Zuckerberg pledged 99% of his Facebook shares to charity

Person: Mark Zuckerberg
Lived: b. 1984
Field: Technology
From: American

The story

By late 2015 Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan already had a record of large-scale giving. In 2010 Zuckerberg had signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away at least half of his wealth. In December 2012 the couple said they would devote the majority of their wealth over their lifetimes to advancing human potential and promoting equality, and they gave Facebook shares worth about $500 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation that month and shares worth about $990 million a year later.

On 1 December 2015, shortly after the birth of their first daughter, the couple went much further. They pledged to transfer 99 percent of their Facebook shares, then valued at about $45 billion, to a new organisation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The shares would not be handed over at once but gradually, over the course of their lives. Measured by the value of the shares involved, it was one of the largest philanthropic commitments ever announced.

The initiative was given a broad mission: to advance human potential and promote equality, with work in science, education and community causes. Rather than a traditional charitable foundation, Zuckerberg and Chan structured it as a limited liability company. That choice allows it to make grants, invest in companies and support policy work, giving it more flexibility than a conventional foundation.

The pledge drew wide attention. In June 2016 Business Insider named Zuckerberg one of its Top 10 Business Visionaries Creating Value for the World, alongside Elon Musk and Sal Khan, citing the couple's commitment to give away 99 percent of their wealth.

Within a year the initiative was putting its resources to work. In 2016 it gave $600 million to create the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub in San Francisco, a research centre linking scientists at UCSF, UC Berkeley and Stanford, with the long-term goal of helping science cure, prevent or manage all disease. The Biohub's investigators were required to share their findings quickly on preprint servers, and later funding extended its work into the 2030s.

The 99 percent pledge set a new benchmark for how much of a fortune a founder might commit to philanthropy, and it was made by a couple then only in their early thirties, giving the initiative decades to pursue its goals.