Mark Zuckerberg Gives $990 Million To Charity

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mark Zuckerberg Gives $990 Million To Charity

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 19, 2013 @04:38AM from the pocket-change-we-can-believe-in dept.

mrspoonsi writes with this excerpt from Business Insider: "This morning, Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to give 18 million Facebook shares to charity by the end of the month. Facebook is currently trading at $55 per share, so Zuckerberg's gift is worth just under $1 billion. The money will go toward Zuckerberg's foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and The Breakthrough Prize In Life Science, a [Nobel] Prize-like award. Zuckereberg is giving his shares away as part of a secondary stock offering from Facebook. Reuters says Zuckerberg will sell 41.4 million shares, reducing his voting power in the company from 58.8% to 56.1%. Other insiders selling include board member Marc Andreessen, who will sell 1.65 million shares. Facebook is selling 27 million."

21 of 230 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:so he gave by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · 2013-12-19 04:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

So did Bill Gates. And Bill Clinton. Those two at least do some good work.

--
Your ad here. Ask me how!
oh boy... by globaljustin · 2013-12-19 04:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

TFA Headline was misleading...saying it like this:
"X gives [huge sum of money] to charity."
X being an often criticized figure and "charity" being the incongruent thing that supposedly makes the headline interesting.
But it buries the lead...the story isn't some tech/dork/genius/villain giving a huge sum of money away to needy people...it's about him transferring it to his own charity.
Huge difference.
Jerry Sandusky used the Second Mile Charity to find victims. Clinton uses his charity to maintain his personal/family brand and...I admit...do good things. Bill Gates, I think somewhere in his brain he wants to be altruistic for some philosophical reason, but his charity really just pumps M$ products and tries to make teachers be paid by performance.
IMHO, Gates and Zuck are bad models for tech chartiy. I would rather him take that money and pay off every home mortgage in the poor communities in his area....Oakland. The also need to stop all attempts to use his charity to get student data via "donating" some student info system and calling it some innovative name.

--
Thank you Dave Raggett
1. Re:oh boy... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-19 04:59 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  IMHO, Gates and Zuck are bad models for tech chartiy. I would rather him take that money and pay off every home mortgage in the poor communities in his area....Oakland. The also need to stop all attempts to use his charity to get student data via "donating" some student info system and calling it some innovative name.
  I would rather have a more egalitarian world, where money does not accumulate obscenely like that.
2. Re:oh boy... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-19 04:59 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  As I remember it Gates didn't give a damn about charities until the Microsoft anti-trust trial was underway. It was a PR move.
  I could be wrong though, feel free to jump in if you have citations otherwise.
  --
  Hey, ACs need sigs too!
3. Re:oh boy... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-19 05:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Gates gained a soul when he got married. Finally getting laid mellows you out.
4. Re:oh boy... by dkleinsc · 2013-12-19 05:13 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Bill Gates, I think somewhere in his brain he wants to be altruistic for some philosophical reason, but his charity really just pumps M$ products and tries to make teachers be paid by performance.
  His charity also does a ton of good stuff in areas like public health and sanitation. He's not a saint, he may be doing it primarily as a PR move, but that's definitely doing more good for the world than having it just sitting in some trust fund for his 3 kids or something. And yes, he could have also given it to a bunch of organizations rather than creating a foundation of his own, but my impression from those who have done work in the area where his foundation operates is that they have a fairly good reputation as far as non-profits go.
  I don't like Bill Gates' business tactics. I do like what he's chosen to do with a lot of his time and money.
  
  --
  I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
5. Re:oh boy... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-19 05:32 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Citations in response to a non-cited and subjective post?
  PR people are a lot cheaper than billion dollar foundations. And PR for what? A retired guy? Who cares? If this was a PR move why keep it going?
  In the end he is giving. There isn't a timetable for this and he isn't required to do it at all.
6. Re:oh boy... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-19 05:37 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  The thing is with teachers, especially in under-achieving schools, the community and students don't show up.
  My wife taught in Detroit for a while. Half her class missed half their classroom time over the course of a school year. Is it her fault that all those kids have low test scores (if they even show up on testing day)? It's the same at many of the under-achieving schools around the US. The kids and parents don't show up.
  Perhaps if you tried looking into the problem rather than rattling off overly generalized bullet points that align with what you've heard on the blue glow box in the corner of the couch room you'd have a clue.
7. Re:oh boy... by king+neckbeard · 2013-12-19 05:40 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  It's also worth considering how he got the money in the first place. You have to weigh the harm of his prior actions against the benefits of his current actions.
  
  --
  This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
8. Re:oh boy... by Sarten-X · 2013-12-19 05:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That's actually far more insightful than I think you intended.
  Having a spouse means you're forced to consider another perspective, which in turn makes it easier to understand and empathize with others you're not related to. Life isn't just about pursuing your own goals any more, but suddenly there's a concern for helping everyone. Perhaps not all the way to meeting their goals, but at least living long and well enough to have a chance.
  
  --
  You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
9. Re:oh boy... by Jason+Levine · 2013-12-19 05:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  No, but the current model for "evaluating teacher performance" is giving kids a lot of standardized tests (designed by Pearson and other big companies and not evaluated by any third party). Teachers whose students do poorly on the tests are claimed to have done a bad job - regardless if said students are English Second Language students or have special needs that might interfere with test taking. Furthermore, since teachers' jobs are tied to the results of these tests, they wind up teaching to the test. Any time spent covering items that won't appear on the test is time spent risking your job.
  Of course, the whole testing system is designed to punish public school teachers and push business-owned, for-profit, publicly financed charter schools (which all too often don't require a background in education to teach), but that's a different rant.
  (I have two kids in elementary school dealing with the whole Common Core/EngageNY/high stakes testing nonsense so I know first-hand what this is doing to our kids and teachers.)
  
  --
  My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
10. Re:oh boy... by s.petry · 2013-12-19 05:59 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Really? Gates demanding that people and governments sign long term contracts with US Agriculture and Medical corporations and not produce or grow locally as a condition of receiving his "Free" medicine is a benefit to society? Who's society are you referring to, the starving people in Ethiopia that can't grow local food any more because they received "Free vaccines"?
  Good grief man, use your head just a little. If Mr. Gates was really just "helping everyone with his money" why has his wealth continued to grow while the people he is supposedly helping go further down in poverty? Some of the vaccines being pushed overseas are illegal in numerous Western Countries after being proven harmful to recipients.
  Your view of an "awesome model" seems to be very low and abstract.
  More on topic, look for Facebook to report some major loss in value causing the stocks to drop. Zuckerberg is not the only one donating lots of stock. These people are not idiots, and didn't get to be as wealthy as they are because they are altruistic.
  
  --
  -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
11. Re:oh boy... by Derec01 · 2013-12-19 06:40 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  His wealth has continued to grow irrespective of any of that, I'm sure, due to a massive spread of investments.
  However, I can't find any reference to these contracts stipulating restrictions on food growth or the alleged unsafe vaccines. Do you have a source for either of those? I'd like to follow that up.
  In any place receiving these vaccines, wouldn't it be a headache to enforce that kind of contract anyway given the state of the local judicial system?
12. Re:oh boy... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-19 06:48 · Score: 0, Insightful
  
  Some of the vaccines being pushed overseas are illegal in numerous Western Countries after being proven harmful to recipients.
  I only suspected you were a kook and a douchebag until I read that sentence, then I knew for sure. You are a stupid asshole and your opinion worth less than nothing.
13. Re:oh boy... by blackbeak · 2013-12-19 07:41 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  And you get to fly in your Foundation's aircraft, be chauffeured about in your Foundation's limo, you get to direct funds to friends' pet projects, to hire relatives with cushy salaries, to avoid taxes on almost a billion dollars that will remain largely under your influence, to expense fine dining and gifts, you get to insert meddlesome NGO's into foreign lands (furthering your ties with clandestine government agencies), you get to influence politicians and voters, you get to serve on "advisory committees" and write legislation, you get to implement sweeping changes like "Common Core Curriculum" that will effect almost everybody (without their input) .... I'm sure I didn't list all the perks!
  
  --
  Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
14. Re:oh boy... by Smauler · 2013-12-19 07:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Having a spouse means you're forced to consider another perspective, which in turn makes it easier to understand and empathize with others you're not related to.
  Alternatively, having a spouse and family makes it much harder to understand and empathise with those outside of that family. "Old money" refers to this - people preferentially give money to those they are related to, to the detriment of others. Massive family fortunes have been accumulated and held on to this way, and have been influential despite those currently being in control being incompetent.
  People who don't have spouses and family are _more_ forced to consider other perspectives, because they actually decide what will happen to their money when they die, rather than just passing it on.
Charity by BringsApples · 2013-12-19 04:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

Hell, say what you will about Shumckaberg, but it looks like this was a good move. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation does good work as far as I can tell. It's not like he's investing back into technology or anything else that will do him any direct good - again, as far as I can tell.

--
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Not a charity by femtobyte · 2013-12-19 04:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

Check the "Silicon Valley Community Foundation" web page, and you'll see it's not a charity --- it's a big-money investment firm that manages accounts for other big-money charities. This is part of the move to make "charity" a highly profitable enterprise for big business; ways to shuffle around tax-sheltered billions invested in scummy megacorporations.
1. Re:Not a charity by femtobyte · 2013-12-19 06:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The insertion of middlemen (carrying out the will of billionaires) is common, but that doesn't make it good or charitable to be a self-serving corporatist middleman, wielding dollars for the glorification and enrichment of billionaires. I'm sure there's at least one person getting "fed" at the end of this process: Zuckerberg. Probably several cronies and nephews of cronies handed out six-figure-salary part-time jobs high in the organization, too. Giving money to yourself to further your own interests: not charity, even if you insinuate yourself as a middleman for other nominally charitable institutions (using their funds to further the interests of your own stock portfolio). Making the world a safer, friendlier place for the Zuckerbergs to control every aspect of society is not a net win for humanity.
Re:so he gave by alexander_686 · 2013-12-19 05:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

Horrible way to avoid paying taxes.
If MZ sold his stock he would keep 72%. Assuming his cost basis was $0 and a tax rate of 28%
By giving his stock away he keeps 0%. I mean, yes, you do stick it to the man by not paying taxes but you would have the same effect if you burned large piles of money.
MZ probably has other motives for giving his money away then avoiding paying taxes.
Re:...what? by Nefarious+Wheel · 2013-12-19 11:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and laid them out, end-to-end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion?

--
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear