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. Inspired by

effective altruism Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, c ...

, the mission of Founders Pledge is to "empower entrepreneurs to do immense good". By May 2023, 1,776 entrepreneurs across 30 countries have signed up to Founders Pledge. Collectively, they have pledged to donate $9.3 billion in share value (of which $891 million in donations have been completed to date).

History

Founders Pledge was initially launched in 2015 by the Founders Forum for Good, which focuses on helping social entrepreneurs build and scale businesses. David Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of Founders Pledge, has stated that the ideas of

, and the work of

80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours is a London-based nonprofit organisation that conducts research on which careers have the largest positive social impact and provides career advice based on that research. It provides this advice on their website and podcast, and ...

in particular, have influenced the trajectory of the organization. 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". Starting in London, Founders Pledge has since expanded and opened multiple new offices in cities such as Berlin, New York and San Francisco. In addition, Founders Pledge has launched partnerships with organisations including

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

MassChallenge MassChallenge is a global, zero-equity startup accelerator, founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 2009. MassChallenge is headquartered in Boston's Seaport District in the Innovation and Design Building, and has additional U.S. locations in Texas ...

, and Forward Partners. In September 2016,

Sam Altman Samuel H. Altman ( ; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator. Early life and education Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mothe ...

, 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." Since 2016, Founders Pledge was awarded two major grants⁠—totaling more than $6 million⁠—from the

Open Philanthropy Project Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current co-chief executive officers are Holde ...

, a foundation largely funded by

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

co-founder

Dustin Moskovitz Dustin Aaron Moskovitz (; born May 22, 1984) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. (now known as Meta) with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found A ...

Activities

Founders Pledge runs three main types of activities, all of which are free of charge for its members. * First, they aim to build a community of impact-driven entrepreneurs by organizing events to educate members on evidence-backed impact strategies. * Second, they provide administrative support with donations and offer a

donor-advised fund In the United States, a donor-advised fund (commonly called a DAF) is a charitable giving vehicle administered by a public charity created to manage charitable donations on behalf of organizations, families, or individuals. To participate in a don ...

. * Third, Founders Pledge conducts research on high-leverage giving opportunities and advises its members on where to give based on their personal values.

Research

Founders Pledge partners with

GiveWell GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percent ...

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

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

, *

evidence-based policy Evidence-based policy is an idea in public policy proposing that policy decisions should be based on, or informed by, rigorously established objective evidence. The implied contrast is with policymaking based on ideology, 'common sense,' anecd ...

, *

animal welfare Animal welfare is the well-being of non-human animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures such as longevity ...

, *

mental health Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. It likewise determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making. Mental health ...

, * and the mitigation of

existential risks A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying Modernity, modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction o ...

Members

Entrepreneurs signing up to Founders Pledge enter a legally binding 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%. Comparing several donation pledging initiatives, ''Vox'' writes that Founders Pledge forces

The Giving Pledge The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage extremely wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. , the pledge has 236 signatories from 28 countries. Most of the signatories of the pledge are billionaires, an ...

"to compete for the mindshare of today’s tech community". A complete list of members is available on the Founders Pledge website. Notable members of Founders Pledge include the following: *

Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman (born August 1984) is the co-founder and former head of applied AI at DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company acquired by Google and now owned by Alphabet. His current venture is Inflection AI. Early life Suleyman's fath ...

, co-founder of

Google DeepMind DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and research laboratory founded in 2010. DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, after Google's restru ...

Kathryn Petralia Kathryn Petralia is an American entrepreneur, and the co-founder and COO of Kabbage. In November 2017, she was assessed by ''Forbes'' as being the 98th most powerful woman in the world. In December 2017, she was listed in a TechCrunch feature on ...

, Co-founder & COO of

Kabbage Kabbage, Inc., is an online financial technology company based in Atlanta, Georgia. The company provides funding directly to small businesses and consumers through an automated lending platform. American Express acquired the company in 2020. Hi ...

* Roy Bahat, Head of

Bloomberg Beta Bloomberg Beta is an early stage venture capital firm with $375M under management, capitalized solely by Bloomberg. The fund exists to expand Bloomberg’s horizons by investing in companies built by extraordinary founders that are creating prof ...

* Niklas Adalberth, Founder of

Klarna Klarna Bank AB, commonly referred to as Klarna, is a Swedish fintech company that provides online financial services such as payments for online storefronts and direct payments along with post-purchase payments. The company has more than 4,000 ...

and Norrsken Foundation * Andrew Fisher, Executive Chairman of Shazam * Eric Wahlforss, Founder & CPO of

SoundCloud SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming se ...

* Uma Valeti, Founder & CEO of

Upside Foods Upside Foods (formerly known as Memphis Meats) is a food technology company headquartered in Berkeley, California, aiming to grow sustainable cultured meat. The company was founded in 2015 by Uma Valeti (CEO), Nicholas Genovese ( CSO), and Will ...

* Esben Kran, CEO & Logo designer

References

External links