How can founders fix the broken charity model?

hey everyone welcome back to fundraising the mystified today we have David Goldberg on the show with us David I'm very excited to have you on and share your story of founding Founders pledge welcome to the show thanks for having me I'm looking forward to it now so you are an exit to founder and you are now running an insanely amazing and very large scale uh nonprofit that's deployed over 1.3 billion I would love for you to give the audience a little bit of context as to how you got there when it came from you know building your first you know company and selling that to going into to philanthropy sure so I've had a sort of atypical journey in that I didn't go to university straight away I worked and um in finance and then uh moved to Europe back in 2006 and started a company that I got very lucky with and a couple of years later I sold it wasn't a technology company there were no investors it was bootstrapped you know made money pretty quickly and um and captured a nice moment um and two and a half years later when I sold it I found myself with just more than I needed having effectively won the life Lottery um and I sort of really internalized my luck and and at the same time sort of understood that you know if I had been born a different place a different time a different color I might have had a really you know different experience and it did feel a bit like sort of winning the lottery and I I sort of decided to that point that you know having had this blessed existence that if I didn't do something to rebalance the karma scales because I'd i' had got lucky a bunch of times before um I was like do some tragedy and I really did feel that like if if something you know if if I just kept making it about sort of the aggregation of more for me then um the universe was going to correct this mistake in some harsher way than I would do on my own basically and so resolved at that point that I was going to give away most of my wealth to charity um very naively thinking that it would be easy to do well i' spent a couple of months you know um looking at charities and giving away money and being a philanthropist and I feel awesome and you know really good about myself and then I'd go on to the next project and um what I actually uncovered was this ecosystem of organizations that were extremely well-intentioned set up for all the right reasons uh but really poorly run really poorly executed and really ineffective on the whole um I I started you know trying to understand what charities actually did that changed the world rather than the stuff that they say which is you know you affect a lot of people or you know you provide you know books or electricity or water to this population and you know as a result of that their lives are better what I wanted to know was like how much better are they as a result of this thing and how many people are affected by it and can you prove it like are we sure that it was this charitable intervention that you've done that's actually made these people better or was it something else and the moment I got into the detail the nitty-gritty with these organizations um the uh communication stopped flowing really and uh the questions went unanswered and it sort of became a bit of a running joke like let's reach out to another charity to see if I can give them money and have them not really address my questions well and what soon became clear was that this sector is basically broken there are 10 million Charities which is a lot like what many more than we need and a very small number of them are actually doing really important counterfactually impactful work and um and I couldn't really in good conscience um at that point because I didn't really understand which are the good ones and which were the bad waste my money you know with the hope that by lighting it on fire the smoke did something good for the world and that's sort of how it felt um and so I uh took a step back and realized you know I have no idea what I'm doing you know at that point I was High School Dropout with no education um I decided I needed to figure out how to think better if I was going to work on this thing and I didn't really want to at that point at least work on charity as a career uh but like understand charity better so I you know decided I'd go to Community College and figure out how to think better and Community College became you know a four year and then a four year became a PhD program here in the UK um and um over the course of that time I I did figure out how to think better and understood how the world worked and S of became a bit more numerate like both practically and theoretically numerate than I had been in the past and um decided that I was going to start an organization that fixed the problem that I faced when I sold my business which is you know I have these resources that I don't need all of that I want to use to affect the world positively how do I do that and at that point you know when I sold this business in end of 2008 was no one really set up to help and even a couple of years later um five years later having left my PhD program you know without without actually getting the PHD uh I uh I I still felt like there was not much resource for people who you know looked like me um and who had you know not billions of dollars of wealth but a lot you know enough that they could really make a dent in the world um and so you know that became Founders pledge um this this this organization basically tries to help people people use their resources to impact the world positively and gets them involved in thinking about philanthropy giving back really before maybe they have any right to before they've actually made money and so I had this idea that um what if we could get people who had extremely you know high potential wealth for the future commit to give to charity now when they still are you know practically poor people even if they have like paper wealth in the form of of you know founder shares of a company what if we could get them to commit some chunk of those founder shares to go to charity um it turns out we really discount the future very heavily and so committing to give away something you haven't yet made that is still sort of theoretical like pie in the sky Monopoly money um seemed intuitively to me to be an easier ass than getting extremely wealthy people who had already made it who had been through the you know the decade of grind to give away something that's already in their bank account which ostensively was more painful um and that sort of became the basis of how Founders pledge you know operates and so that's you know where I want to kind of you know go back to is this this journey of you know very typical founder journey of coming into a problem wanting to solve it going to school to figure out how to solve it and you warming up your brain to figure out the solution um but this idea of and kind of why I brought you you know on the show because you know I don't really we don't do usually do nonprofits kind of thing but I think the way you've done this is an incredibly Innovative way it's you know lured me in to make the pledge it's got me involved as a as a member so full disclosure to the audience I'm slightly biased in this conversation but uh you know I think what's fascinating is this catering to Founders what resonated with me was this idea that you know this world is broken because I totally agree I just don't feel like I know a lot of Charities and I just like they don't get the capital deployment and allocation strategy that is Meaningful to me as a Founder who's a micromanager is like in the weeds founder mode all the time uh and I felt that that's a unique approach which you guys have and we'll get to this you know later in terms of how you guys you know fund raise and amount of capital you deploy but let's talk a little bit more about what this what this concept of the Pledge is and and how that works and and just for some insights like you know from a scale of the you know membership that you have and kind of like how many people are actually having these material events yeah so um The Pledge itself is pretty simple and it you know it's effectively skin in the game um and um it wasn't enough at the start to get people to commit to give I mean it was a nice you know jumping off point but getting people to just commit to give and then not helping them to give better sort of results in my situation where you're sort of like out at sea without any you know land or boats in sight and you're just sort of floating there hoping you you're going to sort of swim to some some buoy or something um so the pledge itself is simple um it's a you know commitment to uh donate a percent of your exit proceeds to charity so if x then y x being if I sell shares in my company and make money personally y being then I'll donate Z percentage of what I make some percentage to the nonprofits of my choice on a go forward basis and it's a pretty powerful statement to make and put in writing and then have it sort of countersigned and um and have and be held accountable by uh you know another another organization us um so we have about 2,000 signatories now from 40 countries they've pledged just shy of 11 billion dollar and um and and and the pledge itself to my mind should be the easiest decision that a Founder makes in their day right amidst a you know endless list of hard choices to make about like product decisions monetization strategies hiring firing design culture you know the stuff that just requires Les the idea that you're going to give away some small chunk of your extremely you know good outcome to the things that you care about and hopefully get tax relief for it in most cases people do should be just like oneand done it's a five minute you know conversation with your partner and then on to the next but it's powerful because it really sort sort of starts to embed this idea that My Success is Not Just accruing To Me the individual but it acrs to the world to people who are you know from less fortunate backgrounds from you know challenging economic context and challenging geographies it it it sort of takes into account that we don't actually really price in the cost of doing business into our day-to-day lives hence we have a climate crisis it it tries to basically make or enable people who otherwise are Focus just on solving a first world you know problem to you know re have have real positive social impact in in other parts of the and and that's what it's done for you know for me and and other members I've met uh through the organization it just it starts the conversation because you as a Founder who's very pragmatic you know very hardcore capitalist all the way capitalism solves all the problems but um yeah but it it's it's powerful to kind of hear and I think it it'd be great for you to share just like the strategy that you guys have in terms of impact because this is you know one you gota you got to go inspire people to commit capital and that's a you know story that we can kind of talk about in the fundraising side and then there's the allocation strategy it's like how do you maximize the impact of those dollars to appeal to what would probably be the most you know Savvy and committed and involved you know donors who actually can like just as you were like trying to hold these charties accountable so it's a pretty high bar that you that you live up to so definitely um let's start with the you know the fundraising so it's it's starts with a pledge you know so Founders before you materialize the wealth to start the conversation it's easier to kind of give away what's future paper money but that event happens so up 2,000 members you know how many actually have had liquidity um and and what's that experience like kind of raising the capital for you know you've ra you deploy 1.3 billion like that's more money than you know the majority of any founder that will ever been on this show or other you raise money and that's just like business is usual for you so I'm just you know curious how how do you go about like what's the experience with that pledge to uh actual liquidity yeah so um our sell the thing that we are you know providing to people that they otherwise can't get elsewhere is that we're going to help you give better than you could do on your own um and and not just in like a you know tax efficiency planning way but in a what do these dollars pound zeros actually accomplish in the world and it turns out to be really hard to impact the world in a meaningful way in a in like a causally attributable way and so we take the approach you know in the same way that lots of investors do that not all organizations are the same some are much much better than others and um and some are better yet than even those right there's like real outliers here and our focus is on finding the absolute best organizations in the world tackling the absolute biggest problems at scale that also need resources so we sort of look at this um this issue from like a a scale tractability neglected lens scale being like what's the Tam of the market that we're trying to address um if it's big then it's something that we should probably focus on um do we think that this this cause area actually has solutions that could make it better like solve the problems that pervade and if that's true then the sort of third and maybe maybe most important question is is it neglected you know we we're really interested in sort of driving marginal value and we sort of take a utilitarian frame when we think about charity which some people are immediately allergic to but um I think thankfully we are not like strong utilitarians were yeah I call this sort of humanistic utilitarians like really sort of intention sort of philosophical Frameworks but um actually just describe us quite well this idea that you know we should really seek to deploy our resources in a way that is going to change the makeup of the problem or like potentially provide Solutions so we can find a really highs scale issue that has really tractable Solutions in it but is extremely well capitalized such that if we put more money into it it actually isn't going to really do much so we want to think you know on the margin about our additionality so to what extent is our next dollar pound Euro going to affect this cause area this intervention this organization in a way that actually leads to more good stuff and if the answer is it displaces someone else's money because they you know the cause area is already extremely well capitalized or um the charity is like you know has a bunch of big backers and you've heard that you know Bill Gates supports it and all of Bill's friends support it and then the question becomes well if Bill is supporting it he's probably supporting it to the extent that it needs support and if we're piling our money behind his you know maybe we're actually displacing someone else's less smart Capital with our you know are smart capital and so we sort of try to think with this mental model that like even if it's not true the way to think about it is if if our money is really smart and everyone else's is less smart and we put our smart money into an area that moves someone else's dumb money or Dumber money out of it then we are actually potentially causing harm in the world because if we take this sort of marginal value mindset and then find the next best thing that we could support that is neglected we're actually going to do more good uh potentially than would be the if we you know funded this more exciting thing that is really well capitalized so ultimately this is the product like this is what the product is helping people give better right and so you know we we're a team of about 75 now half of that is spent on helping people give better um both in terms of getting them to donate in the right way to the right structures uh to all of the grant making everywhere in the world so we're we're unique as far as organizations go and that we're sort of um geography agnostic so we operate in 40 countries we deploy Capital everywhere on the planet um we don't sort of think in terms of national uh National lines and so we enable you know Founders in California to deploy Capital to Charities across the global South and still get tax relief in California um and we do this be and we can do this because we are working with a relatively small you know user base so there's lots of organizations out there helping people give to charity but all of them are taking the sort of mass Market approach they're focused on you know the the Thousand $10,000 donations and for us we're focused on to the million 10 million hundred million dollar donations and because it's such a sort of smaller group of users as it were and we can provide them with a lot more support than would be the case otherwise so the process from pledging to deploying is typically someone pledges you know series aish sometimes a little before sometimes a little after and then they can engage with our community in the way that they'd like because they're running their business some Founders are like really sort of laser focus nose to the grindstone and just don't have the capacity to really engage with much of what we do until much closer to a liquidity event but others actually find a lot of value in our community so we do about 30 events per year all over the world these are aimed at bringing our members together and sitting them around a table with thought leaders and experts practitioners charity CEOs policy makers and helping them understand the context of a set of issues that may be important to them it's not sales there's no fundraising there's no asks but it really is about helping people to get a deeper better S of more high resolution understanding of what are the biggest issues how are they affecting people what do Solutions look like and what are the problems in implementing those Solutions and then that's sort of and I to say there like as a person that's been to events they're incredibly mind openening but it's also like you know it's interesting meeting some of the other members like you have some of these people that have materialized they've had these you know Monster outcomes that we all aspire to and then you have people that just made the pledge you know people that are you know passionate but they're they're still grinding and you you bring these these people together you have these really thoughtful conversations and you know it's a a great Network expansion but you know when it comes to it's something I want to highlight for what I think is fascinating about you know Founders pledge is not only the impact you have effectively it's like how I Define it it's like you have three different products you fundraise for and I would like to talk about just how you think about the fund raise for each one of these so the first is the actual organization Founders pledge you have an operating budget then you have the actual Capital deployment so it's getting money out of people's bank accounts or their donor advice funds into actual causes and then you have a venture fund which you know maybe we start you know start there which is you know you've raised I think it's a $50 million uh follow on fund or like a fund that you 53 million yeah yeah so 53 million so I would love start with that sure yeah so I'd love to start with the The Venture Fund in terms of like you know how of that you know you know you have this kind of you know the nonprofit and technically the The Venture fund has a non you know nonprofit as well in terms of what the proceeds go towards um but I think it's just fascinating you've created these products for your founder audience that everything relate you it's very easy for someone like me to be like makes sense um so maybe talk about what it's like uh for those three different products you offer you know starting with the Venture Fund in terms of raising Capital sure so the Venture fund it's important to note is uh actually like extremely independent from Founders pledge my team would be upset if I didn't mention that um so it's an independent uh Venture fund but it has like a really deep relationship with the charity Founders pledge um and to understand the Venture fund you have to sort of understand how Founders budget is funded so I'll I'll May I'll actually maybe I'll start there because it it sort of maybe makes a tiny bit more sense so everything we do at Founders budg is free there's no cost there's no business model there's no membership fees or dues we don't take Cuts commissions um it's like extremely loss makak on the order of $10 million per year and what that means is every year I have to go out and fund raise and and raise the year before ideally um at least the operating budget of the next year so this year we had to raise $10 million we're just nearly there and it's hard right and it you it requires me basically spending half my time talking to people about what we do and trying to get them excited about funding our mission and people fund us for a host of different reasons but I think the most exciting one is um when someone wants to give to charity they can give to charity uh they give to any charity they want they they $100 you get $100 worth of impact from that charity potentially so it's a one for one if you give to an organization like ours we call a meta charity um in in the same year that we raise that money we help our members give on average 20 times more than what we cost and so you could give a dollar to a charity and get a dollars worth of impact or you can give a dollar to US and in the same year get $20 worth of impact it's a 20x multiple in year and if I said to you Jason hey I've got this new business and it's going to 20x your money in 12 months you'd probably wire me money same day right um or or at least same week is it that easy though like it's it's a great great narrative but like no no of course of course it's not that easy I mean but that's that's that is the truth that's the narrative so once people are like wow that's pretty incredible then you know we dig into like how that works why it works the way that it does um how much of it is attributable to us and and it turns out that the majority of it is and so um you know we basically leverage up cash that is going to charity um to get more money to charity would would be the case otherwise and not just more in the sense of volume but more in the sense of impact as well um and that sort of comes back to this idea that we when we help people give better we help them give more and they help them give more effectively um and so that's one of the frames for fundraising the other is like you've gotten value from this community you've used our services you've sort of leveled up your thinking you use our sort of infrastructure structure to deploy Capital seamlessly globally and you like got it for free and it's better than what you would pay for if you were going to you know one of the commercial shops that do similar things to what we do but not at all vertically integrated um and so people want to support us they feel you know like they're paying it forward for the Next Generation so who can also benefit from it for free without any obligation and um and then I guess the final frame is people just like community and um they want to be a you know around people like them and not just in the same sector like they do bdb SAS or like consumer Tech or you know climate attch but people who do something in technology and have made this commitment to give back to the World when they have success and I think that you know um our community is so special because every single person that's in it has the exact same skin in the game they've all made a pledge sometimes the pledges are bigger than others but um everyone's made a pledge and so um it's free for those reasons and you I fund raise typically through donations but um this is sort of subject to shocks like I'm a single point of failure within Founders pledge and this became exceedingly clear in the summer of 21 I was crossing the street having left a meeting in shortage and I nearly got hit by a bus like really actually nearly got hit by a bus An American in the UK I look the wrong way on my phone and um a bus honked and I like steep back just in time and it was like a really near mess and it it I I it shook me basically I was like that was nearly it I am not sure I to say that word here yeah we're all um yeah uh so I like took stock later that day I was like what would have happened if I had died and my family would be sad of course but would Founders pledge survive me and the answer was like not really clear at that point and the reason is not because it's you know I'm I'm necessary for the day to running of the organization I'm not my coo does all of the hard work she's amazing but because I bring in most of the money to keep the the team paid in the lights on and at that point I sort of realized that if this didn't change you know at some point in the future we were going to have an issue and I sort of had this aha moment where I was like well typically the journey goes someone you know gets value from us has this exit donates to charity appreciates what we've done and then donates back so we are like sort of down the waterfall of distributions as it were and you know my thought was like What if we were higher up the waterfall like what would need to be true in order for us to participate in the success of our members alongside them and it was like just a jump from that to well we should start a venture fund we should invest in our members companies at really consequential moments in time and see the upside acrew to the nonprofit and so it was an idea that captured me like you know by late 21 I was like full steam ahead with this idea uh if you remember then money was still free people felt extremely rich markets were flying and I had you know a bunch of conversations with our members to say hey if I you know if I said I want to invest in your company um I've got $5 million of cash sitting on my balance sheet I definitely did not by the way but if I did like would you would you let me into your next round the answer was sort of universally yes I had one person who was unsure but I SP I I spoke to 50 people and um um and it soon became clear that like there was something here and those 50 conversations turned into like 45 LP commits without a deck without a structure just like this is amazing you should do a fund I want to invest in it put me down for a million dollars and it was like oh wow there's something here um and it turns out that a charity starting a venture fund is actually like pretty atypical um and not really a thing that has ever happened before in Europe and uh there's versions of it in the US um that are um great but you know we're a UK headquarter orc that operates in the US and so we had to basically Start From First principles and create this structure which took a year and like many many lawyers many accountants lots of lots of grind basically and by the end of it you know by sort of late 22 the world had changed and my you know $75 million of LP commit was is actually more like 15 um in a changed world where money isn't free and people who are still extremely rich feel much poorer um and so we started again basically from scratch and fundraised you know at the end of the day we we closed the fund in um in April of 2024 with $53 million um and all but four of our LPS are members of Founders pledge and the tickets ranged on the low end from 50 Grand we had a feeder vehicle for smaller tickets but you know technically our minimum was 250 to the highend 10 million um and and the model and this model is so interesting to people because it combines sort of two things that are historically intention or like typically intention which is like doing good and making money so it's a rules based fund that invests in any company that ticks our three criteria and criteria are one of the founders is a member of Founders pledge company's raising $20 million more in a series b or later and there's a tier one fund participating in the route and so you know basically is like let's you know build an index on the top desile of our community uh we know it's the top desile because the SEO the index the excels are backing them they're raising a late stage round of a minimum size and they've committed to giving back which sort of speaks to their ambition of scale um and people let us into their rounds which are almost always oversubscribed because we donate 85% of the GP carry to charity and not just any charity Founders pledge a charity that they're already involved in so it creates this like really nice virtuous circle whereby they're going to raise money already maybe they'll take a million or two less from their lead and take you know capital from us and when they have success that primarily acrs to a nonprofit that they are already involved in so despite it taking a while and fundraising maybe in the worst Market ever to do a firsttime fund you know we raised $53 million no I'd say you done like just a master of fundraising one you create a great product I think that's the the architecture of your everything is have a good product yeah like that that I think is killer the fact that you started to find that you you get allocation because it's already existing members it's it's a it's a carrot for people to join and be a part of the the founders pledge not every you know kid do everything but you know it's just like a nice to have as far as a member being the founder making the pledge but you also drisk the investment in terms of getting into the hot deal as your post series B it's usually sure enough likeliness of failure is reduced you know you're not going to get the maybe the 100 200x return but you know you're not going to lose money and LPS want it because it's still two and 20 to them but it makes them feel better it's like it's and they're also gonna make a lot of money yeah you know ostensibly if Founders budget is successful so are they and it turns out that the majority of you know members who've uh who invested in the fund have also pledged back a meaningful portion of their returns so there's you know it's like a a d you know it's a double tap basically and um and it's you know small tickets all in I mean we aim to invest in 60 companies in fund one extremely atypical for growth stage funds but our you know our tickets our average ticket is just million dollar so we're not writing big tickets so we're not crowding out you know um meaningful funds or you know lead funds or even small funds we're you know we're we're small fry in the scope of things but you know we have a lot of small fries and it makes a full meal at the end of the day hopefully you're likely having raising money or selling your company personally I've had four exits and I've raised over $145 million if you want a free coaching session with me just like subscribe and leave a comment down below letting me know what you think of today's video for a chance to win a free coaching session with me I'll select three winners every single month You' just have to like subscribe and leave a comment down below for a chance to win now onto the video uh and so I just think that you know with your experience in in fundraising um and we didn't get to kind of the separation we'll call it church and state of Founders pledge raising money you have to go out and raise 10 million every year so it's like as a Founder that's raised you know 40 but over Ser you know multiple periods of time that lasts like a certain amount of time I have Revenue coming in to offset that and now you have some you Revenue coming in from the the fund but you know part of that you're having to go out day after day and just race how like what's your process like we've kind of talked about the ne the message but like what's your fundraising process to open these doors and to raise this Capital so I mean the first piece is like you know as you said have a product that people want you know a good product and you know and and we do I think um uh and the next is like find people who actually um align with your vision of the world who are interested in not just giving to charity but giving to charity as effectively as possible doing the most good that they can so um we you know everything we do is free we are extremely explicit about that all the way through the Journey um but when someone has a you know asks at the end of the day having just worked with us and donated $10 million like what can I do to support you you know you say if if you've if you've gotten value from us then you should get back and enable the Next Generation to and 90% of our our donors are our members um but not because they're compelled to give but because they choose to they want to then we have a small cohort of people who are just interested in sort of like finding the very best giving opportunities in the world um and and see us as just a machine for leverage um and so almost all that we do is built on sort of network and um and basically getting our our our our members to become our ambassadors and our evangelists and connect us to other people in their ecosystems and their worlds who they think would get value from working with us and we never start a conversation with you know how much do you want to give or to us or like you know here's what we need we start the conversation with how can we be helpful to you like what are your problems as as they relate to the things that we focus on and like maybe we can be you know useful for you and so sometimes we'll spend years you know adding value before there's even like an iota of cash that comes our way but it turns out that when you focus on providing value to people really authentically and and um and objectively um and I I'll sort of double click on that Founders PL is not for everyone we have a view of the world that is we should aim to do the most good possible and some people you know bless them and and respect to them aren't really interested in that they're interested in like giving to their local stuff the things that they can see and interact with because it feels good to them that's fine no value judgment but typically those aren't the people that are going to work best with us but our OB focus on impact Above All Else means that um we don't really pull punches when people ask us hey what do you think of this this organization or like where should I give my money to we're going to tell them the truth not not necessarily what they want to hear but the truth is we understand it we see it what the data suggests at least um and that um focus and um objectivity and um yeah like monom manism about impact really sort of sets us apart and I think um creates you know the authenticity that people get and want to want to get involved in yeah it's a it's a contrarian product I would say what's traditional out there and you know polarizes maybe some partic you people from participating or not participating but I feel like it's necessary to build an organization to the scale that you have you know 75 employees for a nonprofit yeah that's a huge you know accomplishment that ended I think he said 1.3 billion um since Inception which how long has it been for you got uh 10 years 12 years 10 years 10 years so 10 10 year anniversary one point could pretty pretty solid but hopefully by so 10 year anniversary is sort of early next year and hopefully we're closer to one and a half billion by then um I will say one thing about it is so our research our advisory you know helping people give better may not be for everyone but the pledge itself this idea that everyone should be giving back actually is like a should appeal to everyone and everyone can participate in so it's worth mentioning we don't keep a list of um Charities that you must give to anyone who joins Founders pledge can give to whatever they want they have total agency and control over their resources and um and and they don't need to follow advice they also don't need to um listen to it if they don't want to some people join for the community and that's it some people join to use our Donor advised fund because it's you know Global first and zero cost and don't really actually want help in figuring out where to give and and some people just want help in figuring out where to give so it's different for each person and sort of like a buffet in that sense um people eat lots and leave the rest and so one thing I just want to you know point out because I you know we've had amazing Founders on the show and you know predominately always you know commercial you Pro for-profit businesses and we talk about fundraising as a journey and one thing that I'm picking up from you as you talk about the the journey you've been on it's you it's expanding the network building your network adding value for years and establishing that trust and that report and demonstrating the value um but at the end of the day it's like you know I talked to some I got to run a process create a bidding prod you know it's such a different game where this is such 100% relationship based which is really how the best fund managers in the world operate they just have been in the game long enough to where these relationships start to materialize and you I'm curious as you look towards the future of Founders pledge like as you look probably at your up into the right graph of capital deployment you know like kind what's the velocity that you guys are at now what does like the next couple of years look like for Founders pledge I mean every year we give more to charity and it seems to be I mean even in the last couple of years we had our this will be our best year last year was our best year the year before was our best year despite um the markets going pretty side ways and making liquidity extremely challenging right um and so even in this bare market we've grown both um membership pledge value and capital deployed um and you know in the next couple of years we want to be giving about a half a billion per year um so it's you know growing 100% in the next 34 years um and ites it doesn't look like there's any rate of slowing or any upper limit you know we have 2,000 members of which a couple hundred have had liquidity call it 250 to 350 I actually don't have the number off stop my head but somewhere in there not like not all of them have had like full-blown exits some some are secondaries um uh but that's like scratching the surface of the sector there are so many Founders who are not part of Founders pledge and so much wealth that's been created that has then you know for one reason or another gone into a Donor advised fund or a private Foundation that then sits there sometimes forever without actually getting donated to end your Charities because the sort of principal wealth creators are either still running their businesses busy focused on investments enjoying retired life and aren't really interested in engaging with the like the mental cycles of how do I do this well and and get into this sort of analysis paralysis or fear state where they're just like I'd rather not even focus on it I've gotten the tax break I'm just going to let it sit there so if you think about like what the future looks like for us it's unlocking this nent Market where there's billions and billions and billions of dollars of philanthropic Capital sitting doing nothing that could get put to work um but for a lack of focus um a lack of clarity um and not enough time a lack of trust in the institutions that they're aware of and that's that's a thing that is real by the way and it should be real yeah and you know we had another guest on the show Patrice uh Brickman who you know you're focused on the draw down of Dash like actually the deployment for good and where her focus on you know expanding on the dash was like growing for good in terms of deploying into you know impactful organizations um from a for-profit perspective to grow the assets under management but you know at some point it's got to go out the door you know it's got to be deployed and and put to work uh and there's just so much of that cash just sitting there uh you know not being you know just accumulating and making fees to the uh you know the wealth managers which I think is you know kind of the key differenti you demonstrated it's like you can get a daff for free with founder spudge uh and not have to have those whatever you 100 bips taken every year for you know measure fees I think actually the D is free for our members but it costs us money to operate so it's it's like everything we do it's a loss leader and so if you think about what incentive this creates um we want to get money out the door the more you know the more we have the more it costs um and not that we like pay bips for people but like their salaries and um yeah our incentive is to get money out the door not to Aggregate and hold and grow AUM it's the exact opposite of what we want we want to like our metric of successes how much did we donate in the year and if that grows Year onye we're how how do you measure the impact of the deployed Capital you know since it's not necessarily a return in you know on investment in terms of cash it's a return on save lives or improved quality of life like how do you look at the the actual measurement and kpis of the capital once deployed yeah that's a big question and um and people who want like more in-depth answer our website is has a trove of information it's there's no pay wall so you could just go to our website and all of our thinking all of our writing all of our research is on the open internet but the the basic way to think about this is um we spend typically a year looking into a cause area to find the right interventions that we think are going to do the most good and then the Charities implementing those interventions who are doing it most effectively who can also absorb capital and if we take something like Global health and well-being you know typically what we think of as poverty alleviation giving to Africa or Asia or South America to help people live better healthier happier lives we're looking at um either averting disability adjusted life years and so reducing the health burden of people or improving their quality of life and happiness um and we are typically looking for um interventions and organizations that have like extremely robust evidence to support that what they do actually works and and practically that is randomized control trials or pseudoscientific trials that enable us to draw a causal link between what an organization does as a intervention and the result of how people's lives have changed having experienced it with a control to like count for maybe maybe the country just decided to implement this new program and there's some sort of um you know noise that are that that that's making signal hard to understand so we do you know we rely on rcts to really understand and what's the best thing to do and so when a a charity is implementing an intervention that has robust RCT evidence in a in a way that um is transparent and sort of clearly understood with um good reporting um using technology and really high cost Effectiveness then you know we can say that um we expect a donation to this organization a dollar to result in xuns of impact in the form of di or qualies or wellbies or some other sort of hybrid metric so we can really say in a quantifiable way for at least Global health and well-being interventions that um you're going to be getting X units of impact per dollar input um very few organizations can can say this um and so when we think about success we we try to find the organizations that are doing as much good as possible so there's a bunch of different metrics but we try to normalize um to make simpler for people who don't have phds in this in this space to understand and so we take a benchmark organization that's really really very good called give directly give directly um does unconditional cash trans cash transfers to the ultra poor and low-income context um it turns out that giving cash to people in in places where they don't have it and need it to buy stuff for their lives actually is one of the most effective ways to improve their quality of life really really highly evidenced and extremely robust evidence and so give directly is our Benchmark and so we consider something to be high impact if they are at least as good or better than give directly and um and and and our top charities in some cases are 70 times better than give directly that's not to say give directly is bad they're amazing like if you can't do better than give directly you should give to them um uh they're they're wonderful uh but some organizations are even more wonderful because of the areas in which they work the contexts that are challenging that people are starting from such a low point that like helping them improve by 20% actually is just like a vast quality of life Improvement and one one of the areas that we think about a lot these days is um increasing people's income or income doublings is the the term that we use so it turns out that anywhere in the world if you were to double someone's income their life would be better well maybe with a couple of exceptions at the high end but like if I said to you Jason hey I'm going to double your income tomorrow you'd be like oh awesome now I can give more to charity um and it's the same for you and me and someone earning $2 a day someone earning $2 a day suddenly $4 a day their life is markedly different um their kids lives are markedly different and so we try to find these sort of intervention spaces that are either going to like increase economic Mobility increase um income reduce Health burden increase happiness um increase consumption that sort of stuff no I think it's incredibly impressive it's an amazing organization to which I'm a member of I encourage other Founders to explore the idea of what giving means to them and there's this whole post exited founder Paradox of like you get a very large check in your bank account you no longer have a job you no longer have your identity it's like what now and I feel like this is the potential to be an anchor for some people to have a bit of focus post exit of knowing that they have this commitment it could be something that they could work towards as they they can do a million other things you're not giving 100% of your wealth away or anything but you know it just gives like a a sense of you know meaning Direction and an activity post exit because a community you you grind for years 10 15 years as a Founder you might have forgot you made the pledge you know then you like come back to like you kind of have this new world you're exposed to you we just had a dinner last night 50 exited Founders and there's a bunch of them that just happened you know in a couple months and they're just like it was smartest most capable super intelligent like tons of energy and they don't know where to direct it and um you know so for the founders that where you're in the grind right now and you don't necessarily you know can't even think about what life is like at that point you know taking just you a little bit of time to understand like an opportunity like this doing full full hardcore pitch to Founders pledge right now being big believer uh you know to just explore the idea of it and so when you're out of that grind and you're on to you know exploring what's next for you you have this opportunity and that kind of Feelgood impact because yeah in most exits there's a material amount of capital gain you know that you don't know what to do with like it's hard to really know what's what's you know it's such a monster it's not doubling your wealth it could be quadrupling 10 that so um David where's the best place for people to find information on Founders pledge uh for them to learn more on our website Founders pledge.com easy enough uh easy enough there's lots of information there um if you want to join the pledge um we want to talk to everyone before they join so um get in touch um on our learn more form you have a call with one of us and you know we just want to chat to everyone before we invite them to join um make sure you know they're joining for the right reasons and we can add value for them and they can you know sort of benefit from us um and yeah would love would love to see um some new faces and and some you know kind of consolation opportunities that come about are all the events that you do bringing these Founders together that like I said are just made the pledge still like series a level still in the grind to people that are very comfortable living very amazing Lifestyles and have this amazing wealth of knowledge um that you get to be together with and you get to talk about these topics uh and kind of bring these people together and so very smart people that talk about the you know impact uh of theic as you so um if you're selfishly you know if you think selfishly as a Founder you got to have some kind of value ad benefit to participate there's at least that you get to kind of build your network and you me some other amazing Founders so um be sure to check out Founders pledge.com for for those listening today um David really appreciate you being on the show really appreciate all the work you've done uh it definitely is amazing to kind of see the the scale that you've been able to reach and I know the the full story full grind of how it got here but uh amazing to see it I'm glad we got to share the story thanks Jason really appreciate you having me and I appreciate your ADV vacy as well all right awesome thank you thank you for watching today's episode as a reminder I'm your host Jason Kirby I built and sold multiple companies with over 135 million in transactions as either a Founder oper Ator investor across multiple Industries I'm currently the managing director and founder of thunder. BC where we help companies and Founders at all stages navigate what capital to raise and who to raise it from and help improve company's odds of raising Capital if you need help reach out to us at help. under. BC if you like Today's Show please share with your friends give us a like or a comment down below and as a reminder this show is published weekly to get notified new episodes and our newsletter be sure to go to our website at join. thunder. BC and if you sign up today I'll send you a few freebies on how to negotiate a term sheet how to get a free list of relevant VCS and much more that's it no more Shameless plugs thank you and see you next week