Recipe for Goods

​“How would you spend a billion dollars on good things?”

​Billions of dollars from impending liquidity moments are expected to move through donor-advised funds imminently —the largest philanthropic wave in history.

​Although everyone is wondering what we'll do with this money, fewer are asking whether we have structures capable of turning private capital of this size into public benefit. And to this latter question, evidence so far would suggest that we are not structurally prepared to move this money.

​That is, history shows much of it won't move at all: a DAF captures its tax advantage on day one and never requires a dollar to go anywhere. What does move will land in institutions built to absorb grants slowly and carefully, which is not what it feels like this moment needs.

​Carnegie funded thousands of library buildings, but only where a town council voted to fund staffing forever, at ten percent of his grant. Rosenwald's fund put $4.3 million into schools for Black children in the segregated South; the communities themselves raised $4.7 million, and the program channeled $18.1 million out of state governments as well. The funding worked as not just a gift, but a lever for systemic change.

​So what are the contemporary structures that would allow us to spend billions of dollars on public goods — while ensuring the public will make good use of said goods? Could the enterprise be our most capable structure for organizing talent, mobilizing capital, and pointing resources towards an outcome — a public good outcome? If we accept that the private enterprise is our most powerful institution today, could we use it to turn good ideas into not just private, but also public value? What would that allow us to build today?

​Dinner generously sponsored by folks who believe in new public goods.