Philanthropy
Zuckerberg and Chan have pledged about $4.6 billion to charities, including a donation of $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital, where Chan worked.[7][17][18] In 2013, they gave 18 million Facebook shares (valued at more than $970 million) to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The Chronicle of Philanthropy placed the couple at the top of its list of 50 most generous American philanthropists for that year.[19] They also pledged $120 million to public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.[6]
On December 1, 2015, Chan and Zuckerberg posted an open Facebook letter to their newborn daughter. They pledged to transfer 99 percent of their Facebook shares, then valued at $45 billion, to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a limited liability company that focuses on health and education.[6][20]
In 2016, Chan and CZI co-founded The Primary School, a nonprofit organization that promised to provide K–12 education, prenatal care, early childhood education, primary health care, and other programs and services for free to residents in East Palo Alto, California and the surrounding areas.[7] She served as the emeritus board chair of the school.[21] In 2022, The Primary School received approximately $8 million in donations, and in 2023, the school recorded nearly $4 million in contributions. In April 2025, CZI announced that it was closing The Primary School's East Palo Alto and San Leandro (East Bay) campuses at the end of the 2025–2026 school year[22][23] "due to a lack of funding".[24] Chan did not attend meetings announcing the tuition-free school's closure,[24] and parents are uncertain about what's next for their children.[24]
Critiques have been made regarding CZI, as it often tries to solve problems caused by social media, including Zuckerberg's very own social media platforms.[26]
