VIDEO: Will Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $45 Billion Charitable Pledge Be Good for America?

In an open letter to their newborn daughter published Tuesday, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and wife Dr. Priscilla Chan announced their intent to give 99 percent of their Facebook shares—currently valued at more than $45 billion—to charitable causes over the duration of their lives.

The couple’s announcement is laudable on its surface, but there are plenty of reasons to doubt that it will mean, as they write in their letter, that “every child born today will grow up in a world that is better than the one we know now”. In addition to funding research into clean energy and new drugs, critics fear that the expenditures will serve to increase the power private interests have over the shape and direction of society.

In 2010, for example, Chan and Zuckerberg donated $100 million to support charter schooling in New Jersey. Charter schools are criticized for prioritizing standardized testing over creative learning, reducing the control teachers have over their workplace, the terms of their employment and the education they deliver, and acting as a gateway for the privatization of education.

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, said they were forming a new organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to manage the money, through an unusual limited liability corporate structure. “Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities,” they wrote. […]

By using a limited liability company instead of a nonprofit corporation or foundation, the Zuckerberg family will be able to go beyond making philanthropic grants. They will invest in companies, lobby for legislation and seek to influence public policy debates, which nonprofits are restricted from doing under tax laws. A spokeswoman for the family said that any profits from the investments would be plowed back into the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for future projects.

“We must build technology to make change. Many institutions invest money in these challenges, but most progress comes from productivity gains through innovation,” they wrote in the letter to their daughter. “We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates. Many institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.”

Read more here.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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