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Mark Zuckerberg, Wife Named Most Charitable

Topped the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of 50 most generous Americans

by
Lily Wilf
February 10, 2014
Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg introduces Graph Search features during a presentation January 15, 2013 in Menlo Park. (Stephen Lam/Getty Images)
Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg introduces Graph Search features during a presentation January 15, 2013 in Menlo Park. (Stephen Lam/Getty Images)

Just one week after Facebook’s tenth anniversary, the social networking giant’s co-founder, chairman, and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is back in the news. Zuckerberg, whose personal wealth is estimated at $27.9 billion, was identified as 2013’s most generous U.S. philanthropist, the Associated Press reports. Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan recently donated 18 million shares of Facebook stock to a Silicon Valley nonprofit, a sum valued at more than $970 million. Today, the Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked the couple at the top of their annual list of 50 most generous Americans.

Topping lists is nothing new for Zuckerberg. Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg to their list of the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world, and since 2011 he has ranked first on the list of ‘Most Influential Jews in the World’ by the Jerusalem Post. Zuckerberg has a diverse history of giving, with causes ranging from “Diaspora,” an open-source personal web server, to the public school system of Newark, N.J. In 2010, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet signed the “Giving Pledge,” a promise to eventually donate at least half of their wealth to charity. Today’s announcement suggests that Zuckerberg is a man of his word.

Lily Wilf is an editorial intern at Tablet.