Mark Zuckerberg’s $45 Billion Pledge to Support Personalized Learning and Other Philanthropic Efforts

FOLLOWING GATES STEPS: In a letter welcoming his newborn daughter, Max, to the world, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he and his wife will be committing 99 percent of their Facebook shares—currently worth about $45 billion—to several philanthropic causes over the rest of their lives.

Alongside curing diseases and connecting people to the Internet, personalized learning is also a major focus. Over the past years, the Facebook founder has been making education investments through different vehicles: his nonprofit foundation, Startup:Education (which has supported many schools and nonprofits), a venture fund dedicated to education causes (which has invested in AltSchool, MasteryConnect and Newsela, among others), and Facebook, which is helping Summit Public Schools build its personalized learning platform.

“It will take engaging with communities, which is why we’re starting in our San Francisco Bay Area community," he writes. “It will take building new technology and trying new ideas.” And, perhaps alluding to his criticized efforts in Newark, Zuckerberg acknowledges that “it will take making mistakes and learning many lessons before achieving these goals.”

In the letter, Zuckerberg tells his daughter that he expects her generation will have full access to high quality education. "Personalized learning can be one scalable way to give all children a better education and more equal opportunity.”

Before the today's announcement, Zuckerberg had already committed the majority of his fortune to philanthropy as part of The Giving Pledge, a campaign leaded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to incentivize the wealthiest individuals in the US to donate their fortunes to charity.
