Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to the Obama Foundation, the largest individual gift in its history

• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a $100 million donation to the Obama Foundation.
• The donation is the largest individual gift in the organization's history.

Jeff Bezos has made a $100 million donation to the Obama Foundation, the largest individual donation in the organization's history.

The Amazon founder's unrestricted donation will be used to fund multiple groups, including Girls Opportunity Alliance and My Brother's Keeper, two youth organizations under the foundation's umbrella. As part of his donation, Bezos requested that the plaza at the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago's South Side be named the John Lewis Plaza after the late congressman and civil rights leader.

"Freedom fighters deserve a special place in the pantheon of heroes, and I can't think of a more fitting person to honor with this gift than John Lewis, a great American leader and a man of extraordinary decency and courage," Bezos said in a press release about his donation.

The news site Puck was the first to report about Bezos' donation earlier on Monday.

The decision to name the plaza after Lewis — and not Bezos himself — is part of the foundation's goal of shifting away from granting naming rights to wealthy donors. Instead, public spaces at the foundation's Chicago hub will be named after "extraordinary change agents upon whose shoulders we all stand," Valerie Jarrett, the foundation's CEO, said in the press release.

Bezos' latest donation follows a slew of high-profile giving over the past several months. Immediately following his spaceflight this past summer, he gave $100 million each to chef Jose Andres and activist Van Jones to dole out as they see fit. Bezos also donated $200 million to the Smithsonian in July and pledged $10 billion in 2020 to fight climate change via the Bezos Earth Fund.

Bezos, who's worth $210 billion, has ramped up his charitable giving at the same time that he's been working to carve out his legacy since leaving the helm of Amazon earlier this year. He and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, were highly visible at the United Nation's climate summit last month, and his other company, Blue Origin, has made two high-profile spaceflights this year alone.