What’s the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars? Not as much as you’d think, at least if your name is Ted Turner. But the CNN founder almost didn’t get a chance to donate the cool billion because, well, he isn’t a country.
The CNN founder was on hand late last week to accept the McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award at Refugees International’s 30th anniversary gala at the Italian Embassy, and he told the audience what led him to donate $1 billion to the United Nations.
“They were honoring me for past donations and I wanted to say something that would make an impact,” he said. “So I thought, ‘I’ll give a million dollars,’ because to me that sounds like a lot. But it’s not, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll give you a billion dollars.’ Which was how much the UN owed at the time.”
That’s when things got tricky. Turner said he called his lawyers and accountants, who told him, “You can’t announce that, we have to figure out the tax implications, blah, blah, blah.”
Then they told him he couldn’t even donate because the UN can only accept money from nation states. “Last time I checked, you’re not a nation state,” he recalled his lawyer telling him.
“So I went to sleep that night thinking ‘Thank God he didn’t want me to give a billion dollars away,’” he remembered.
Nevertheless, they ultimately figured out how he could donate through a parallel organization. And since then, the UN has changed the rules so that individuals can donate.
“So you could be like a nation state now?” moderator Christiane Amanpour asked him.
“I’d call it the state of confusion,” clarified Turner.
