Today, after nearly two years of preparations, Founders Pledge is launching the Patient Philanthropy Fund (PPF): a grantmaking vehicle that invests to give to safeguard and improve the long-term future.

The PPF is incubated as a special trust within Founders For Good - the Founders Pledge UK entity. It is managed by a Management Committee consisting of purpose-aligned experts on timing of giving. Our aim is to further develop and grow it over the coming 10 years and eventually spin it out as a separate charitable entity.

The Fund is open for contributions by non-FP-members via EA Funds. We are launching the PPF with $1m in pre-seed funding contributed by a list of Founding Partners and Supporters, including many EA community members.

Please refer to the Fund's website for more information on its plans, governance structure, Management Committee, grant-making policy etc.

And please share any feedback or questions you have on the PPF in the comments on this post, or reach out to sjir@founderspledge.com!

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kyle_fishOct 27 202121

This is huge, congrats on the launch! I'm so excited for this fund to exist. How did you decide on the growth targets for the different phases? And will the balance be visible publicly (á la EA Funds) or disclosed some other way?

Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Oct 29 20218

Thanks Kyle!

The growth targets will of course always be somewhat arbitrary, but they are based on a number of considerations:

$1m was based on what we thought was achievable (based on "market research"/early conversations) + is large enough for people to feel good about making $100k+ contributions post-launch, which is the ballpark we're aiming for among FP members + is a nice round target of course
$10m came from discussions in the FP investment committee on what is roughly a size at which you can start making private equity investments from a transaction costs, risk management and access perspective
$100m is based on all investment options being open at that point + a size at which a Fund could reasonably fund itself + a size at which the Fund is too much of a responsibility for the FP board to want to carry + a size at which it's too large a part of FP's overall product for it to make sense to stay within FP. The trigger for spin-out is either $100m or 10 years with minimum $10m at that point, because we wanted to be really clear about committing to spinning out the Fund at some point.

On the Fund's balance: we'll be sharing regular and milestone updates with the Fund's funders, on our blog and on the Fund webpage. I like the idea of having a (near-)live counter on the Fund's page at some point, and will raise this with our tech team to see if we can implement it.

kyle_fishOct 29 20213

Really helpful, thank you!

PeterSlatteryOct 27 202116

Thanks so much for doing this! I think that it is very important to have a patient philanthropy fund.

While it's great that donations to the fund will be tax-deductible in the USA, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, I'd really like to see tax deductibility status across a wider range of countries. It would be great if patient philanthropy was never disincentivised by being tax inefficient relative to alternatives.

A dedicated group of local EAs could potentially help.

Just mentioning the above as an idea for the future. Thanks again!

Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Oct 29 20217

Thanks for raising this Peter; I agree it would be great to have tax-deductible donation options from other countries as well, and we'd love for local EA groups to pick this up. It's unfortunately not something we as Founders Pledge can prioritize, as we'd expect the total size of these donations to be relatively small compared to those of our members (who can use the Founders Pledge Donor-Advised Funds) and of non-members living in the three geographies you mention.

BrianTanOct 27 202111

Congrats on the launch!

Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Oct 29 20211

Thank you Brian!

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Announcing the Patient Philanthropy Fund

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