In a recent list of America’s “Most Generous Donors,” tech comes out very well.
The list comes to us from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a magazine devoted to tracking to world of nonprofits.
Mark Zuckerberg and his new wife Priscilla Chan rank #2 on the list after donating nearly $500 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Zuckerberg made the donation back in December 2012 in the form of 18 million Facebook shares. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is a leading philanthropic trust organization in the area. It’s Zuckerberg’s largest single charitable donation to date, having given $100 million to improve public schools in Newark, New Jersey back in 2010.
Their gift of $498.8 million is second only to Warren Buffet, who spread nearly $3.1 billion around Howard G. Buffett Foundation, NoVo Foundation, and the Sherwood Foundation.
In fifth place on the list is Google’s Sergey Brin and his partner Anne Wojcicki, who donated approximately $222.9 million in 2012, most of it to their own Brin Wojcicki Foundation, which supports multiple causes including “education, environment, women’s issues, and many other causes; the Human Rights Foundation; and Tipping Point Community, a nonprofit that seeks to eliminate poverty in Northern California.”
They also made a $32.8 million contribution to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen also broke the top 5, coming in at #4 for his $309.1 million in 2012 donations.