Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician, topped the list of the most generous American philanthropists in 2013 with a donation of 18 million shares of Facebook stock that are now worth more than $1 billion. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, it was the largest charitable gift on the public record in 2013. On Friday, they announced a $120 million gift to the San Francisco Bay Area public school system.
Some of the nation’s biggest givers, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, did 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.
With that, here are the five biggest donors from the technology sector last year, as compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
1. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, with more than $1 billion, to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
2. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, with $225 million to HopeLab, Humanity United, Omidyar Network, and the Ulupono Initiative.
3. Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife, Joan, with $221 million to The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute at Cornell Tech, a technology-focused graduate school in New York City, and other entities such as the San Diego Public Library Foundation.
4. Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife, Anne Wojcicki (now separated) with $219 million to the Brin Wojcicki Foundation and to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
5. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, with $206 million to the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and to the EMP Museum in Seattle.
