
Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million - rmason
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/18/mark-zuckerberg-donation/?hpt=hp_t3
======
epaga
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.

~~~
powertower
> 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.

~~~
espadagroup
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.

~~~
powertower
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.

~~~
mahyarm
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.

------
jfaucett
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.

~~~
veidr
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.

~~~
jfoster
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.

~~~
flyinRyan
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.

~~~
phn
Off-topic but:

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

~~~
flyinRyan
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.

~~~
phn
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.

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habosa
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.

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saurik
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?)

~~~
nikcub
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.

~~~
maxerickson
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.)

~~~
loceng
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.

~~~
maxerickson
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).

------
rms
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).

~~~
philipn
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...](http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/consideringDonorAdvisedFund.jsp)

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mochizuki
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.

~~~
philipn
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...](http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/consideringDonorAdvisedFund.jsp)

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

~~~
philipn
You're right - updated comment

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

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

~~~
aw3c2
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.

~~~
natrius
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.

~~~
jhuni
What wealth did Mark Zuckerberg create?

~~~
oscilloscope
A large social network called Facebook.

~~~
jhuni
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?

~~~
oscilloscope
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.

~~~
jhuni
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.

~~~
oscilloscope
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.

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

------
dcaranda
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](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>)

------
ChrisNorstrom
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.

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bksenior
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.

~~~
yen223
It's bad _rap_ , as in rap sheet. <http://grammarist.com/usage/bad-rap/>

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

~~~
endgame
Please don't stop.

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theklub
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.

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z00mer
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.

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

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VonGuard
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.

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

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heymishy
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..

~~~
marcusf
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?

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dennisgorelik
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.

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isabre
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.

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

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

