Billionaires often wait later in life to start giving away their wealth, but Mark Zuckerberg is already giving away broad swaths of his fortune — at age 28.
The latest donation is a $500 million gift of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) stock to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The organization is focused on building projects to improve healthcare and education across the world.
Mark’s donation is keeping in line with the “Giving Pledge” — the Bill Gates-created commitment to give away at least half of a person’s wealth to charity — which he and his wife, Priscilla, have signed. Other notable members include Berkshire Hathaway’s (NYSE:BRK.A, BRK.B) Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg and Oracle’s (NASDAQ:ORCL) Larry Ellison.
Zuckerberg previously donated $100 million to the Newark (N.J.) Public School system. At the time, he said: “With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts.”
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of “How to Create the Next Facebook” and “High-Profit IPO Strategies: Finding Breakout IPOs for Investors and Traders.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
