique ideas on Apple’s societal benefits — and cash-giving was not one of them.

But even as Cook steps up to the plate, the $100 million still leaves Apple in an unusual spot — far behind its peers.

The Cupertino, Calif., giant, which has roughly $110 billion cash on hand and is the most valuable company in the world, ranks no higher than eighth when it comes to charity. Apple will have even more cash after Samsung coughs up the $1 billion it lost in a patent fight last week.

Jobs was not mean-spirited, says Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. But he also didn’t give a lot of cash.

“Steve Jobs had a lot of concerns about how philanthropy worked and what the value of it was,” she told The Post. “He saw the products he was making as a contribution to society.”

Cook thinks differently.

The CEO’s corporate donation, confirmed to The Post by people close to Apple, was made in 2011.

Stanford University hospitals received $50 million; another $50 million was donated to the African aid organization Product Red, founded by U2 frontman Bono and Bobby Shriver, nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy.

The $100 million donation is less than half that donated to charity by Chevron and by Walmart — both of which have market caps less than half of Apple’s $632 billion value.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is No. 1 by donation size, trailed by No. 2 Walmart and Exxon Mobil at No. 3.

Buffett, one of the world’s most generous donors, handed over $1.5 billion last year.

(Berkshire’s corporate donations were not publicly disclosed. Donations by Buffett were tallied for the company total.)

In his lifetime, Jobs accumulated an estimated $8.3 billion fortune. There’s no public record of him donating any of this to charity.

Jobs never belonged to the Giving Pledge, a group founded by Buffett and Bill Gates to encourage the nation’s wealthiest families to pledge half their fortunes to charity.

Buffett in 2006 began his plan to give away 99 percent of his wealth to charity.

People close to Apple told The Post that Cook is at the forefront of a new company-wide charity drive.

Last September, the CEO launched a widely reported employee charity program by Apple — promising to match Apple workers’ donations up to $10,000.

“You see a real difference under Tim Cook,” Palmer said. “He has talked more openly about charitable giving by Apple. It sounds like a changed attitude.”

Overall, charitable giving by America’s corporations grew by 4 percent in 2011, according to a new study of 166 large companies by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.