Mark Zuckerberg and Wife to Donate 99% of Facebook Shares Following Birth of First Child

Mark Zuckerberg – the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook – and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, have recently been blessed with a newborn baby girl, Max. According to the New York Times, upon Max's arrival, Zuckerberg and his wife pledged to give 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity for the next three years.

Just how much are their shares worth? $45 billion and counting.   

The pledge was put in the form of a letter to the newborn. The New York Times stated that Zuckerberg and his wife "said they were forming a new organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to manage the money, through an unusual limited liability corporate structure."   

Zuckerberg and his wife expressed, "Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities."

What are the benefits of forming the company through an LLC rather than profit? The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will have the ability to "invest in companies, lobby for legislation and seek to influence public policy debates, which nonprofits are restricted from doing under tax laws."

This is not the first charitable effort from the married couple. In 2010, they gave $100 million to help aid in improving the public schools in Newark, New Jersey. The money eventually made its way into the hands of the high-performing public charter schools instead. How was this received from the Newark community? With much resistance from the parents, community activists and unions.

According to CNN Money, the new parents also donated $120 million to education programs in the Bay Area through their nonprofit, Startup: Education, along with founding a new Bay area school, The Primary School. The school combines education with health care for underprivileged children.

Zuckerberg and Chan have recently joined the Giving Pledge – a pact by billionaires to give away half or more of their money to charity – along with the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.