14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook’s latest SEC filing revealed that the company, Mark Zuckerberg and another member of the board were selling a lot of Class A shares in an effort to get a lot of cash. However, the filing also revealed that Zuck would donate 18 million of his shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
That means that the donation adds up to about $1 billion (€732 million), a hefty sum by anyone’s standards.
This isn’t the first time the Facebook founder and CEO has given the foundation company shares. Back in 2012, the same organization got another 18 million shares, although at the time, their value was of only $500 million (€366 million).
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation was created to help a range of other organizations. The foundation works with more than 125 corporations and 1,650 smaller charities, issuing grants without making too many waves about the help it’s offering.
Zuckerberg is a known member of the Giving Pledge, a campaign started a while back by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in which he agreed to donate a portion of his earnings to charities and philanthropic activities. According to a chart, Zuckerberg gained $10.5 billion (€7.68 billion) over the past twelve months alone.
As mentioned, the SEC filing from Facebook revealed that the social network, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen, a board member, were selling 70 million Class A common shares worth $4 billion (€2.93 billion).
Most of them came from Zuckerberg, who agreed to sell 41.4 million shares from his collection. 27 million shares came from Facebook and only 1.65 million from Andreessen. The decision to part ways with so many shares affects Zuckerberg’s voting power in the company. Currently, he holds 56.1 percent of the company’s shares, down from 58.8 percent.