Facebook’s Zuckerberg is Most Generous of 2013

10 Feb, 2014

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were the most generous American philanthropists in 2013, with a donation of 18m shares of Facebook stock valued at more than $970m to a Silicon Valley non-profit.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported on Sunday that Zuckerberg’s donation was the largest charitable gift on the public record in 2013 and put the young couple at the top of the magazine’s list of 50 most generous Americans in 2013. The top 50 contributors made donations last year totalling $7.7bn, plus pledges of $2.9bn.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy editor, Stacy Palmer, said the most significant fact from the list was the amount of money coming from living donors. Palmer said: “It’s a sure sign that the economy is getting better and people are getting a lot less cautious.”

Some of the nation’s biggest givers do not appear on the 2013 list, not because they stopped being generous, but because their donations in 2013 were counted as pledges in previous years.

The Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda, gave their foundation slightly more than $181.3m last year, but they were paying off a pledge of about $3.3bn they made in 2004. The founder of CNN, Ted Turner, and the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, also made large gifts toward previous pledges.

It took gifts totalling at least $37.5m to make the list this year. Forty-two of the top 50 made gifts of $50m or more. Thirty people made big gifts to colleges and universities, but Palmer noted most college gifts went to science and research this year, not to buildings, as in previous years.

Ten of the 50 made the list because of bequests after their deaths, including the second biggest giver in 2013, George Mitchell, who made his fortune in energy and real estate.

At No 3 were the Nike chairman, Philip Knight, and his wife, Penelope, who made a $500m challenge grant to Oregon Health and Science University Foundation for cancer research.

Fourth on the list was philanthropist and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made gifts totalling $452m in 2013 to arts, education, environment, public health and other causes.

Nineteen people or couples on the list have signed the Giving Pledge, started by Gates and Buffett in 2010. More than 120 of the world’s wealthiest individuals and families have pledged to give at least half their wealth to charity since the movement began.

The Guardian

Mentioned In This Post: