Facebook occupies a particularly strange place in the left-of-center political ecosystem. The social media leviathan has been heavily criticized for being a vector of misinformation, and for not placing warning labels on Donald Trump’s most acerbic rhetoric, as Twitter has done. Liberals have also accused Facebook of being afraid of cracking down on fake news because new restrictions would disproportionately affect conservatives; the charge is that the company is too sensitive to Republican accusations of bias to do what is good for the country.
But however strong the progressive case against Facebook the company is, its well-compensated top employees are a reliable source of Democratic campaign donations, giving to national organizations as well as individual candidates running in swing districts across the country. Some top donors who work at Facebook are famous, others not so much. Here are the top six donors of 2020, based on a rough analysis of OpenSecrets data:
Sheryl Sandberg
The billionaire Facebook COO is one of the most notable philanthropists in the country and peels off hundreds of thousands of dollars every political cycle to support Democrats and progressive causes. She gave $1 million to Planned Parenthood’s political 501c(4) offshoot in 2019, and since 2018 has given $250,000 to Women Vote!, a voter turnout project from EMILY’s List. In 2016 she gave the maximum of $10,000 to dozens of state Democratic parties, and maxed out donations to individual candidates; she did something similar in 2020, frequently writing out more than $10,000 in checks on a single day. Her most-donated to Democrats include members of the House leadership and New Jersey Congressperson Frank Pallone, the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, where Facebook executives have testified. No one else at Facebook comes close to matching the titanic scale of her donations.
David Fischer
Facebook’s chief revenue officer isn’t in the same league as Sandberg, but he’s been undeniably generous in his giving to Democrats—in addition to tithing $5,000 to Facebook’s own PAC on a regular basis, Fischer has contributed $50,000 in the past two years to Forward Majority Action, a PAC that focuses on state legislative races, and more than $30,000 to the DNC. He was among the many Silicon Valley execs to give $50,000 to Tech for Campaigns, a hybrid PAC/Super PAC aimed at pushing Democratic campaigns to focus more on the digital side of things. (The New York Times called the nonprofit “a kind of Democratic Geek Squad.”) He’s also given $5,000 to Mind the Gap, a relatively secretive group that has been trying to funnel tech money to Democrats who most need it.
In his own targeted giving, Fischer has been focused on Pennsylvania, a state he doesn’t appear to have strong personal ties to. He’s given $10,000 to the state Democratic Party and $5,400 to Chrissy Houlahan, who flipped a House seat in 2018 and retained it in 2020. But he's also given thousands to a variety of other 2020 candidates, most of them centrists like Conor Lamb, Sara Gideon and Steve Bullock.
Naomi Gleit
Gleit isn’t one of Facebook’s public faces, but she’s the company’s second longest-tenured employee after only Mark Zuckerberg himself. Now the vice president of product and social impact, her most prominent role may have been as a member of the original “growth team” that helped the social media network expand from a website where college students could share photos and party invites to one of the most powerful companies in the world.
Gleit has only recently started to dip her toes into political giving. In 2017 she gave $5,400 to Max Rose, the Democrat who went on to flip a House district on Staten Island in the midterms. She gave $3,800 to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign in 2019 and over $5,000 each to Nancy Pelosi and Cory Booker. Her major giving, however, came in lump-sum donations to organizations—she donated $35,500 to the DCCC, and $50,000 to Tech for Campaigns.
Elliot Schrage
Facebook’s former policy chief announced his resignation some time ago but until he updates his LinkedIn it seems safe to assume he has some kind of role at the company. In any case, his stepping down hasn’t slowed down his donations to Democrats, most notably his donations totaling $70,000 to Tech for Campaigns since 2018. He’s given thousands to Facebook’s PAC and has also regularly contributed to Democrats in the Senate, including Virginia’s Mark Warner and Michigan’s Gary Peters. He also threw $500 to Tom Steyer’s presidential campaign on Christmas Eve, 2019—probably the least impactful half-thousand Schrage ever spent. He was fairly quiet in 2020 as a donor, but his funding of Tech for Campaigns earns him a spot on this list.
William Castleberry
Another lesser-known Facebook exec, Castleberry founded and runs Facebook’s state policy and community engagement office. Somewhat unusually for someone in the tech world, he’s donated to Republicans as well as Democrats, though not very much and not for the past few years. His recent donations have included $5,600 to Sara Gideon, $8,400 to Joe Biden, and more than $8,000 to Montana Senator Steve Bullock and his leadership PAC.
Mark Zuckerberg
The Facebook founder used to splash campaign donations around, giving to both Republican and Democratic leaders during the 2014 cycle. These days, however, he barely donates anything beyond a $5,000 annual gift to Facebook’s PAC. When you own Facebook, you don’t need campaign donations to make yourself heard.
