Not Enough Money

Chris Larsen

08.13.21

How does Chris choose when he's contemplating the beneficiaries of a massive donation? His formula is clear, concise, and focused on maximum impact.

Summary:

How does Chris choose when he’s contemplating the beneficiaries of a massive donation? His formula is clear, concise, and focused on maximum impact.

Thuy

You have also given really generously to help solve complex problems because you had been infected with COVID-19, I know that you have given to vaccine research for the coronavirus, you've given to solutions to help solve hunger and data privacy problems. Is there a set of guiding principles that you use to define your life purpose or your personal mission?
Chris_Larsen

Chris Larsen

Well, on the giving, probably, the owner broad things I guess I could mention, one is try to get the money out there as soon as you can, right? So, there's a lot of pledging going on, but the data on that shows, and I don't think this is malicious in any way, but money's just not getting out there fast enough and there's always problems happening right now, so kind of the number one thing is, like, instead of pledging, just get it out there and try to tackle the hard problems. I hope I don't get in trouble for this, so we kind of made a decision not to give to, like, arts and kind of theater stuff - not saying that that's not good but we've kind of made an effort really to things like food banks, homeless issues, some of the issues around child sexual abuse material. Thorn is a phenomenal, thorn.org, phenomenal organization, so that we've been involved with quite a bit, and things like give directly, giving direct donations to people in the developing world, Donors Choose, giving money to teachers, so we try to focus on that and things that just kind of catch your eye. I think weÕre new at this too, so we're kind of learning the ropes of philanthropy, but trying to learn as best we can.