California, Dec 4: With a lot of people questioning his decision to set aside 99 per cent of his Facebook shares for philanthropy work, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come out with a clarification of how he plans to spend the money.
“Our initial focus areas are personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities. We’ve already made many investments over the past five years in these areas — education, science, health, internet access and inclusion — and you can see a summary of our investments on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative page timeline,” he said in a Facebook post on Friday.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, he clarified, is structured as an LLC rather than a traditional foundation to pursue “our mission by funding non-profit organizations, making private investments and participating in policy debates — in each case with the goal of generating a positive impact in areas of great need”. He said “any net profits from investments will also be used to advance this mission”.
He added: “By using an LLC instead of a traditional foundation, we receive no tax benefit from transferring our shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, but we gain flexibility to execute our mission more effectively.”
