The Victory Tour of 1984 headlined the Jacksons as a group, and showcased Michael's new solo material to more than two million Americans. It was the last tour he did with his brothers. Following controversy over the concert's ticket sales, Jackson donated his entire share of the proceeds, an estimated $3 to 5 million, to charity. Following an incident in 1984 in which Jackson received second and third degree burns to his scalp while filming a commercial for the tour's sponsor, Pepsi, he donated his $1.5 million settlement from Pepsi to the hospital where he had been treated, Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, California; its Michael Jackson Burn Center was named in his honor. Notably, even before this incident, Jackson had made multiple visits to patients in the burn unit and elsewhere in the hospital, stating that "it makes me feel good to cheer up sick and injured patients in the hospital". Jackson also donated funds from the Victory Tour to several charities, equipping a 19 bed unit at the Mount Sinai New York Medical Center, which is part of the T.J. Martell Foundation for Leukemia and Cancer Research, and enabling Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times to build a year-round camp facility for children living with cancer.

His charitable work reached new heights with the release of "We Are the World" (1985), co-written with Lionel Richie, which raised money for the poor in the US and Africa. It earned $63 million, and became one of the best-selling singles of all time, with 20 million copies sold. The project's creators received two special American Music Awards honors: one for the creation of the song and another for the USA for Africa idea. Jackson, producer Quincy Jones, and promoter Ken Kragen received special awards for their roles in the song's creation. In 1988, it was described as "the humanitarian effort Michael considers his greatest personal triumph". Humanitarian themes later became a recurring theme in his lyrics and public persona.

From 1985 to 1990, Jackson made substantial donations to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), endowing $1.5 million to that organization in 1986 to set up the "Michael Jackson UNCF Endowed Scholarship Fund", aimed toward assisting students majoring in performance arts and communications, with money given each year to students attending a UNCF member college or university. Another benefit concert held by Jackson later in the decade brought an estimated $500,000 more for UNCF scholarships.

Yoshiaki Ogiwara, a five-year-old boy from Takasaki, Gunma, Japan, was kidnapped and murdered in September 1987; Jackson was undertaking his "Bad" tour in Japan at the time, and dedicated concerts in Osaka and Yokohama to Yoshiaki's memory, and the single sleeve for "Man in the Mirror", released in February 1988, contains a dedication to Yoshaiki. All profits from that single, the fourth consecutive number one single from Jackson's album, Bad, also went to the charity Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times, of which Jackson had previously been one of the "Founding Fathers".

While on tour in November 1987, Jackson made a surprise visit to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, "armed with handfuls of autographed programs and T-shirts", a visit described by hospital staff as "an incredible tonic" for the many terminally ill young patients. Jackson's vocal coach Seth Riggs noted that Jackson would arrange to have sick children brought to his concerts, stating: "Every night the kids would come in on stretchers, so sick they could hardly hold their heads up. Michael would kneel down at the stretchers and put his face right down beside theirs so that he could have his picture taken with them, and then give them a copy to remember the moment". At a number of tour stops, Jackson would also visit with patients at a local children's hospital, and make a substantial donation to the facility. In May 1988, while touring in Rome, Jackson visited children suffering from cancer in the Bambino Gesù Hospital, also donating 100,000 pounds sterling to the hospital.[2] Later that year, following another tour appearance at Wembley Stadium in England, Jackson presented Prince Charles and Princess Diana with a donation of $450,000 for The Prince's Trust, designated for the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, described as "a favorite charity of Jackson's". He also visited two wards of that hospital while on that trip.

In February 1989, a few weeks after a mass shooting at the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California resulting in the deaths of five children and the wounding of dozens more, Jackson visited the school and met with some of the children affected by the event.