Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

tech.fortune.cnn.com

187 pointsrmason140 comments

I'm getting a bit miffed at the comments talking about this being a "PR move" or helpful for a "tax break". Did I read this wrong or did it not say 500. MILLION. dollars?

The cynicism must be pretty darn strong to try and explain that away by anything other than Zuck wanting to do some good with his shares and money. We should be applauding it, not over-analyzing it for how it benefits him.

Why would such moves be automatically altruistic?

Why would it matter if they're altruistic or not? It's a move, it's going to help. Who the fuck cares why?

The saying goes "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

You would look a gift horse in the mouth if the mafia gave it you right?

It'd come with strings attached...

I might be willing to accept a lot of strings for 500mil ... just saying.

Problem is Zuck wants your soul and takes it for far less than $500 mil then sells it to other people and gives someone some stock with those strings attached...

When you put it that way, he can't be anything other than an asshole.

Rock solid logic.

Banks use your money for interest and loans (or at least a percentage) and you get "free" money in the form of credit cards and interest. Facebook uses your data for ads in exchange for "free" services.

You can always opt out if you don't like it. Store your data in your mattress. :)

That I do.

People know how banks operate and they are regulated. The same is not true for Facebook, which makes negative policy decisions all the time.

Yes, because the recent financial crisis proved how much we know about banks and their dealings.

Banks are one of the most opaque industries and are constantly devising (ingenious) ways around regulation.

Yes and that is with regulation. Imagine what Facebook is like.

> Why would it matter if they're altruistic or not? It's a move, it's going to help. Who the fuck cares why?

You have to look at both acts of commission and omission when you're considering someone's impact on the world.

Zuckerberg is donating an eye-watering amount of money to charity. That's cool, but what about the rest of his wealth? His net worth is something like $14bn last time I checked.

That makes this a donation of around 3.5% of his net worth. No more impressive than someone with $200k of assets donating $7k to charity. In fact, given diminishing marginal returns to wealth, it's considerably less impressive. $500m is nothing to someone with a net worth of $14bn. It's just some digits on a piece of paper.

Consider a parallel universe in which Facebook never existed, and the $14bn that accrued to Zuck through his stake in the business was scattered amongst the many investors from whence it came. Who is to say these investors, between them, would not be donating an average of 3.5% of their net wealth to charity?

"Consider a parallel universe in which Facebook never existed, and the $14bn that accrued to Zuck through his stake in the business was scattered amongst the many investors from whence it came"

You're making a mistake. There wasn't $14bn in investors pocket that was simply moved to Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg created wealth. It wasn't simply moving existing wealth.

In your parellel universe, there was less money to donate.

"You have to look at both acts of commission and omission when you're considering someone's impact on the world."

No, that's wrong. When considering someone's impact on the world, you only need to consider their impact. Mark's impact was creating Facebook, with all that implies, the good and the bad. And it also, now, includes giving 500 million dollars to charity, which will probably save at least some lives (doubtful it will have no impact or a negative impact, imo).

Unless by impact you mean something more like "considering whether someone is morally good or bad", in which case I'd agree with your statmenet, but still rule that Zuckerberg is good from the public info on him.

> You're making a mistake. There wasn't $14bn in investors pocket that was simply moved to Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg created wealth. It wasn't simply moving existing wealth.

There was literally $14bn in investors' pockets that moved to Zuckerberg. That's how it works. They liked the cut of his jib, so they gave him money in exchange for a slice of his business.

If it hadn't gone to Zuckerberg, it could have gone to someone else, perhaps someone more charitable.

> In your parellel universe, there was less money to donate.

Zuckerberg may have created wealth, but he didn't create money. The money supply is controlled.

> No, that's wrong. When considering someone's impact on the world, you only need to consider their impact.

A person's impact on the world is determined by both the things they do, and the things they fail to do. We could argue at length about whether acts of omission ought to carry moral or legal punishments, but they are undeniably part of the overall impact that you have on the world.

> And it also, now, includes giving 500 million dollars to charity, which will probably save at least some lives (doubtful it will have no impact or a negative impact, imo).

My point is that, sure, Zuckerberg is cycling money into charitable causes, but in his absence the very same money may have been cycled in greater quantities, at a greater rate.

That's the bar at which you measure Zuckerberg's character.

If you go into a HN thread like this and expect someone to not shit all over someone giving away millions of dollars to charity, you haven't been paying attention.

Unless HN is navel-gazing, negativity is the default.

Wouldn't say negative by default but inquisitive, which i believe is a good thing.

> Did I read this wrong or did it not say 500. MILLION. dollars?

This isn't directed at Zuck or Facebook, or anything. Because I really don't know him.

But regarding your shock about the dollar amount...

Keep in mind that it's incredibly easy to be generous when you are at the top. It's actually so easy, that it's almost effortless.

There really is a difference between a man that writes a check that makes no difference to him (in the amount), and a man with nothing that roles up his sleeves, goes out, and dedicates himself to helping others.

I'll celebrate the latter before I'll celebrate the former.

One throws money away, the other helps change everyone around him.

First, "throws money away", really? It's going toward something good, helping real people's lives. Second it's fine if you want to measure someone's charitableness by their personal sacrifice, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with measuring it by the impact of their actions. In your scenario I would say the money being thrown away would have much more of an impact.

I've long stopped believing that money helps improve the world. People do.

If you throw money at a problem, often times you create a dependency on that aid, and other times you just end up with even more mouths to feed.

It's not that monetary aid is always 100% ineffective. It's just that once you tally up the bad and the good, you're left with something that's in the red.

Money is an extremely effective social organization and incentive system. It's a way to get people to behave in a way you want to. The right investments can help change the world.

And you pay people with money.

> Second it's fine if you want to measure someone's charitableness by their personal sacrifice

Why do you think that's fine? Do you regard the notion that one person's happiness must be "paid for" by another person's suffering as a virtuous one?

Why not celebrate both?

Beyond that, even if we accept the premise that it's easier for Zucker to give away $500MM than someone with little to donate a fraction of that amount, the money will absolutely have a great net impact on society as a whole. Isn't that contribution to the betterment of all worth a major celebration?

I think part of the problem is that it's hard to conceptualize what sort of impact donations as large as these will have. If we actually met the thousands of people that this gift will help out, and heard their stories of what a different it made, I think it'd be much harder to dismiss than it is a written number.

If you think the aid is effective, you can celebrate that.

But (for example purposes - not targeting Zuck) why would you celebrate a person who is using a donation as a tax write-off?

This complaint comes up every time. But, can anyone explain to me how spending $500 mil /for the purpose/ of saving less than 500 mil in taxes would make any sense at all? People tend to frame it as if it was somehow a profitable maneuver.

Who cares if it's a tax write-off? What is at all negative about a tax-write off that in any way detracts from the manifest positive impact that the charitable donation itself creates?

500 Million is not effortless for anyone on planet earth. Mark Zuckerberg has somewhere in the range of 7 to 10 billion dollars. 500M is somewhere between 5 and 7 percent of his net worth. I realize that money has less marginal utility to billionaires, but donating 5 to 7 percent of what you've earned in your whole life is nothing to sneeze at. I'm pretty sure Mark thought about this decision as he has never been known to throw money around, and for you to dismiss it as "effortless" is fairly absurd.

I guess you didn't belive me when I said my post had nothing to do with Zuck or Facebook.

Ok, you can go back to celebrating your Steve Jobs poster. Jobs showed how much of a maverick he was by keeping all his money to himself and fuck the world. Now THAT took real courage and effort.

You're not the first person to glorify volunteering and charity work over monetary donations, but I think it's misguided. It's my impression that most charities could use money a lot more than volunteer time, especially because it's easier to convert the former into the latter. If you make $50/hr as a contractor, you could go work as a volunteer for an hour or do an hour of contracting and give 5 man hours to a charity, as well as giving 5 people some work. Or if they don't need any extra labor but they need anything else they can use the cash for that. Even if it's a lot less romanticized, getting full value for your labor out of a market economy then redirecting part of it to charitable causes probably does a lot more overall good than doing a (relatively) inefficient amount of labor. You argued elsewhere that people can get dependent on money, but they can be just as easily as dependent on anything else you do.

The only exceptions I can think of are blood donations or anything where you're donating a 'human' element (visiting the elderly) rather than your work.

I celebrate the former first.

Agreed. Who cares if there is a tax break for this. I think this donation is well-timed and I would like to see more "rich" corporations follow suit. I was initially thinking he might do something for Sandy Hook. There is a community torn to shreds that will never be the same. Here is a list of ways we can all help now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/12/14/connectic...

I care. Or well, I care if there _aren't_ tax breaks for this. People who complain about this being a PR stunt or driven by self-interest are missing the point. If appeals to self-interest are what it takes to get people to do good, then we should appeal to people's self interest and applaud those who give in to those appeals.

This kind of dignity just doesn't apply when it comes to solving certain problems. I doubt the kids with new opportunities in Newark, or the people without TB or Malaria in Africa give two shits about what motivated the people who helped them.

Edit: One other thing worth noting is that tax breaks for charitable donations in the US are actually a really, really awesome thing for the government to do. It's basically Uncle Sam saying "yanno what, we understand that there are certain things that government doesn't do well, so we're going to approve you diverting some of your taxes to these other organizations who do it better."

Does it even matter? A charity now has 500 million dollars. That's the only relevant point.

You view charity in terms of the benefit to the recipient. I think that's the exact wrong way to view it.

I think charity should be measured by how much it hurts to give. $500 million is about 1/20 of Mark Zuckerberg's estimated wealth. He could donate $8.4 billion and still be a billionaire. He could donate $9 billion and still be set for the rest of his life. $500 million is almost inconsequential to him.

Compare this to an impoverished widow who lives off of $10K a year and donates half of that. Now that is charity. But by your measure, this is merely five thousand dollars, not 500. MILLION. DOLLARS. That miserly widow.

Also, charity isn't charity if there is any kind of quid pro quo. Your name on a building. Donating to that orchestra you always patronize. In Mark's case, the quid pro quo is the positive press he and Facebook receives from it. If he really cared, he'd have given as anonymously as possible (like Chuck Feeney did).

Generally, I view acts like this as the wealthy trying to buy their way out of hell.

I think you are viewing in the wrong way.

I see charity in terms of impact you can make. If I have 1000 bucks, and give 500 for charity, this means that I donate half of what I have. If Zuck fives 500 Million, he donated 1.000.000 times more than me. It doesn't matter how much do he has, it matter how much he can impact. 1 milion dollars are stiill 1 million dollars, despite if the donors has only 2 millions, or 1 billion.

The present value of the securities is certainly one aspect of measuring the value of said securities to Mr. Zuckerberg. Another aspect would also be the control of his company that he's giving up (since it's primarily stock I assume). The second one I believe is one that would interest Mr. Zuckerberg more than the dollar value of said securities. But even then, it probably amounts to a negligible steak in the company as well.

It doesn't hurt him as much as the widow, but taxes or not $500 million will do a whole lot more than $5000.

You're falling prey to one of the biggest flaws in human psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game

This is a win-win scenario, the charity gets lots of money and he gets his name on a building and positive press. Yet you're turning it into a negative because you believe he gets more than he gives.

On the one hand I can see where you're coming from - charity can very often be done as a self-serving way to justify other evils. Kind of like the dad who out of guilt for never being home buys his kids a nice computer.

On the other hand, 500 million dollars hurts for anybody - even viewing it relatively, 1/20th of your wealth is a pretty sizable chunk of change to be giving away. Having his name on it is right in line with the Gates/Buffett thing of trying to provoke other billionaires to action.

As a side note...I may be wrong, but as I read your note, I think I hear echoes of Jesus talking about the impoverished widow's donation in Luke 21 - if so, I'd say this is a misunderstanding of what Jesus is getting at here - he's not saying the large donations were bad or wrong, but rather that the woman's giving both(!) of her two small coins caused her donation to be most valuable to God. He was focussing on the positive rather than being cynical about the others' gifts - he simply said her gift was more valuable.

I'm really, really trying to restrain myself from vigorously flaming you here in the way that I'd be tempted to if I'd seen this post in a forum where the cultural norms tend toward less civility than HN. Suffice to say that I find your views utterly abhorrent and unconscionable.

Charity is about helping people who need help, creating more happiness in the world than previously existed. Measuring its virtue in terms of how much pain it creates - for anyone - is a shameful, Manichean inversion of morality.

Maybe "the wealthy" are "trying to buy their way out of hell". They're also buying other people's way out of hell. Good on all counts; who wants to see anybody living in hell, other than someone who thinks that pain is good?

People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

Well he deserves the hammering. The guy is clearly immoral and has damaged people's privacy and the world wide web forever.

$500mil doesn't suddenly make that ok, especially considering the charity is basically a quango.

Why do you think he's immoral?

If you equate "enabled people to share more of their lives more broadly" with "damaged people's privacy" then I agree, but I'm not sure even a majority would agree with a sentiment of that necessarily being a bad thing. People share what they feel comfortable with, don't they?

It's not about what but to whom.

To whom is hard to control and is made harder on purpose as after all, their entire model is based on encouraging sharing legitimately or otherwise.

Don't underestimate the power of the majority to make a crap decision. That's why we have privacy and data protection laws in the EU: to protect people from predatory information gathering and sharing.

Who's privacy was damaged in a way where the victim didn't voluntarily give it up?

Guys like these maybe : http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/10/facebook_bobbi_d...

Are you joking? You have got to be joking. What have you contributed to society that amounts to 1/100000th of Mark's recent contribution? You're going to sit here and write an internet comment about how a guy who just donated $500 million dollars to charity is evil because you don't like the way he handles privacy settings on the $100 billion dollar company that he started single-handedly

You have some serious soul-searching to do, guy. Go out there and build something, or do anything useful with your life. Then come back and tell me who you think is good or evil.

Do you have to be successful in order to be allowed an opinion?

If your opinion is as boneheaded as the parent's, then yes.

Edit: This was uncalled for, and I apologize.

What I mean to say is that anybody who builds things of value for a living quickly develops a more nuanced sense of morality than the parent displays. I do think that, when talking of the moral character of great people, the experience of having gone through the struggle yourself is rich with perspective. The fact that the parent deems Mark "clearly immoral" because Mark changed the parent's Facebook UI is absolutely the most revolting type of perspective in my eyes.

You've just lost any credibility by saying this.

You're right. Thanks.

People like the parent bring out the worst in me -- people who judge others without lifting a finger. I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with the name-calling, though.

Thanks for the rational reply.

For ref, I don't do nothing - I do a lot of charitable work which benefits people directly (children with neurological problems). No stock, no schemes (other than gift aid). I won't go into the amount in detail but per year for the last year it's been larger than zuck's donation aggregated per Facebook staff member

I'm entitled to judge a person by their own standards - in public, in front of people, which is how zuck wants us to live our social life.

I stand by my point.

I'll have done net more positive things by sitting on my arse doing nothing, which I haven't been.

Yeah, he deserves kudos for this, but he also deserves much of the shit that people talk about him.

Facebook is a company that is loathed roughly in proportion to the degree that people understand what they actually do to make their money: adorn your baby or wedding photos with fart app ads, put your own face on various ads that you know nothing about, make you play whack-a-mole with their settings UI to preserve what little control of your information they allowed you to have last week, sell your instagram sexts, etc etc.

And he's the guy who calls the shots.

> And he's the guy who calls the shots.

When a child grows into a teenager it becomes harder to blame the father for their actions.

Right. That is indeed a more difficult and nuanced judgement than holding a corporation's CEO responsible for its major business decisions.

I haven't seen evidence that the average facebook user cares that much about the things that you've mentioned.

I fully accept that some of their users (or ex-users) do. I have seen plenty of blog posts and outraged media stories. Yet I haven't noticed any great attrition among my friends on facebook, which is what I would expect to see if people cared much about this stuff.

What on earth does "what most people feel" have to do with anything? Nobody in Germany seemed to care that much about what Hitler was doing until they lost the war.

Off-topic but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law

I know very well about the frustrating action on the internet where if you use Hitler for an extreme example of anything to make the point clear, someone's going to link Godwin's law.

Well, if you prefer an on-topic response:

The guy gave 500 million dollars to improve something in this world... The way he runs his company (or as someone else in this thread said, the company "runs itself") has nothing to do with it.

Still on the Hitler topic, I don't think you could opt-out of being german, nor could you voice your opinion freely against whatever was happening without fear of the consequences.

What I think, and in this I think you agree with me, is that Facebook should be more transparent as to what is done to your data, so that people would make a conscious choice of using it or not.

Because in this scenario (facebook, not WW2) the individual facebook users are the ones who stand to lose something in most arguments against Facebook's model.

So if a minority objects to facebook, I would suggest they just not use facebook. In most cases that means facebook won't have a negative impact on them.

Facebook is also, as a piece of software, utter crap.

this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

== Why? Can you explain?

How is this not a PR exercise: Oopps. Here's $500MM.

Investment of $500MM is going to result in very poor ROI if this is a PR exercise. It's going to be roughly a few days (perhaps a week) of "Zuck is nice" news stories and then be mostly forgotten.

$1Bn was not material enough for FB bod to even be briefed on instagram. this is 1/2 that for scale. Furthermore, after tax shields, this is only $250 out of pocket. Spending $250 to protect a $10-50bn asset base is actually good math. Same as instagram purchase logic. BTW, $250m is also the amount that evaporated from the instagram deal for instagram shareholders during the 6m it took to close the deal (FB stock portion decreased in value). At the scale of FB, these numbers are not so impressively generous, in other words.

While I don't think its a one sided discussion, its certainly open for debate if you are looking at the maths.

It's not so much that I would consider $250MM too much to spend on a PR exercise. I think there would be much more effective PR exercises available for that price.

This isn't Facebooks money, it's Zucks money. It is roughly 5-7% of his entire net worth, so I'd say it is fairly material.

It depends - does he benefit personally from a tax writeoff from this? From all of his previous behaviour it would seem that this would more likely be the motivating factor here.

Giving away $500 Million is giving away $500 Million. The charity is receiving $500 million. Zuck doesn't get anything for it at all. If he earnt so much that he was able to write off $500 million, that just means he pays less tax on the rest. But at 30% tax rate, and if the whole lot was deductible (it wouldn't be), it's still $350 million out of his pocket. He's not benefiting (financially) in any way.

These comments are so pathetic it kills me. This man just donated half of a billion dollars to a good cause. There is absolutely no way around the fact that a donation of that size is an incredible act of generosity. If he did it to get a tax break or to impress his neighbor it wouldn't change a thing.

I'm somewhat confused. If $500 million in shares are donated by Zuckerberg, does that mean a tax write-off of that amount? Also, to verify, the foundation would have to liquidize the shares, right? That kind of instant sell-off would cause massive drops in price... I really hate to ask this (as I honestly don't have anything against Zuckerberg, and really don't feel that "rich people" or "all companies" are evil or anything, as I know some people do), but is this not a massive tax arbitrage? Especially so, given that many people feel that Facebook's stock is overvalued (trading at almost $30 when it "should" trade for less than $10)? Even without any possible benefits to Zuckerberg (which I don't particularly really care about, and which brianpam had an interesting explanation for in his comment elsewhere on this post), doesn't that make this number sound much larger than it would ever really mean to the foundation's bottom line, making this insanely large number somewhat for show? (Seriously: please tell me I'm wrong; I just want to better understand these things.) (Although, thinking more, maybe the "show" is also in the benefit of the foundation, as having a massive donation, the largest in the foundation's history, also looks very good for it, even if the money deflates quite a bit in the process of turning it into cash.)

(edit: Someone, in person, points out they could hold onto the stock and sell it off slowly, or keep it for dividends; I don't think this stock has dividends, and maybe it is actually maintaining its value well--my comment was based somewhat on the premise that the various "overvalued" comments from a few months ago would continue into ever-decreasing prices, but in fact the stock went up at some point from its low-point, so maybe that's where I'm wrong?)

I'm curious about if this benefits him (and/or the company) with tax writeoffs. Just want a clear picture to understand.

Donating stock is not that uncommon, the receiver can choose to sell, hold, or some combination. I'm not an accountant but he should be able to write off the taxes for the market value of the stock at the time of the donation? "Many people" may think the stock is overvalued, but the open market is valuing it at it's current price, so that's what it's worth right now.

There is not a lot to write the donation off against. Zuck is on a salary and won't be selling any stock for a few more years. This is straight up just giving away $500M.

Zuck wasn't the one who put a dollar value on the donation, that was CNN. Zuck only mentioned a number of shares. He also said he is committed to giving away most of his net worth.

There really is nothing that can be criticized here. You could perhaps discuss his choice of how to distributed his wealth, but the fact that he is giving it away, and starting so soon in his life (as opposed to waiting for when he retires), should be commended.

And if Facebook "should" be trading at $10, then it would be trading at $10.

It's likely he can carry the deduction forward.

(I do understand that he only saves some portion of the $500 million so it doesn't make sense to say he is doing it for tax purposes.)

I imagine once you have a guaranteed $10-$20 million to your name, you'd not need or have any attachment to any money after that.

I would at least believe that there is a point where most people start seeing money primarily as a tool (rather than something they primarily exchange for necessities...).

My qualification there was mostly intended to deflect the impression that I was sniping. I don't have any much knowledge of high end wealth management, but my understanding of it is that it is very difficult to use a charitable gift to actually make money. There is some tax benefit, but it is always smaller than the gift.

Apparently the big charity-as-tax-scam is to establish a bona fide foundation and then stack the board with people you would like to provide with income. But that foundation has to pass a smell test with the IRS, so it is really a tax and wealth management strategy, not a way to escape paying taxes (at least, paying taxes on income that gets used for something or other).

FB trades an average of ~63 million shares a day. It wouldn't be that hard to sell these in the normal course of business over say a few months without having much if any impact on the share price.

People keep talking about charitable tax write-offs as if there's some sort of profitable benefit to them. Either I'm daft, or there are a lot of people out there who are very confused about the us tax code.

How does this in any way benefit Mark? He can only write off a portion of his income (yes, even if he carries it forward). So, he's getting back what, like ~40% of this back as a deduction(depending on what bracket he's in)? It's still 250M dollars out of his bank account. There's no math that makes this work our in his favor. (Is there some kind of trick here that I'm missing like reducing your income, claiming the deduction as unrealized losses, and then hedging against the stock price decreasing over time? Sort of like a short?) I just don't see it.

What am I missing here about the tax code that results in any charitable tax write off resulting in a net benefit for the individual? Seriously, I'd love to know how to take advantage of this loophole myself.

I'm curious for someone to explain the choice of charity. It looks like Silicon Valley Community Foundation is an organization that specializes in helping people and companies set up large spendings of charitable donations. Does anyone else do that on this scale?

It seems the alternative is spending a fair amount of mental overhead to set up a charitable foundation or donating to an existing foundation institutionally equipped to spend that much money as a non-profit (the Gates Foundation).

Silicon Valley Community Foundation is a Community Foundation (in contrast to a Private Foundation), which means that they manage lots of different pools of money from different sources. It also means that donations to them are tax-deductible in the exact same way it is with other charities[1].

I'm not familar with the specifics of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, but it looks like SV Community Foundation, similar to most Community Foundations, does a lot of work managing what are known as donor-advised funds. Check out this Wikipedia page for some good info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor_advised_fund

1. Private Foundations have a few different rules in place, including lower maximum deductibility for donors, required 5% funds disbursement to charitable organizations, etc. Check out this link for a comparison http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/considering...

It's not a normal charitable foundation, but it's more like a fund that donors house their donations, and that then act as a sort of clearing house to match up these donations with grant applicants, where the donor keep a directorial role. The SVCF doesn't seem to have much in the way of limits on the kind of charitable projects they support - from what I can see, the money might go to malaria prevention in the Congo or it might go to funding prestigious professorial chairs.

I guess Zuckerberg likes the kind of projects the SVCF has funded in the past and the way the donor-applicant matching works.

Recall that Zuckerberg has already pledged half his wealth to charity: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-09/seventeen-of-wealth...

I set up a donor advised fund (DAF) with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation when I sold my company in 2000. At that time they had the policy of selling all the donated shares immediately. It turned out to be one of the best things I did. Now I have more time available to look into how to give money in meaningful effective ways and I have a pot of money available for this thru the DAF where I don't have to be doing the math on whether or not I can 'afford' the donation. My post acquisition world has been much richer for the interactions I've had with people I respect that stemmed from this.

I don't entirely understand why he donated shares of Facebook instead of dollars, can they sell the shares all at once and use the money or is there a catch to that? Did it cost him less money to donate shares in the long run? It's probably my lack of understanding of stocks and economics but it seems like it would be easier for everyone to just donate money.

Community Foundations[1] such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation can receive stock donations that are tax-deductible to the owner. If the donation was in dollars it would also be deductible for the owner, but the owner would need to sell the stock first, which would mean paying capital gains taxes.

1. Differences between Community Foundations / donor-advised funds and Private Foundations can be found here: http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/considering...

Foundations can get tax-deductible gifts, they just have slightly different other rules.

You're right - updated comment

Additionally, if the entities receiving the shares happen to be C corporations (which I believe can have 501(c)(3) status), they can deduct the lesser of: (i) 70% of dividends received on the stock; or (ii) 70% of the corporation's taxable income. As such, the implied tax rate on any dividends received from the shares would only be 11.88% (30% * 39.6%), assuming the corporation is in the 35% ordinary income bracket. This is important for 501(c)(3)'s, too, because there are plenty of exceptions to the general notion of "tax exemption" associated with that code section (See, e.g., 26 USC §§ 507-09, 511-15, and 527).

EDIT: of course, this only applies if the company issues a dividend

I'm not sure if the organization has the option to keep or sell the stock (I think they can do either). For the donor, there are tax benefits- besides the usual lowering of adjusted gross income, you don't have to pay capital gains on stock you donate.

Let's say Mark plans on donating $500M to an organization and this month he also wants to buy $300M of Christmas presents. He only has about $600M lying around, but he has a lot of FB stock. He can donate $500M cash, then sell stock to have enough money to buy the presents but he'll pay capital gains. Or he can donate the stock, avoid taxes, and use his cash for the presents instead.

Stock can be used as collateral to get a bank loan (the uber rich use this to avoid capital gains taxes). I would imagine that is what they'll do to generate cash for disbursements from the foundation (they have to pay out at least 5% per year).

I would be shocked to find they sold the shares. I'm sure them keeping them for a long period of time (possibly forever) and Zuck retaining voting power over them was a key part of this transaction.

"shares worth $500 million" They are it worth today. Who knows what they are worth in a year :-)

millionaires and billionaires who donate their wealth to philanthropic causes deserve to be upvoted and recognized.

I would always prefer the wealth coming from inside the system, not being first taken by individuals and then spread at their whim. Such wealth would much rather be a sustainable source. A well functioning society/government would know exactly how to spend it well.

In many cases, to me, the good the rich do does not nearly weigh in for their wrongdoings.

Your comment has been downvoted, but there isn't yet an explanation of why it is incorrect. I'll provide my perspective.

1) Zuckerberg didn't "take" wealth. He created it.

2) Governments don't have particular insight into the best ways to spend resources. We spent a couple of decades comparing market economies with command economies, and market economies won.

What wealth did Mark Zuckerberg create?

One could argue that Facebook helps spreading democracy in some countries, and thanks to Facebook companies can target customers more efficiently.

What countries did Facebook help spread democracy to?

The arabic ones during their recent revolutions. It did not directly spread democracy, but one could argue it contributed to it.

One would have a pretty blood difficult argument in that case. Was anyone in any of these countries actually using FB?

A large social network called Facebook.

Still $11 below IPO. So much wealth!

$27.71 above foundation. Yes, that's a lot of wealth.

Did you really just set the IPO price as your baseline for wealth? I have news for you, the IPO wasn't 0, it was $104bil. Still quite a bit of wealth.

1) Myspace provided a large social network with free web hosting and some PHP doodads before Facebook did. Did Mark Zuckerberg create anything new?

2) Facebook is a weapon deployed against the integrity of human personality. Does facebook quality as wealth considering that it is a destructive force?

I found Facebook useful for finding my roommates and classmates during college. They took away the classmate finding feature, but then it became more accessible and my grandparents could use it. I just used it a moment ago to get my cousin's birthday.

That's a lot of value to me. When I share something there, it has the broadest reach of real-world friends on any social network, but that's my personal experience.

Facebook is not a weapon. It's a product, definitely, and a medium to some degree. A corporate and focused vision of the internet, sure.

A weapon? No.

Whenever a photo is shared through Facebook it is run through facial recognition software and the results are sent to every police agency that is interested. We know that policy agencies have picked people up on information attained in this way.

Some of the worlds police agencies are evil. Whenever you use Facebook to share photos or some other personal information you are equipping potentially evil police agencies with a potent weapon that can be used against you and your friends.

Wouldn't they get that information anyways by tapping my phone or internet connection? The NSA probably has my known IP addresses linked together, who knows.

I've not experienced Facebook used as a form of oppression against me and my friends. If I did, I would immediately alert them... on Facebook.

The value Zuck created has nothing to do with PHP or MySpace, it is the billion people who check Facebook each month and spend tens of billions of hours on the site. The value is provided to the network of users and to advertisers who want to reach that audience.

The market shifted from radio, newspaper and television to web advertising. 20 years ago the $500M that Zuck donated would have otherwise went to an aristocratic media owning family empire. I prefer it going to somebody who has created new value and who will be putting the money to better use. Simply spending and gifting the money is a better use than hoarding it and establishing a genetic dynasty.

The argument about Facebook being a weapon against human development and integrity is the same argument that luddites (and the Amish) made against radio, television, the telephone and many other new inventions.

95% of the people that I know in my life, and 100% of the career moves I have made in my life were through people that I met online. The difference is that I was technical enough to know how to use IRC, how to use early blogs, etc. Facebook is simple and accessible, and allows the other 99% of the world population to take advantage of the same networking technology to enhance their lives.

You might consider Facebook as a weapon and a destructive force, but don't state it as a fact.

As far as streaming facial recognition data to various agencies - source? Do they comply with various legal orders? Most definitely. Do they send all of their data to police agencies? I highly doubt it.

A greater degree of connectedness among humans

Facebook didn't create that but it did allow for the elites to use a greater degree of surveillance against humans then ever before.

What is the "market" in this case? For smaller donations, lots organisations does compete for our sympathies, but larger donations seems to largely go to pet causes of the persons making the donations. I don't see market forces at work there.

His comment also seems to imply that the rich are guilty of wrongdoings simply by virtue of having a lot of money.

>> Zuckerberg didn't "take" wealth. He created it.

Well, Myspace was kinda destroyed in the process. So let's call it reshaping, refactoring and some creation.

And, of course, the fact that he was hired by the two guys who actually came up with this idea, stole the idea from them and purposely lead them along into believing he was working for them when in fact he was competing with them with their own idea.

So yea, I'd probably stick with "took wealth".

Your point 1 is basically correct. Just to be pedantic, I'd adjust that to he "created and led the creation of the first versions of a fast-growing system that attracted great investment and wealth", rather than "created" (which suggests out of thin air).

Definitely agree with your point 2.

It sounds OK, but Bill Gates case may prove that individuals can do with wealth better service than government. In a way, the government also "takes from the system", and a lot of what it takes is then spread unfairly.

Where does your faith on government spending come from? Because I have exactly the opposite impression. The most extreme form of government spending is communism, and that didn't work out at all. The problem with governments is that they spend other people's money, so they have less incentives for being prudent with it.

I specifically said "well functioning". I definitely did not meant a corrupt and anti-social government.

If it's over their tax writeoff benefits - sure.

Whether it's a PR stunt or not, if the money is used well it'll do a lot of good

Many people are asking "why?" Too often we take for granted why we should give to charity, so it's a valid question.

Some quotes below on why.

"The world is complex, and it can't be entirely fair from a what you contribute to what you get - it's very very uneven." - Ben Horowitz (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqI7fa04atc&t=106m0s see 1:46:00)

"I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate's distribution of long straws is wildly capricious." - Warren Buffet (source: http://givingpledge.org/#warren_buffett)

Very nice. It's good to see a lot of rich folks, both young and old (Buffet, Bloomberg, Gates) donating their money. When you're young it's all about accumulating as much money as you can from others in the form of businesses. Then as you get old, you start asking yourself what good all that money is when you're going to rot away in the ground like everyone else. After you win "the game" and enjoy the prize, you might as well disperse it. No use holding onto green paper if it doesn't change the world or make it better. At least Mark, at his young age, will get to see his donation actually used over the next few decades.

He gets a bad wrap, but as far as a role model for continued commitment to self betterment and helping other within a positon of power he has done an incredible job.

It's bad rap, as in rap sheet. http://grammarist.com/usage/bad-rap/

Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine :).

Please don't stop.

The part we should be talking about is the people who run these "non-profits" who line their pockets with money. Not saying this one does but MANY of them do.

I think the title needs the distinction that it's that amount in shares, not in cash.

I appreciate it could go up, but the more likely is the opposite.

Well, lets wait and see if the money is really going to be used, or if it just lies there.

This is awesome. So happy to see it. It does make me jealous, though, as my non-profit www.themade.org could run for 3 years on a decimal percentage of that donation. Wish it was being spread around more.

Gave half a billion dollars? Awesome! To what cause? We have no clue!

perhaps im being naive (or biased), but why donate $500m to a SV foundation rather than say use that money to address those in more needier positions? Maybe I'm misinterpreting the 'Giving Pledge' ideals but I believe they were meaning donate to those in need for day to day life - rather than funding a community of a relatively well-off community. I understand the desire to give back to your community but 500 million can make a large dent into some bigger issues.

1st world vs. developing world problems I guess..

Based on the article alone, it seems that the SV foundation focuses on managing donations for both local and global projects, and not only in the Bay Area?

There are plenty of people who need help in San Francisco.

It has a relatively high suicide rate, for example.

Mark Zuckerberg helped society a lot more by building Facebook (and making these billions) than he ever would by giving away his wealth to charitable causes.

I don't think he cares about the money at all. From the start, Mark was always interested in building a cool product. It's a great gesture on his part.

I'd rather be discussing Ron Conway's decision to put his muscle -- and money -- behind efforts to stop gun violence.

He probably did it just to wind up the haters on HN.

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