Founders Pledge

Last updated
Founders Pledge
Founded2015;10 years ago (2015) [1]
FounderDafna Bonas, David Goldberg
TypeNon-profit
Location
Area served
Global
Membership1,776 (May 2023) [2]
Website founderspledge.com

Founders Pledge is a London-based charitable initiative, where entrepreneurs commit to donate a portion of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business. [3] [4] [5] The mission of Founders Pledge is to "empower entrepreneurs to do immense good". [6]

Contents

By October 2024, 1,970 entrepreneurs across 30 countries [3] have signed up to Founders Pledge. Collectively, they have pledged to donate $10.3 billion in share value (of which $1.4 billion in donations have been completed to date). [7]

History

Founders Pledge was initially launched in 2015 by the Founders Forum for Good, which focuses on helping social entrepreneurs build and scale businesses. [8] David Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of Founders Pledge, has stated that the work of 80,000 Hours have influenced the trajectory of the organization. [9]

Founders Pledge was named one of the New Radicals 2016, which are "innovative projects chosen by The Observer and Nesta as making a real difference to society". [10]

Starting in London, Founders Pledge has since expanded and opened multiple new offices in cities such as Berlin, [11] New York and San Francisco. [3] In addition, Founders Pledge has launched partnerships with organisations including Y Combinator, [12] MassChallenge, and Forward Partners. [13] In September 2016, Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, wrote on the Y Combinator blog: "Many of our founders ask us about how they can donate part of their equity or post exit proceeds, and now we have an answer: Founders Pledge." [14]

In 2023, Founders Pledge moved $168 million to the charitable sector on a budget of $8.2 million, implying an ROI of over 20:1. [15] [16]

Activities

Founders Pledge runs three main types of activities, all of which are free of charge for its members. [3] [7]

Research

Founders Pledge partners with GiveWell for its research on cost-effective global health and development charities. In addition, Founders Pledge has written research reports on various topics, including:

Members

Entrepreneurs signing up to Founders Pledge enter a commitment to donate a portion of their personal proceeds on liquidity to charity. The minimum commitment is 2%, though on average entrepreneurs commit around 7%. [26] Comparing several donation pledging initiatives, Vox writes that Founders Pledge forces The Giving Pledge "to compete for the mindshare of today’s tech community". [27]

A complete list of members is available on the Founders Pledge website. [28] Notable members of Founders Pledge include the following:

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Forbes" . Retrieved 15 December 2019.
  2. ↑ "Founders Pledge Homepage". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 12 May 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Bell, Douglas. "The Radical Founders Raising Billions For Charity - Is This A New Social Movement?". Forbes. Archived from the original on August 29, 2019. Retrieved 2019-12-15.
  4. ↑ Rovnick, Naomi (2016-05-06). "Wealthy millennials explore venture philanthropy". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  5. ↑ Schultz, Abby. "The Age of Moonshots". www.barrons.com. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  6. ↑ "About Us". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  7. 1 2 "Home". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2024-10-25.
  8. ↑ Volpicelli, Gian (2017-06-12). "Brent Hoberman left lastminute.com and formed an empire. This is how he did it". Wired UK. ISSN   1357-0978 . Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  9. ↑ "One of the most exciting new effective altruist organizations: An interview with David Goldberg of the Founders Pledge". 80,000 Hours. 2015-11-26. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  10. ↑ Marsden, Harriet; Fallon, Katy (2016-07-10). "More of the best New Radicals 2016". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  11. ↑ Shead, Sam. "Germany's multimillionaire startup founders are being encouraged to donate to worthwhile causes". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  12. ↑ "Y Combinator signs up to Founders Pledge charity scheme for social causes". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  13. ↑ Partners, Forward (2018-02-07). "Our pre-seed termsheet". Medium. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  14. ↑ Altman, Sam. "YC and Founders Pledge". Y Combinator. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  15. ↑ "Our most impactful year yet". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2024-10-25.
  16. ↑ "Our most impactful year yet". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2024-10-25.
  17. ↑ "Community". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  18. ↑ "How It Works". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  19. ↑ "Research". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  20. ↑ "The difficulty with the EU's sustainable investment rules". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  21. ↑ Samuel, Sigal (2019-12-02). "Want to fight climate change effectively? Here's where to donate your money". Vox. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  22. ↑ Piper, Kelsey (2019-06-13). "Is climate change an "existential threat" — or just a catastrophic one?". Vox. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  23. ↑ Neal, Meagan (2018-12-21). "It's hard to design good policies. This simple idea can help governments do it". Vox. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  24. ↑ Goth, Aidan; Hoeijmakers, Sjir (2020-09-25). "Psychedelic-Assisted Mental Health Treatments Executive Summary". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2020-12-04.
  25. ↑ "Global Catastrophic Risks Fund". www.founderspledge.com. Retrieved 2024-10-25.
  26. ↑ Paynter, Ben (2018-09-25). "Why nonprofits should be courting entrepreneurs as donors". Fast Company. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  27. ↑ Schleifer, Theodore (2019-05-28). "MacKenzie Bezos signed the philanthropic commitment her ex-husband spurned". Vox. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  28. ↑ "Members". Founders Pledge. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  29. ↑ Shead, Sam. "Facebook's little-known billionaire cofounder is funding a London charity". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.