Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation

CDC budget for 2014 is $6.8B so 25 million is drop in a bucket anyway.

There's also a corruption concern, of course, but I don't see that in today's case.

I think it is pretty clear the the CDC has become just another calcified government bureaucracy who ordinarily gets very little oversight or feedback from the outside world. As they recently admitted - just like the Houston nurse they blamed - they cannot even follow their own safety protocols (anthrax and H5N1 debacles) because of their toxic culture[1]. It is a real challenge (perhaps impossible) to prevent these problems from developing in any large organization - including private sector firm (think big semi-monopolies) but even more so in government. More money could even make it worse as bigger bureaucracies are even less effective - just like putting more programmers on the failing project.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/us/after-lapses-cdc-admits...

Is it hats off or hat's off? I think you're right. The saying is 'my hat is off to you'

Billionaires don't pay taxes, they lend money to the government. This is the system the billionaires created for us.

Many people don't realize that just "getting money out the door" is an incredibly difficult task when you have the burden of so much bureaucracy. Most of this bureaucracy is well intentioned (e.g. vetting partner organizations for terrorist or narcotics connections), but taken as a whole it is stifling.

In fact, the USAID Mission in Kenya (USAID's largest in Africa) turned down increased funding in 2012 because they simply had too much cash and not enough staff to obligate it to organizations on time.

This ends up creating a heavily calcified aid "system" where older organizations with the ability to cope with legal/bureaucratic issues are the only ones who can survive. The average wait-time for a USAID payment is something around 9 months, so small start-up organizations are de-facto ineligible if they need immediate funding.

Obviously this is just anecdotal. However, the ultimate result that I have observed is that aid typically gets distributed to organizations (contractors) who are heavily entrenched and will generally take around a 50% overhead fee.

USAID has attempted to alleviate this problem through the USAID Forward initiative (which requires Missions to have a certain percentage of "locally owned" organizations ). However, once again entrenched aid contractors are best suited to jump through bureaucratic loopholes. For example, by incorporating country-based subsidiaries in locations where they are pursuing contracts.

Just my own take on why money isn't always the problem when it comes to assisting developing countries.

This attitude - "I gave you money to help x, I only want it to be used on x" is part of the problem. In order for relief agencies to be prepared for the next problem, they need resources on hand that don't have strings attached. But such agencies have learned that if they do this - take money donated at the time of one crisis, and keep it on hand to help with the next crisis - people will be upset.

Planet Money explains this well: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/09/26/351515481/episode-...

I myself want to help make a positive difference and am trying to figure out what else can be done beyond just donating to help (or whether rallying donations is really helpful) - especially in this specific case.

EDIT: I was in no way trying to downplay the kindness of the donation by Zuckerberg and his wife - if anything I was trying to understand what more can be done (or what more money can be raised).

It's a lot easier to be a hero when you've got the tools to be heroic.

The indignation of the form of your question is remarkable.

But to answer your question: It's probably funneled through their foundation, which they would, of course, name and manage together. Because, ya know, they're married.

Changing the headline's speaker from Zuck to "anonymous HN software" changes the meaning.