[gotothrowaway]

This is interesting only because Mark didn't address it head on from the start, but honestly it's not all that surprising.

Private foundations have something called "expenditure responsibility" which makes giving funds to a taxable entity (a grant) tremendously annoying. Any misstep makes you liable to some massive surcharges, public scrutiny, and potentially major headaches. It's the antithesis to Mark's "move fast and break things"

There's some argument he should push for a public charity instead. There, expenditure responsibility isn't expressly required, but you're still expected to see that the money you grant is used for our charitable purpose, and still subject to audit.

I'm expecting them to write quite the essay in response. On it's face, I don't think people should fault this decision. I'm fully expecting a strong effort to use this money efficiently, which is no easy task with such a massive sum. Check out GiveWells recent post about trying to "give away" Dustin Moskiwitz and Cari Tuna's money - which I believe is an order of magnitude less in volume, but still very challenging.