PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Can and should the superrich save the world? While this is a highly contested issue, attention is predominantly paid to individual philanthrocapitalists, such as Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Pierre Omidyar, George Soros, Elon Musk, or Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg and their visions. This paper conceives of such visions as raw material which is refined within philanthrocapitalist organizations. Traditionally, such organizations took the form of a tax-exempt foundation, a 501(c) organization. There seems to be a recent trend towards organizing as an LLC, thereby losing tax exemption. That an LLC is allowed to invest and earn money, does not fully explain this shift. Instead, the thesis is put forward that it is not all about money but that an LLC offers opportunities to solve problems such organizations typically face when tackling grand challenges: 1) making addressees use solutions (properly) and 2) scaling them. One solution (the Public Safety Assessment) from one organization (Arnold Ventures LLC) illustrates that philanthrocapitalist LLCs do not just execute their founder’s wills but translate visions into strategies to reach what money (alone) cannot buy and technology (alone) cannot operate – and what an LLC is needed for.