Jerry Yang Makes Good on Promise

Both before and after he won the Main Event at the 2007 World Series of Poker, Jerry Yang made a promise to donate ten percent of his $8.25 million in winnings to the Ronald McDonald House, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Feed the Children.  It seems as though he is off to a good start.

This coming Saturday, Yang will be working with Feed the Children in Long Beach, California to help distribute ten truckloads of toys and necessities to needy families.  Yang’s bill: $72,000. 

“In about 1991 or 1992, I saw Feed the Children on TV,” Yang said in a Card Player article.  “I was only a graduate student then. I didn’t have much money, but I sent $30 to Larry Jones and I wrote a note to him and said ‘I’m only a graduate student, I don’t have a lot of money, but this is all I can afford at this time. Hopefully, in the future, I can help for more. He was very gracious and he wrote back to me. It said, ‘Jerry, it is because of people like you that we can help some of the poorest kids in America.’ So, that has stuck in my mind all of these years.”

In addition to this, Jerry Yang has donated $275,000 to both the Ronald McDonald House and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  He has also given money to his church and the social agency for which he used to work.  All told, he has already eclipsed the ten percent mark he had initially set for himself, giving more than $1 million away.

Yang will also be hosting a poker tournament to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in April.

He may not be the sort of outgoing, public figure that many poker fans were looking for in a champion, but Jerry Yang is certainly serving as one heck of an ambassador for the game.