Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet today (Oct. 22) that he will put 1% of the company’s equity in a pool that will issue grants to employees.
The equity will come directly from Dorsey’s own holdings, and amount to about a third of his 21.86 million shares. His total shares are worth $640 million, according to FactSet. One percent of Twitter’s stock is 6.74 million shares, which is worth $196.64 million, as of Thursday’s closing price.
Twitter told Quartz it will file an 8-K with the US Securities and Exchange Commission tomorrow before the markets open in the US, which may provide additional details about how the pool will work.
The news could help boost morale at the company, after Dorsey last week cut 8% of the workforce as part of his plan to turn around the ailing social network. As the company’s new CEO, he’s been charged with reversing Twitter’s slow user growth and lagging stock price.
“I’d rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small,” he said in a follow-up tweet about his donation.
This is the exact same line Dorsey used last week when he revealed that he was donating 40 million shares of Square—the other company he’s CEO of—to support an organization he created called the Start Small Foundation. According to Square’s IPO filing, the foundation intends to invest in “under-served communities around the world,” starting with Ferguson, Missouri.