
 
 Jack Dorsey was named Twitter's permanent chief executive on Oct. 5, ending months of speculation about who would take the reins at the company. (Mike Blake/Reuters) 
 
 It's been a huge three weeks for Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey. 
 
 On Oct. 5, Twitter's board removed the "interim" from his title, confirming reports he would be chief executive and ending months of speculation over who would helm the social media service. Since then, Dorsey has made headlines for not earning a salary or taking a new bonus or additional stock compensation in his new role. The company has launched a big new element of the service, the news-via-Twitter feature "Moments," named a new chairman of the board, apologized to developers and announced it was cutting more than 300 workers (8 percent of the company's staff). 
 
 Oh, and amid all this, Dorsey filed the paperwork to take public the other company he founded and runs, the mobile payments company Square. 
 
 Dorsey capped off this mad flurry of news with a tweet Thursday night saying he is giving one-third of his Twitter stock, or one percent of the company, "to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people." The shares are equal to about $200 million. “I’d rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small,” Dorsey said in a subsequent tweet. “I’m confident we can make Twitter big!” 
 
 Whew. 
 
 Dorsey's most recent effort may be an attempt to help increase employee morale after last week's job cut news, or, as Bloomberg News noted, grow the pool of shares that can be used to pay employees without diluting the stock. It's a rare move, though there have been a few recent stories of CEOs foregoing a bonus or giving away their own shares or profits from selling the company. 
 
 The chief executive of a Turkish food delivery company paid out $27 million to 114 employees this summer after selling the firm. In July, Bobby Frist, the nephew of former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, gave $1.5 million of his own shares to 600 employees of the Nashville-based health care company he runs. Dan Price, the founder of Seattle-based Gravity Payments, made headlines for using his $1 million salary (as well as company profits) to fund raises for every employee in his company to at least $70,000. In 2013, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing gave $3.25 million of his $4.23 million bonus to hourly employees. 
 
 But something on the scale of $200 million is really quite rare. Whether the move is designed to add to the shock-and-awe of the last few weeks before next week's earnings report, increase employee morale in the aftermath of announcing layoffs or pay employees with equity--the gold standard in Silicon Valley currency--without diluting the value of other shares, one thing's for sure. Dorsey's move to give away such a big chunk of his own stock helps boost and expand the argument that's been made repeatedly about Twitter that a founder can do things for this company that other CEOs could not. 
 
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 Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of both Twitter and Square, is in a giving mood. 
 
 On Thursday evening, he announced at a Twitter staff meeting and on the social network that he would donate one-third of his stake in the company — worth close to $200 million — to the employee stock compensation pool “to reinvest directly in our people.” 
 
 “I’d rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small,” he wrote in a tweet. “I’m confident we can make Twitter big!” 
 
 Although no employee is being given additional stock directly through Mr. Dorsey’s action, the move makes extra stock available for grants and could help prop up morale, which took a hit after he laid off 8 percent of the work force last week. 
 
 Last week, Mr. Dorsey disclosed in Square’s paperwork for an initial public offering that he would donate 40 million shares of that company, or 10 percent of the total stock outstanding, to the Start Small Foundation. Those shares, on top of 15 million shares he had already donated to the foundation, are intended to be sold to Square customers to raise money to help artists, musicians and local businesses. 
 
 He used identical language at that time to describe his planned donation of Square stock, which would be worth about $600 million based on the last round of private funding raised by the company: “I’d rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small. We intend to make this big!” ||||| It’s been a rough couple of weeks since Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as CEO. While the share price got a short-term boost from his arrival, it weakened again after Dorsey announced that the company had grown too large, and would have to lay off about 335 employees or about 8% of the company’s workforce. 
 
 Perhaps in part to ease the pain of that restructuring, Dorsey announced on Thursday night — on Twitter, of course — that he is donating a third of his ownership stake to the employee equity pool. That amounts to about 1% of the company’s total equity base. 
 
 🐥⚡️ I'm giving ~1/3rd of my Twitter stock (exactly 1% of the company) to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people. — jack (@jack) October 23, 2015 
 
 Dorsey owns about 22 million shares of the company, so his gift amounts to about 7 million shares. At current market rates, that stock is worth approximately $200 million. By being added to the equity pool, the shares will then be available for equity grants as part of hiring new staff, bonuses, etc. 
 
 Giving up this much equity in Twitter (TWTR) isn’t going to put Dorsey on the bread line by any means: He also owns about 24% of Square, the electronic payments company he founded after he left Twitter (and is still CEO of). His stake in that company, which just filed documents for a public offering, is worth about $1.6 billion based on Square’s most recent round of fundraising. 
 
 The Twitter CEO has also donated a chunk of his Square stock, although not to employees. Dorsey recently donated 20% of his stake in the company — about 15 million shares — to a foundation he set up that will use the money to help artists and other creative professionals.
– Twitter employees have had a chaotic go of it over the past few weeks: first the shakeup of co-founder Jack Dorsey coming on board permanently as CEO, then an unpleasant round of layoffs that purged 8% of the company's staff. Brighter news, however, has since come down their feeds, Fortune reports. "I'm giving ~1/3rd of my Twitter stock (exactly 1% of the company) to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people," he tweeted Thursday evening, when he also held a staff meeting to make his announcement, per the New York Times. Using his 22 million shares as the baseline, that percentage amounts to about 7 million shares, worth roughly $200 million, dumped into the worker's equity base, Fortune notes. Those shares can then be granted to new hires, as a bonus, or as other incentives. Why exactly Dorsey donned his Santa suit a bit early is up for speculation. The Washington Post, which calls the move "quite rare" due to its value, speculates he could have done it either to make nice with employees after the morale-busting layoffs, reward workers with equity without watering down other shares' value, or generate excitement before next week's earning call. "I'd rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small. I'm confident we can make Twitter big!" he followed up on Twitter. Don't worry that Dorsey's generosity means he'll be chowing down on ramen every night: In addition to his remaining Twitter shares, his share of the Square electronic-payments company is worth around $1.6 billion, per Fortune.