Words by Smiley Team
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and wife Priscilla Chan, set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) in 2015, and pledged to give away the majority of their wealth in the same year.
And the couple, whose net worth is estimated at $90bn, have so far donated $2.7bn to good causes, focusing in 2020 on helping organisations dealing with Covid-19 relief and electoral integrity.
Zuckerberg, 36, founded Facebook in 2004 as a 19-year-old student at Harvard, and took the company public in 2012. He still owns 15 per cent of the stock.
The site has billions of users worldwide, but has received criticism for not tackling fake news and disinformation.
In the run up to the US elections in November 2020 CZI donated a total of $400m to help local election offices prepare for people casting their vote safely in the midst of the pandemic.
Most of the money was given to the Chicago-based Center for Technology and Civic Life, and it helped to pay for protective equipment to prevent spread of the coronavirus at polling sites, drive-through voting locations, equipment to process postal ballots and more.
In a statement the couple commented: “Many counties and states are strapped financially and working to determine how to staff and fund operations that will allow for ballots to be cast and counted in a timely way.
“These donations will help to provide local and state officials across the country with the resources, training and infrastructure necessary to ensure that every voter who intends to cast a ballot is able to, and ultimately, to preserve integrity of our elections."
The pair both declared in 2015 that they intended to give the majority of their wealth away, and signed the Giving Pledge to make their commitment public.
In their pledge they stated: “We've had so much opportunity in our lives, and we feel a deep responsibility to make the world a better place for future generations.
“We've benefited from good health, great education and support from committed families and communities. We believe that in the next generation, all of our children should grow up living even better lives and striving for even more than we think is possible today.”
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