Here’s a number that doesn’t get said enough. In 2000, Guinness World Records recognized Michael Jackson for supporting 39 charities, more than any other entertainer on the planet. Not “gave to a few causes.” Thirty-nine, a record.
Behind that number are a handful of efforts that are rock solid and genuinely his. In 1992 he started the Heal the World Foundation, built around children’s health and education and the idea that kids everywhere deserved a shot. He endowed a scholarship fund with the United Negro College Fund. And after a Pepsi commercial shoot in 1984 went wrong and badly burned his scalp, he took the settlement money and gave it to a hospital, which named its burn unit the Michael Jackson Burn Center.
Michael Jackson – Heal The World (Official Video)
A quick note of caution, because this is where fan pages tend to go overboard. You’ll see enormous dollar figures attached to all sorts of causes, AIDS research, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, diabetes charities, 9/11 relief, and he did support a lot of them. But some of the exact numbers that get passed around aren’t well documented, so it’s smarter to talk about the pattern than to swear by any one giant figure. The pattern alone is staggering enough.
One of the clearest examples came after September 11, 2001, when he pulled together a crowd of stars to record a charity single called “What More Can I Give” for the victims’ families.
Michael Jackson and Friends – What More Can I Give
That’s the part of him that got buried under everything else. Not the headlines, not the trials, not the tabloid circus. A man who gave so widely and so often that an official record-keeping body had to invent a category to describe it.