(Mike Blake/Reuters) 
 
 It's been a huge three weeks for Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey. 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. 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." — jack (@jack) October 23, 2015 
 
 Dorsey owns about 22 million shares of the company, so his gift amounts to about 7 million shares. 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. 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. 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).
– 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.