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Mark Zuckerberg drives a Volkswagen Golf. He pays himself an annual salary of a dollar. In 2006, at the age of 22, he turned down a billion times that for Facebook. In 2010, when his then-girlfriend (now wife) Priscilla Chan moved in to his home, he posted an update offering their crockery and appliances because they had \u201c2x everything\u201d. He dresses in grey T-shirts and hoodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As quiet a life as Zuckerberg and Chan lead in some respects, they are in others fairly conspicuous. And on Tuesday they took an extraordinary action in the most visible way possible. Via an open letter to their new daughter Max (posted, obviously, on Facebook) the Chan Zuckerbergs announced that they would be donating 99% of their Facebook shares to charity during their lifetime. A missive featuring a bullet-pointed mission statement and the phrase \u201cpersonalised learning tools\u201d may lack the gooey warmth that little Max might have been entitled to expect, but no one can deny its potential impact: at current values, the family\u2019s donation is worth more than $45bn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Zuckerberg was already the essential figure of our age \u2013 unironic, ruthlessly competitive, post-private \u2013 he could now be seen as its Superman, too. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have made similarly lavish gestures, but they are relatively old men, disposing of what they have accrued before it\u2019s too late. Zuckerberg is 31. He presumably has many years ahead of him leading Facebook. He has reimagined social behaviour for his generation; now, via this \u201csmall contribution\u201d, he has set them their most inescapable altruistic example. His contemporaries may find it a bit weird that he hasn\u2019t starting flying yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s Facebook post was met, unsurprisingly, with huge acclaim. (Melinda Gates liked it; so did Shakira.) \u201cThe first thing is simply to congratulate the Zuckerbergs,\u201d says Sir Tom Hughes-Hallett, a longstanding charity executive and co-founder of the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship at the LSE. \u201cIt\u2019s so important to recognise that this is a gift of extraordinary generosity before beginning to analyse it. I\u2019m so excited by it.\u201d Equally unsurprising were levels of snark that a Martian might not anticipate being doled out to people who have just given away 99% of one of the biggest fortunes in the world. \u201cThe lamest mission statement in the history of man,\u201d one tweet called it. \u201cMark Zuckerberg donating 99% of your personal info to charity,\u201d snorted another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Busy as he presumably is changing nappies, Zuckerberg himself is likely to be unmoved by such critiques. The rest of us can probably agree, twitticisms aside, that a $45bn donation \u2013 more than double the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations put together \u2013 is pretty generous. All the same, $45bn never comes without strings attached, and once the sniping is dispensed with, there are serious questions to be answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are those who see serious risks in the era of super-giving that started with the Gates Foundation, and who worry that our warm fuzzy feelings are blinding us to the broader implications. \u201cWhat\u2019s curious is that even benign, obvious criticisms are seen as violating the sacrosanct sphere of private giving,\u201d says Linsey McGoey, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Essex and author of a book about \u201cphilanthrocapitalism\u201d called No Such Thing as a Free Gift. \u201cThere\u2019s this idea that there should be no constraints. But the problem is that such gifts exert sway over decision-making that affects the lives of millions. So it needs to be monitored.\u201d By this account, Zuckerberg is less a superman than a chequebook dictator. By figuring out which version is closer to the truth, we\u2019d learn a lot about the king of Silicon Valley, of course, but we\u2019d also learn a lot about how modern philanthropy seeks to change the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how will Zuckerberg be feeling now that his news is out? Those who would see his act as one of genuine altruism will find evidence for their case in his view, reported in the New Yorker, after a gathering with tech industry leaders and Barack Obama. His fellow tech gurus were, Zuckerberg apparently felt, too focused on their pet issues, instead of a wider public-interest agenda. \u201cThere\u2019s this huge moral component,\u201d he later said. \u201cWe might as well go after all of it.\u201d If he is genuinely so motivated, he\u2019ll be excited, says Richard Ross, chairman of the Rosetrees Trust, who donated \u00a323m of his \u00a3100m fortune to charity earlier this year \u2013 but a little daunted, too. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s like landing in a foreign land. You don\u2019t know where anything is or what you want to do: you just know you have to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Zuckerberg does so, he will presumably lean on the example of Bill Gates: the language in the letter to Max mirrors some of the terms that the Gates Foundation set out. But Gates isn\u2019t the only model for Zuckerberg (who is, of course, not new to philanthropy himself, either). In recent years, a growing number of young Silicon Valley executives have made vast donations to charity; as they\u2019ve done so, they\u2019ve refined a model that Sean Parker, founder of Napster and Zuckerberg\u2019s one-time mentor, christened \u201chacker philanthropy\u201d in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this year. Three of the six most generous philanthropists in the US last year were in their 30s, and in tech: as Zuckerberg grows up, building a family and finding a bigger purpose, Silicon Valley seems to be growing up with him. And, perhaps, it\u2019s finding grander status symbols, too: when you\u2019re so rich that a private jet seems a bit downmarket, it may be that the only way to project your triumph is to wear scruffy clothes and give it all away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s brilliant,\u201d says Beth Breeze, director of the centre for philanthropy at the University of Kent. \u201cIf they\u2019re visible, they\u2019re role models. If you want to be successful in the 21st century, it isn\u2019t just about making a load of money, it\u2019s about getting rid of it. It\u2019s a million miles from the \u2018Loadsamoney\u2019 caricature I grew up with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whatever motivates them, these new philanthropists aren\u2019t happy with the model for altruism that they\u2019ve inherited. In his WSJ article, Parker, dismissing traditional philanthropy as \u201clargely antiquated\u201d and motivated by \u201csafe\u201d gifts that result in the chance to \u201cname buildings\u201d, described a new approach that would be at ease with failure, agile, and sceptical of received wisdom \u2013 just as its proponents had been in tech. \u201cThey\u2019re much more comfortable with risk,\u201d says Breeze. \u201cThis is not an easy area: trying to do something about intense social problems outside of the state and outside of the market. If they take a risk and they learn from it, that\u2019s held up as a success. The willingness to talk about failure is another part of their gift.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When generosity on such a scale and on such terms is so new, it\u2019s not surprising that things can go wrong. Zuckerberg, for his part, has already been burned: his $100m gift to improve schools in Newark, New Jersey was met with furious objections from locals who felt that their needs had been ignored by distant grandees holding the purse strings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That sort of problem may indicate that Parker\u2019s contempt for the existing models is a bit premature; indeed, whereas one critic of the Newark scheme called it something that was \u201cdone to people rather than in cooperation with people\u201d, the letter to Max was careful to signal a far more collegiate approach this time around. According to Hughes-Hallett, in general, those useful failures aren\u2019t being well enough scrutinised yet, which is partly why the LSE\u2019s Marshall Institute has been founded. \u201cThere is very little scope for new philanthropists to identify centres of excellence,\u201d he says, \u201cwhereas in their corporate life when they want to increase their return on equity, there is a queue of people to help them. Very little academic rigour has been brought to bear on this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Listening more is a good start, then. But look at the detail of the Chan Zuckerberg announcement and you\u2019ll see that well-intentioned promises to pay closer attention to the people who best know what\u2019s needed aren\u2019t the only innovation this time around. Instead of a traditional foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will be a limited-liability company, and that will mean that Max\u2019s parents are allowed to invest in for-profit companies, which they believe are the most effective means of driving the innovation that will change the world \u2013 and to use their money for political activism, too. The Chan Zuckerbergs say that this is vital: \u201cWe must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates,\u201d they tell their presumably baffled baby. \u201cMany institutions are unwilling to do this, but progress must be supported by movements to be sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which seems to make sense, but sets off some alarms. \u201cIt frees him from these constraints, and it heightens concerns that there is zero check on a private individual\u2019s ability to influence decision-making,\u201d says McGoey. \u201cIf it was the Koch brothers pledging $45bn towards an effort to monitor every Muslim in the US, that would raise immediate concerns.\u201d Few will see Zuckerberg\u2019s fuzzy broad aims \u2013 \u201cadvancing human potential\u201d and \u201cpromoting equality\u201d \u2013 as too controversial. On the other hand, consider his well-publicised view, repeated in the letter, that the internet is an unalloyed good; and then consider the more controversial principle that Facebook seeks to enforce \u2013 that life is there to be shared. Zuckerberg means well, no doubt; on the other hand, sometimes there\u2019s a detectable messianic tendency that not everyone will be comfortable with. (At school, he loved the Aeneid, he once said, and its story of a man\u2019s quest to build a city that \u201cknows no boundaries in time and greatness\u201d.) It isn\u2019t hard to imagine how the idea of an \u201cinternet for everybody\u201d could overlap with the idea of \u201cFacebook for everybody\u201d, giving charitable cover to a more self-interested end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others don\u2019t have much time for that view. \u201cOf course anything\u2019s dangerous if someone is extreme,\u201d says Richard Ross. \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing in the world that can only be used for good. People like him, with specialist knowledge and skills and so much to give, they\u2019re going to get good results. And maybe they inspire others. There are thousands of people with wealth between 10 million and a billion. If a little bit of that could be channelled, if these people set in process a train of thought in other people, over time, it can be massive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the heart of the dispute, perhaps, is philanthropy\u2019s operative weirdness: the use of private, selfishly acquired means to achieve public, altruistic goals. By one argument, it\u2019s their money, and they can do what they like with it \u2013 and the very idea that they should be criticised for not spending it perfectly is as absurd as ticking them off for buying the wrong yacht. But, by another, if an individual is playing a role that should arguably be fulfilled by the state, perhaps they should be subjected to the same oversight as the state. Or perhaps we might view such a huge gift as similar to a great work of art: bearing the indelible stamp of its creator, but ultimately belonging to the world, and therefore subject to the world\u2019s interpretation and scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the moment, that question is moot: Zuckerberg can largely do what he likes with it. His previous extraordinary philanthropy gives plenty of reason for optimism, whatever mis-steps there have been along the way. What will he do now? Can he manage his great gift without letting the political seep into the charitable? How will he change the world next? No one quite knows \u2013 except for him. \u201cMost of the information that we care about is things that are in our heads, right?\u201d he once said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not out there to be indexed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n