Dressed in a black leotard fitted with white glitter and gems, with a bejeweled headdress and gold-headed cane, Beyoncé’s two-hour performance at Coachella was historic. No other black woman soloist has headlined for the California music festival. Guest appearances in her performance included her sister Solange and her old group-mates, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams.
For this two hours, Time Magazine’s Money estimates that she made between three and four million dollars. It sounds pretty impressive, but believe it or not it’s actually on the low end of what the singer can command for appearances. On her Formation World Tour in 2016, she made approximately $5.2 million per night, and that was while she was pregnant.
Despite having cultivated a reputation for a lifestyle dripping in diamonds, the superstar is paying it forward. Immediately after Coachella, she announced that four schools would be new beneficiaries of her BeyGOOD initiative, which intends to set examples of giving back via empowerment.
Beyoncé founded BeyGOOD in 2013 during the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour. It has raised funds for communities in crisis and communities in need of support for the past five years.
Via BeyGOOD, Beyoncé will be giving four $25,000 scholarships to historically black colleges and universities. The recipients will be Xavier University (LA), Wilberforce University (OH), Tuskegee University (AL), and Bethune-Cookman University (FL).
“We salute the rich legacy of historically black colleges and universities,” said Ivy McGregor, director of Philanthropy and Corporate Relations at Parkwood Entertainment, where BeyGOOD is managed. “We honor all institutions of higher learning for maintaining culture and creating environments for optimal learning, which expands dreams and the seas of possibilities for students.”
The schools that received the BeyGOOD scholarships will be able to award them to students in the 2018-19 school year, for any of a dozen or so fields of study. Finalists and winners are to be announced in the summer of this year.
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