Mark Zuckerberg is US Second Biggest Charitable Donor

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerberg contributed almost half a billion dollars to the charity of their choice, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $498.8 million, placing him as the second biggest philanthropist in the country. Zuckerberg is estimated to have a net worth of $12 billion.

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is an organization that is today one of the largest community foundations anywhere in the world. The foundation has more than $2.9 billion in assets, which it uses to fund more than 1,600 philanthropic organizations. Some of the activities that the Foundation supports are to provide food and shelter to the poor, as well as teaching English language skills to immigrants.

Mark Zuckerberg supported the foundation in December by donating 18 million shares of his company Facebook.

$7.4 billion in donations

In 2012, various non-profit organizations received more that $7.4 billion from the top 50 biggest donors in the country.

Young donors
Three of the top five spots of America’s biggest philanthropists are from the tech-industry.  Also, many of these philanthropists are quite young and under 40 years old. Zuckerberg is only 27, while Sergev Brin is 39 and John Arnold is 38.

Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett, Chairman of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, takes the top spot on the list of most generous philanthropists. He gave a total of $3.1 billion mostly to the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, NoVo Foundation and the Sherwood Foundation, the three foundations of his family. Since 2006, Buffett has pledged to give $1 billion to support each foundation. At 82 years old, he is also one of the oldest on the list of top philanthropists.

John and Laura Arnold
Centaurus Energy hedge fund founder John Arnold and his wife Laura are in third place, having donated $423.4 million to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. This organization supports education, pension systems and work to improve the criminal justice system.

Paul Allen
Ranking in fourth place was co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen. The Allen Institute for Brain Science got the bulk of the $309 million. The Allen Institute for Brain Science is a medical research organization established in 2003 to focus researching on human brain function and activity. Their research concentrates on brain health and various brain diseases.

Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki
In fifth place on the list is Sergey Brin along with his wife Anne Wojcicki. Brin is the co-founder of 23andMe, a company that conducts genetic-testing. The majority of their charitable contribution went to supporting the Brin Wojcicki Foundation. They also supported the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research with a $33 million donation last year. The Brin Wojcicki Foundation supports environmental concerns and women’s issues.