The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (or CZI) has been quietly suspending grants to nonprofits across California and the country, especially those that might be construed as reflecting support for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. While CZI claims that it has long planned to move its focus away from social issues and towards the sciences, current and former employees had a different story to tell the San Francisco Standard.
In 2015, then-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, created CZI. The couple pledged to donate 99% of their Meta (then Facebook) shares to the organization, which currently implies a sum of nearly $100 billion. CZI says it has distributed almost $7B in grants over the course of its 10-year history. The organization, whose founding mission was to “build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone,” has also given millions of dollars to nonprofits in San Mateo County, where Meta is headquartered.
In recent months, however, many of those grants have been suspended. The Standard spoke with Juan Hernandez, the CEO of Creser Capital Fund, which provides loans to Latino entrepreneurs, who learned last month that his CZI grant would not be renewed. And just last week, The Mercury News reported that CZI cut funding for local homelessness and affordable housing groups.
The cuts come in the wake of CZI’s warning to employees in February that the organization would be winding down its DEI work, both internally and externally. In a message posted to its website, CZI’s COO Marc Malandro seemed to speak out of both sides of his mouth, saying that while CZI was still committed to “ensuring our work serves everyone” and to “building a workforce that reflects a broad ranges of experiences, thoughts, and opinions,” the organization would be shifting its focus away from political and social advocacy (where it had worked on immigration reform and racial equality); eliminating its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility team (“given the shifting regulatory and legal landscape”); and discontinuing its “Diverse Slate” hiring practices, which aimed to ensure that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds were considered for roles.
The Standard spoke with current and former CZI employees about the recent changes at the organization, two of which described an internal meeting that included remarks from General Counsel Mark Kim. According to the Standard’s reporting, Kim explained that the organization is a “political target” because of its billionaire co-founders (at least one of whom has done his very best to make friends with the Trump administration) and is simply hoping to avoid litigation.
In response to the Standard’s reporting, a CZI spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the changes stemmed solely from CZI’s desire to avoid being sued, saying that the organization’s strategy is “driven by our science vision to cure, prevent, and manage all disease by the end of this century.” Except, perhaps, the disease of bigotry? Anyway.
Additionally, CZI spokesperson assured the Standard that it remained committed to serving the local community, partially through its Community Fund, which has provided $35 million in the last eight years to fund “local organizations doing essential work throughout San Mateo County.” However, one former grantee told the Standard that she was informed by CZI that she was suddenly “no longer eligible” to apply for a grant from the fund. Adriana Ayala, who leads the Chicana Latina Foundation, says she was told by a CZI program officer that it was because of her foundation’s focus on a targeted population (namely, Latinas). “In this political climate, targeted populations are frowned upon, or they’re seen as DEI,” Ayala told the Standard.
The changes at CZI come just months after Zuckerberg’s Meta announced that it was ending its fact-checking program on social media and winding down its internal DEI efforts, including the “Diverse Slate” practices it shared with CZI.
The Guardian reported that the changes at Meta caused angst at CZI, with employees asking in a Slack group for managers and executives if CZI “would ‘reaffirm’ the organization’s values.” At the time, Mark Gundacker, CZI’s Head of People, assured employees that CZI’s policies and governance remained entirely separate from Meta’s, and that “Meta’s changes to its DEI efforts does not impact ours.” He reiterated this point, saying, “If employees have questions, please reaffirm this for them and we’ll continue to do the same whenever the question comes up.”
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