Ballmer Bucks

Updated Jul. 17, 2020 7:31 p.m. ET

With the NBA, NHL, NASCAR and other major sports leagues and sporting events suspended or canceled, professional athletes are using their platforms to facilitate financial support for arena workers and those affected by COVID-19 across the nation. Each day, we will feature a philanthropic effort taking place in the sports world.

On March 24, Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer purchased the Forum in Inglewood, paving the way for plans to build a new home for his NBA franchise just a few miles away.

With the purchase, he made an effort to support those that are currently employed at the Forum:

And now, after offering continued employment to Forum workers, Ballmer and his wife, Connie, are supporting the Los Angeles community in its fight against COVID-19, as well as two other cities that Ballmer can call home.

Ballmer – who is worth over $50 billion – is a native of Detroit, Michigan. After attending Harvard University, he went to Stanford Graduate School of Business, but left school prematurely to join his friend Bill Gates at Microsoft, based near Seattle, Washington.

Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014, and in May of 2014, he purchased the Clippers for $2 billion.

Ballmer's philanthropic efforts are well-known, and since his arrival in Los Angeles, his Ballmer Group has done everything from donate money to food to school supplies to impoverished families across Los Angeles.

A portion of the Ballmer Group's mission:

We support efforts to improve economic mobility for children and families in the United States who are disproportionately likely to remain in poverty.
We focus on community-led initiatives, partnerships with all levels of government, stronger nonprofits, and the use of data to track progress and measure improvement. We acknowledge that systemic racism makes it harder for people of color to move up the economic ladder, and we seek to address barriers to racial equity in all we do.

Those wishing to support the Ballmer Group's efforts in Seattle, an area hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, can do so through the Group's COVID-19 Response Fund: