Our evolution

An engine for impact

Creating real, lasting impact is a continuous activity, and we’re always iterating and looking for ways to support our community.

Every year, we’ve asked ourselves: how do we bridge the gap between our community’s ambitions and the action it takes to realize them? The answer has been to evolve our services in ways that place our members at the center.

Powerful global giving

We provide infrastructure and expertise that streamlines giving and puts impact first, enabling our members to fund the most impactful organizations and initiatives around the world.

Every member can make use of our Donor Advised Fund, a secure, flexible, tax-efficient way to give that we continue to enhance, including adding investment options, accepting a variety of assets, and expanding access for partners and advisors. Through our zero harm policy and our risk-based due diligence approach, we go above and beyond to vet grantees and prioritize our commitment to impact.

Vibrant community

We’ve cultivated a unique community, filled with problem solvers and changemakers, and we’re grateful to partner with our members on their journeys as entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

Our Community team builds deep, personal relationships with members, unlocking meaningful connections that have sparked charitable initiatives, co-founder partnerships, investor relationships, peer-to-peer advice, and more. We link them to the vast array of our in-house advising, research and giving expertise, and to trusted external experts.

World-class research

We’ve spent the past decade assembling a powerful research toolbox, driven by data and evidence, that allows us to continue finding high-impact projects on the ground.

Our methodology integrates diverse tools, disciplines, models, and sources, continuously refined to effectively prioritize global problems, evaluate solutions, and assess organizations. This rigorous approach equips us to make informed decisions amidst significant uncertainty and tackle complex questions.

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Personal philanthropic advising

We’ve developed a flexible, tailored experience, designed to provide our members with the support of a family office.

From creating space for reflecting on personal values to creating a framework for decision-making, our Advisors bring a wealth of expertise, exercises, and resources to support and elevate giving. They serve as thought partners for impact, providing tailored portfolios, strategic planning, and principles for high-impact giving.

Philanthropy Partnerships

Building on a decade of advising the world’s leading entrepreneurs, we created Philanthropy Partnerships to bring the best of Founders Pledge to ambitious, ultra-high-net-wealth philanthropists.

This end-to-end service is designed to remove barriers to giving and support these funders with the tools, insight, and execution needed to achieve outsized impact. Whether it’s strategic advisory, hands-on grantmaking, or custom research agendas, we meet each partner where they are and help unlock their greatest potential for impact.

Inspiring events

We’ve created a diverse program of global events, from intimate dinners to immersive retreats, that connect, educate, and inspire our community.

After hosting hundreds of events and trialing different formats, including breakfast talks, workshops, one-day conferences and long weekends of skiing, we’ve learned more about how to effectively gather our community. We create space for our members to exchange ideas, learn from each other and from leading experts, and explore how to create impact together and as individuals.

Flexible member platform

We've built a platform to bring membership to our community's fingertips, making it more streamlined and easier to access the resources we offer.

We continue to make our member app more powerful—from supporting onboarding to making donations to learning more about impact. We've added more capabilities so members can open and manage Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), access important statements, discover upcoming events, explore our high-impact recommendations, and more.

Our work by the numbers

Advised

399

members and their families since 2018

Hosted

233

events around the world

Processed

3,107

grants

Evolving over time

We haven’t been afraid to experiment through the years, exploring opportunities to better support and engage our members, strengthen our community, and test out new paths to impact. Though we no longer run these programs and projects, they helped us get better at what we do and improve over time.

Between 2016 and 2019, we held an annual Founders Pledge Forum, bringing hundreds of members together for a day to connect with each other, learn and hear from experts and leaders.

After learning about our members' appetite to give their time, skills and knowledge to charities, we began a year-long Beyond the Pledge pilot in 2019.

Through this match program, we connected members with high-impact charities to collaborate on specific projects. The goal of the pilot was to understand how feasible and impactful such a program is and our potential role in running it.

Between 2020 and 2021, we launched Equity for Impact to make high-impact giving the norm throughout the startup ecosystem.

Employees, alumni and investors of pre-exit companies committed to give around major exit events, and we provided key resources and advice. Through the program, more than 560 participants pledged over $200M, committing a portion of their proceeds from the IPOs of companies such as Airbnb, Wise, UiPath, and Remitly.

In 2020, we established a cause area member group: the Climate Cohort. Through a dedicated newsletter and events, we created a space for learning and exploration for members focused on solving climate change.

Case study: Founders Pledge in action

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, our community mobilized.

In March 2020, we quickly set up the COVID-19 Global Impact & Innovation Fund. Established in partnership with Silicon Valley Bank, the Fund deployed $4.6M to meet immediate needs and prepare for the next pandemic.

The Fund supported the Nuclear Threat Initiative Global Biological Policy & Programs (NTI | bio), who used the grant to address a market failure in the pandemic supply chain in Sub-Saharan Africa, coordinating more than 30 organizations to secure 66M pieces of PPE and 1M surgical masks to support community health workers.

Many of our members took action, including Jess Mah, who led efforts to get PPE to US hospitals through the C19 Coalition, and James Monico, who co-founded Testing For All to make COVID testing accessible and affordable to UK workers.

Later in 2020, we participated in the UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport Match Fund, granting $3.4M to vetted nonprofits supporting UK citizens made more vulnerable by COVID-19, including families in lower-income households, frontline workers, and people struggling with mental health and isolation issues.