{"id":10767,"date":"2015-12-02T09:04:12","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T17:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/facebook-ceo-now-a-father-will-give-away-most-of-his-money\/"},"modified":"2015-12-02T09:04:12","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T17:04:12","slug":"facebook-ceo-now-a-father-will-give-away-most-of-his-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/facebook-ceo-now-a-father-will-give-away-most-of-his-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook CEO, now a father, will give away most of his money"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO<\/strong> \u2014 Talk about birth announcements: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife say they\u2019ll devote nearly all their wealth \u2014 roughly $45 billion \u2014 to solving the world\u2019s problems in celebration of their new baby daughter, Max.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg\u2019s wife, Priscilla Chan, gave birth to a 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter last week. But the couple didn\u2019t put out the news until Tuesday, when Zuckerberg posted it on Facebook, of course.<\/p>\n

In the same post, Zuckerberg said he and Chan will, over time, commit 99 percent of their Facebook stockholdings to such causes as fighting disease, improving education and \u201cbuilding strong communities.\u201d The couple had previously pledged to give away at least half their assets during their lifetime, but hadn\u2019t provided specifics.<\/p>\n

They are forming a new organization, called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, that will pursue those goals through a combination of charitable donations, private investment and promotion of government-policy reform.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today,\u201d the 31-year-old social media mogul and his wife wrote in a letter to their daughter, which they also posted on Facebook.<\/p>\n

The announcement stunned the charity world. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly impressive and an enormous commitment that really eclipses anything that we\u2019ve seen in terms of size,\u201d said Phil Buchanan, president of the nonprofit Center for Effective Philanthropy.<\/p>\n

By comparison, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of just over $41 billion, which includes wealth donated by the Microsoft founder and his friend, the businessman Warren Buffett.<\/p>\n

The new initiative will be organized as a limited liability company, however, rather than as a nonprofit foundation. \u201cThey want the most flexibility and they are going to use a wide variety of activities to achieve their mission,\u201d Rachael Horwitz, a Facebook spokeswoman, said via email. \u201cSo in that way this is not a foundation nor is it entirely charitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The notion of investing money in companies that tackle social issues isn\u2019t new, but it has gained more currency among a younger generation of philanthropists, particularly in the tech world.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg has also shown a previous interest in influencing public policy. He led other prominent Silicon Valley figures in forming a group, FWD.us, that lobbied and gave donations to congressional candidates in an unsuccessful effort to promote immigration reforms. Depending on how much of the new effort is devoted to lobbying, it could raise new questions about the influence of money in today\u2019s politics, some experts said.<\/p>\n

In the letter to their daughter, Zuckerberg and Chan described their goals as \u201cadvancing human potential and promoting equality.\u201d They added: \u201cWe must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Zuckerberg promised to release more details in the future, he said the couple will transfer most of their wealth to the initiative \u201cduring our lives.\u201d The couple will be in charge of the initiative, although Zuckerberg won\u2019t be quitting his day job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a full time job running Facebook,\u201d he told The Associated Press in an interview last month, during which he discussed the couple\u2019s approach to philanthropy. Of his job at the social network, he added, \u201cI\u2019m going to be doing this for long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Facebook co-founder is one of the world\u2019s wealthiest men. He and Chan, a 30-year-old pediatrician, have previously donated $100 million to public schools in Newark, New Jersey, and pledged $120 million to schools in poor communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. They\u2019ve also given $75 million to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where Chan did her medical training.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Facebook said the couple\u2019s plan to transfer their shares over time won\u2019t affect his status as controlling shareholder of the company. The company said Zuckerberg has committed to dispose of no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock every year for the next three years.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg and Chan had announced on Facebook last July that they were expecting a daughter, after Chan had three previous miscarriages. Horwitz said the baby was born early last week, but declined to say which day.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom and baby are both healthy and doing well,\u201d Horwitz added. Zuckerberg has said he plans to take two months of paternity leave.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

You can follow Brandon Bailey at twitter.com\/BrandonBailey or find his reporting at www.bigstory.ap.org\/journalist\/brandon-bailey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Talk about birth announcements: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife say they\u2019ll devote nearly all their wealth \u2014 roughly $45 billion \u2014 to solving the world\u2019s problems in celebration of their new baby daughter, Max. Zuckerberg\u2019s wife, Priscilla Chan, gave birth to a 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter last week. But the couple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":10768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10767"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}