At 31, Zuckerberg roughly owns 419 million Class B shares of Facebook and has a majority of the voting shares, along with guiding the helm of the board of directors. With more active users than the entire population of China, the social network’s ad-fueled revenue only continues to grow. The Facebook co-founder and his wife Pricilla Chan are slated to give 99 percent of their net worth to charitable purposes throughout the course of their lives. The rare earliness of the young CEO’s generosity is setting the standard for giving for other business leaders.
On the creation of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative: “We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others.”
Recent benevolent leadership has been pioneered by the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. The Gates Foundation was established in 1997 and is especially committed to the medical field, including assistance in the reduction of measles by 90 percent in the last 15 years.
As Fortune puts it, “The Microsoft co-founder set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife in 1997, and his friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett later joined as a partner and committed to donating 85% of his $44 billion in stock to the couple’s efforts. In June, the Gates Foundation had a total of $41.3 billion, which makes the Zuckerberg foundation slightly larger—although obviously that value could change over time, since it is based on the market price of Facebook’s stock. The Gates Foundation has given away more than $30 billion since it was created.” The foundation’s endowment now exceeds the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford foundations combined.
Benevolent Leadership
The Chronicle of Philanthropy shared that tech donors, especially younger represented 49 percent of their 2014 list of charitable donations totaling near $2 billion. Here’s a wrap-up of other altruistic business leaders:
- Apple’s Tim Cook announced he would give the entirety of his $785 million fortune to charity and has instituted a program to match employees’ financial contributions since 2011.
- Spanx Founder Sara Blakely was the first woman billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge, where wealthy donors promise to give at least half their wealth to charity. Zuckerberg, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings have also joined the list of Giving Pledge signatories.
- Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has invested over one million dollars in Embrace Warmers’ one-for-one program which provides ingenious sleeping bags to ensure the warmth of premature babies all over the world.
- Epic Systems founder-CEO Judy Faulkner signed the Giving Pledge and plans to transfer her shares in Epic to a foundation to invest in healthcare causes and education.
- Napster co-founder and Facebook executive Sean Parker has a $600 million foundation invested in civic engagement, global public health, and life sciences.
- Aspire CEO Sam Collins seeks to contribute technology to women throughout the world with the nonprofit arm of her Aspire Foundation.
- Gordon Moore, inventor of Moore’s Law, has donated around $3 billion dollars of his assets and has $5 billion in a shared foundation with his wife.
- eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and former president Jeff Skoll dedicated over $1 billion to a variety of charities.
- WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum has donated close to $556 million in 2014 with the hopes of assisting immigrant children and cultivating more successful start-ups.
Source – Huffington Post
