Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are named America’s most generous couple

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have topped a list of the most generous American philanthropists in 2013.

The couple last year pledged a donation of 18 million shares of Facebook stock, valued at more than $970 million, to a Silicon Valley nonprofit organisation.

The list – compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy  – also included philanthropist and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg at number four, who made gifts totaling $452 million in 2013 to arts, education, environment, public health and other causes.

George Mitchell, a Galveston, Texas, man who made his fortune in energy and real estate was second on the list, who left $750million to charity when he died.

At No. 3 were Nike chairman Philip Knight and his wife, Penelope, of Portland, Oregon, who made a $500 million challenge grant to Oregon Health & Science University Foundation for cancer research. The Knight pledge requires the university match it within the next two years.

The top 50 contributors made donations last year totaling $7.7 billion, plus pledges of $2.9 billion.

The Chronicle’s editor said the most significant fact from the list was the amount of money coming from living donors, which totaled about the same amount as the two previous years combined.

Stacey Palmer said: ‘It’s a sure sign that the economy is getting better and people are getting a lot less cautious.’

Some of the nation’s biggest givers do not appear on the 2013 list, not because they stopped being generous, but because their donations in 2013 were counted as pledges in previous years.

For example, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, gave their foundation slightly more than $181.3 million last year, but they were paying off a pledge of about $3.3 billion they made in 2004.

CNN-founder Ted Turner and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett also made large gifts toward previous pledges.

It took gifts totalling at least $37.5 million to make the list this year…. see more

source: dailymail UK

Tags: Facebook:, Mark Zuckerberg, technology

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