David Goldberg on Founders Pledge: Scaling Philanthropy to $1.3B

Jason Kirby: Hey everyone, welcome back to Fundraising Demystify. 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.

David Goldberg: Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Jason Kirby: You are an exited founder and you are now running an amazingly large-scale nonprofit that's deployed over 1.3 billion. I’d love for you to give the audience a bit of context: building your first company, selling it, and moving into philanthropy.

David Goldberg: I had an atypical journey. I didn’t go to university straight away. I worked in finance, moved to Europe in 2006, and started a company I got lucky with and sold a couple of years later. It wasn’t a tech company. No investors—bootstrapped, profitable quickly, and I captured a good moment. Two and a half years later, I sold and found myself with more than I needed—having effectively won the life lottery. I internalized that luck: in a different place, time, or color, my experience could have been very different. If I kept making it about aggregating more for me, the universe would correct it in a harsher way, so I resolved to give away most of my wealth—naively thinking it would be easy. I’d spend a couple months, give to charities, feel great, and move on. Instead, I uncovered an ecosystem of well-intentioned organizations, but many were poorly run and ineffective. I wanted to know: how much better are lives as a result of an intervention? How many people are affected? Can you prove it? And when I dug in, communication and answers often evaporated.

It became clear the sector is broken: ~10 million charities, many more than needed; very few are counterfactually impactful. I didn’t want to waste money hoping lighting it on fire would send smoke signals that did good. I realized I had no idea what I was doing, so I went back to study—community college, then a four-year, then a PhD program in the UK (didn’t finish the PhD). I became more numerate and decided to start an organization to fix the problem I faced post-exit: how to use resources I didn’t need to positively affect the world. Back in 2008 when I sold, there wasn’t anyone set up to help. Years later, even after leaving my PhD, there was still little for people like me—those with enough to make a dent, but not billions.

That became Founders Pledge: get people involved early—before they actually have wealth—by committing founder shares to charity. People heavily discount the future, so committing to “monopoly money” that’s still theoretical is easier than giving cash in the bank after a decade of grind. That became our operating basis.

Jason Kirby: That founder-to-founder insight resonated with me and pulled me in to make the pledge. What is the pledge, how does it work, and at what scale is the membership now?

David Goldberg: The pledge is simple—skin in the game. It’s a commitment to donate a percent of exit proceeds: if I sell shares and make money, then I’ll donate Z% of what I make to nonprofits of my choice going forward. Putting that in writing and having us countersign and hold you accountable is powerful. We have about 2,000 signatories across 40 countries who have pledged just shy of $11B. The pledge should be the easiest decision of a founder’s day—among a sea of hard product, monetization, hiring, and culture decisions—because you’ll likely get tax relief and it embeds the idea that success accrues not only to you but to the world. We also don’t price externalities well—hence climate crisis—so we try to enable people focused on first-world problems to have real positive social impact elsewhere.

Jason Kirby: Let’s talk fundraising and allocation strategy—the “product” you deliver to donors. How do you maximize impact to appeal to savvy, hands-on founders?

David Goldberg: Our “sell” is helping you give better than you could on your own—not only tax efficiency, but what those dollars actually accomplish. Not all orgs are equal; we look for outliers: the absolute best organizations tackling the biggest problems at scale that also need resources. We assess scale (size of the problem), tractability (are there solutions?), and neglectedness (are we adding marginal value?). We’re humanistic utilitarians: deploy resources where they change the problem’s makeup or provide solutions. If something’s well capitalized (Gates et al.), our capital might displace other funds rather than add value. We want our next dollar to create additionality, not crowd-out.

Jason Kirby: So the product is “help people give better.” What does the team do and how do members engage?

David Goldberg: We’re ~75 people. About half focuses on helping people give better—structuring donations, global grantmaking (we operate in 40 countries), and enabling founders in California to support charities across the Global South with tax relief at home. We serve a smaller user base and support large gifts—$1M, $10M, $100M—so we can be highly hands-on. Many pledge around Series A; some engage only near liquidity, others engage early with our community. We host ~30 events/year worldwide—no fundraising, just context-building with thought leaders and charity operators on major issues and solutions.

Jason Kirby: You also have three “products” to fundraise for: operations (Founders Pledge), capital deployment (moving money into causes), and a venture fund. Let’s start with the fund.

David Goldberg: The venture fund is independent but tightly related to the charity. First, how FP is funded: everything we do is free—no fees, cuts, or commissions—so we’re loss-making by ~$10M/year and I fundraise to cover ops. A dollar to a typical charity buys ~$1 of impact, but a dollar to our “meta charity” helps our members give ~20× that amount in the same year. Still, I’m a single point of failure on ops fundraising. After a near-miss with a bus in 2021, I asked: how do we participate earlier in our members’ success? Answer: create a venture fund investing in members’ companies at consequential moments, with upside accruing to the nonprofit.

Despite market whiplash, we closed in April 2024 at $53M. All but four LPs are members (tickets from $50k via feeder—min $250k—to $10M). The rules-based model invests when: (1) a founder is an FP member, (2) the company raises $20M+ at Series B or later, and (3) a tier-1 fund participates. We write ~sub-$1M average checks into ~60 companies—indexing the top decile of our community—without crowding leads. Crucially, we donate 85% of GP carry to charity (Founders Pledge), so founders often make room for us in oversubscribed rounds.

Jason Kirby: And back to ops fundraising—what’s your process?

David Goldberg: Have a great product, then find people aligned on effective giving. 90% of our donors are members who’ve gotten value from the service/community and want to pay it forward so others can access it for free. We also serve donors seeking the most effective opportunities. We never lead with an ask—we ask how we can help. Sometimes we add value for years before any donation. Our objectivity matters: FP isn’t for everyone; if someone wants purely local feel-good giving, that’s okay, but it’s not our focus. We’re clear-eyed about impact and transparent with data.

Jason Kirby: Scale check: employees and deployment to date?

David Goldberg: ~75 employees; ~10 years in; ~$1.3B deployed and aiming closer to $1.5B by our 10-year anniversary. Looking ahead, we want to reach ~$0.5B per year within 3–4 years. Of ~2,000 members, perhaps 250–350 have had liquidity so far—many via secondaries. There’s also a huge pool of philanthropic capital sitting idle in DAFs/foundations that we aim to unlock and direct to high-impact work.

Jason Kirby: How do you measure impact?

David Goldberg: We research cause areas for ~a year, identify effective interventions and best-placed orgs that can absorb capital, and prioritize robust evidence—randomized controlled trials or quasi-experimental designs—to draw causal links. For global health and wellbeing, we look at averted DALYs, quality of life, happiness, and income doublings. We benchmark against GiveDirectly (highly evidenced unconditional cash transfers). We consider an org “high impact” if at least as good as GiveDirectly; some top charities can be ~70× better on our models due to context, tractability, and neglectedness.

Jason Kirby: For founders listening—what’s the best way to learn more or join?

David Goldberg: Visit our website, reach out via the Learn More form. We chat with everyone before joining to ensure fit and value. Many people come for the community, global DAF tooling at zero cost, or advice—and some just for one of those. It’s a buffet: take what you need.

Jason Kirby: David, thanks for sharing the story and the craft behind scaling philanthropy.

David Goldberg: Thanks for having me.