Philanthropy
Gordon is well known for his philanthropic causes, especially cancer research. Gordon is an active fundraiser and sat on the Board of Directors for the Prevent Cancer Foundation until resigning in 2011 in the wake of the Full Tilt Poker scandal.
In 2003, Gordon and fellow poker pro Rafe Furst embarked on their Ultimate Sports Adventure Tour. During the trip, the pair attended more than 140 sporting events. At each stop, they collected donations, held auctions, and raffled off prizes to benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation, raising $100,000. During the trip, Gordon and Furst came up with the idea for their Bad Beat on Cancer, an initiative that asks World Series of Poker participants to pledge 1% of any winnings to cancer research. Bad Beat on Cancer has been involved in a number of other endeavors, including an annual charity poker event hosted by the Twitter Poker Tour and held online at Gordon’s Full Tilt Poker, as well as a breast cancer charity event, the Bad Beat on Cancer Challenge, which was held in November 2009 on PokerStars. Bad Beat on Cancer has raised over $3 million for cancer prevention research.
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)