Likely influenced by his benevolent doctor wife Priscilla Chan maybe she's really changing him, you guys! Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that he's donating $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation to fight the spread of the Ebola virus. Zuck made the announcement today on his own Facebook page, saying, "The Ebola epidemic is at a critical turning point," and adding, "We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn't spread further and become a long term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio."
Chan is a pediatric resident at UCSF Medical School, and it seems likely that she played a big role in the decision to make this grant especially seeing as Zuckerberg has mostly only reached into his billionaire's pockets thus far for some political causes, for potential Republican presidential nominee Chris Christie, and that $120 million he gave to Bay Area schools. This is the first donation Zuckerberg and Chan have made to a public health cause.
In the past, Zuckerberg has been criticized by other billionaires (ahem, Mark Benioff), for treating his philanthropy as little more than a tax write-off, and for not actually having any real philanthropic interests.
Also, just to be cynical, it's pretty good PR to throw some money at a global health crisis when you just dropped $66 million on a private compound in Hawaii. Just sayin.
Below, Zuckerberg's post about the donation in full.