Priscilla Chan, wife of billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, tops $100 million in Hawaii giving

Priscilla Chan, the pediatrician and philanthropist married to American billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, has marked a decade of giving on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where the couple have committed more than $100 million to local causes since 2016.

The money has gone to more than 100 organizations, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said on its website this week, alongside a note from Chan on the couple's 10 years of philanthropy in Hawaii. Most of the giving runs through the Chan Zuckerberg Kauai Community Fund, which is held at the Hawaii Community Foundation in Honolulu.

The fund's priorities are affordable housing, health, education and youth programs, food production and distribution, land and Native Hawaiian culture, and job training. It has also paid for emergency relief after floods and fires on the island, during the Covid-19 pandemic and in the recovery from Hurricane Lowell. It backed 39 organizations in 2025, among them the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii, Hawaii Foodbank's Kauai branch and the University of Hawaii's John A. Burns School of Medicine.

Schools and housing

In August, the fund gave more than $330,000 in unrestricted grants to Kauai's 16 public schools, its seven public charter schools and Kumu's Cupboard, a Lihue nonprofit that supplies teachers for free. Chan and Zuckerberg also sponsored a back-to-school event at the Kukui Grove shopping center that handed out more than 3,000 backpacks to students.

"Unrestricted or flexible grants empower our school leaders to direct resources exactly where they are needed most," said Leila Maeda-Kobayashi, the state Department of Education's superintendent for the Kauai complex area.

Housing has been a large part of the giving. In November 2024, the couple gave $626,000 to Permanently Affordable Living Hawaii to move five homes in Kilauea into a community land trust, which keeps the land and sells the houses on leasehold so they stay affordable.

A long tie to the island

Zuckerberg owns a large estate on Kauai's north shore. In 2017 he dropped lawsuits he had filed to clear title to small parcels of land inside the property, some held by Native Hawaiian families, after a public backlash.

Chan and Zuckerberg signed the Giving Pledge in 2010 and set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015, pledging to give away 99% of their Meta shares over their lifetimes. Chan, who trained as a pediatrician, leads the initiative with Zuckerberg. It now puts most of its money into science and biology research.

Zuckerberg, 42, co-founder and chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., is worth about $216.6 billion, according to Forbes, which ranks him as the world's fifth-richest person.