FACEBOOK CEO - MOST GENEROUS

• Posted by T Ghosh February 10, 2014 - Filed in Business - #  #facebook  - 1,088 views

  The most generous American philanthropists in 2013 are Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, with a donation of 18 million shares of Facebook stock, and is after all valued at more than $970 million, to a Silicon Valley non-profit in December.

   Zuckerberg's donation was the largest charitable gift on the public record in 2013 and put the young couple at the top of the magazine's annual list of 50 most generous Americans in 2013 as reported by The Chronicle of Philanthropy .

  The Chronicle's editor says 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.

  "It's a sure sign that the economy is getting better and people are getting a lot less cautious," said Stacy Palmer, Chronicle editor. The top 50 contributors made donations last year totaling $7.7 billion, plus pledges of $2.9 billion.

  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.

  Thirty made big gifts to colleges and universities, but Palmer noted most college gifts went to science and research this year, not to buildings, as 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 totaling at least $37.5 million to make the list this year. Forty-two of the top 50 made gifts of $50 million or more.

  Ten of the 50 made the list because of bequests after their deaths, including the second biggest giver in 2013, George Mitchell, a Galveston, Texas, man who made his fortune in energy and real estate.