​Zuckerberg to donate 99% of his Facebook shares for charity

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Wednesday 02 Dec 2015 - 22:12 Makkah mean time-20-2-1437 New York (IINA) - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife said they’ll devote nearly all their wealth - roughly $45 billion - to solving the world’s problems in celebration of their new baby daughter Max. Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla Chan, gave birth to a daughter last week. But the couple didn’t put out the news until Tuesday, when Zuckerberg posted it on Facebook, of course. 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 “building strong communities.” The couple had previously pledged to give away at least half their assets during their lifetime, but hadn’t provided specifics. 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. “Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today,” the 31-year-old social media mogul and his wife wrote in a letter to their daughter, which they also posted on Facebook. The announcement stunned the charity world. “It’s incredibly impressive and an enormous commitment that really eclipses anything that we’ve seen in terms of size,” said Phil Buchanan, president of the nonprofit Center for Effective Philanthropy. 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. The new initiative will be organized as a limited liability company, however, rather than as a nonprofit foundation. “They want the most flexibility and they are going to use a wide variety of activities to achieve their mission,” Rachael Horwitz, a Facebook spokeswoman, said via email. “So in that way this is not a foundation nor is it entirely charitable. HA/IINA