Of the more than 300 million people suffering from illnesses that currently lack approved treatments, up to 80% are children with rare diseases. About 30% of them will die before the age of five. For these children, every second counts, because without a cure, every second brings them closer to death. Yet billions of dollars that could go toward accelerating the development of lifesaving treatments is waiting in the wings, undeployed. Why?

As it turns out, bottlenecks to the flow of dollars for impact are complex and varied. While they are accumulating wealth at an extraordinary rate, few investors consider how much even a fraction of their profits could do to change lives. Others are delaying their charitable giving until they’ve retired and managing their wealth with the help of financial and family office advisors who see it as their job to preserve rather than distribute the funds.

Foundations also tend to focus on preserving funds, leaving most annual grantmaking at little more than the required 5% of the endowment. And those grants often come with strings attached, constraining rather than unleashing the innovative ideas of social entrepreneurs and ambitious non-profits. This won’t solve the problems facing so many communities.

What’s more, dissatisfaction with capitalism is growing as more people struggle to pay their medical bills and put food on the table while a tiny slice of the population acquires unprecedented levels of wealth. While American attitudes remain more positive towards capitalism than socialism, a 2025 Gallup poll found that the proportion viewing capitalism favorably had fallen to 54%, down from 60% in 2021.
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Let’s be clear. We see capitalism as a lever for positive change. But it needs to work for more people, not just a few. And that means doing things differently. This is our intention at Great Things.

Sharing the windfalls

Ours is a model in two parts. First, through a family office vehicle we’re investing about $100 million in private market deals in pioneering companies and founders, early-stage enterprises, as well as some later-stage businesses, with game-changing ideas and opportunities for exits or liquidity events within three-to-five years. In this way we believe we can generate cash as quickly as possible.
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But that’s only half of the story. We want the success of our investments to help non-profits and social entrepreneurs move forward with innovative ideas, whether that’s repurposing existing drugs to cure rare diseases, providing free training that will keep children in the Bronx safe and strong or ensuring children in South Africa’s poorest townships can lead successful lives.
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Essentially, we want to share our windfalls. So we’re committing 20% of the net profits from our investments to organizations led by people who are passionate about changing the world. And we’re doing this right now. We don’t intend to wait around for these funds to have an impact.

New models take root

We’re not alone in rethinking the relationship between profit and impact. Nor is ours the only model out there. In Nordic countries, for example, charity and business come together in industrial foundations that have non-profit status but own for-profit companies. The governance model may vary from country to country, but these organizations can set charitable goals and give significant funds to non-profits. They often focus on research but in some places, contributions are made to education, arts, culture and other projects.
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More recently, public benefit corporations and other alternative incorporation structures have emerged to support companies that want to pursue positive social or environmental impact. Because this impact is part of the corporate charter, PCB registration enables a company’s purpose to be maintained across leadership changes and to be considered during a potential sale.
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PBC statutes and similar incorporation tools have now been introduced into legislation in more than 30 US states. Nor is it only startups or small businesses choosing this path. With Patagonia, Chobani and Danone North America on the roster, this corporate structure is attracting large companies.

A seat at the cap table

Of course, some might ask whether our for-profit investments should make the same impact as the non-profits we support. We take a nuanced view on this. We are not impact investors. Nor are we making investments that mirror our charitable objectives. Our aim is to generate outsized returns so we can make charitable investments rapidly and at scale.
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That said, investment decisions are not always easy or clear cut, particularly when investing in sectors such as tech and defense. This means we consider every potential investment with great care to assess what we think will be the company’s impact on society—positive or negative. In some cases, we draw a line. In others, we believe the company’s upsides outweigh the downsides but we monitor its activities closely and reserve the option of withdrawing.
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Importantly, investing gives us a seat at the table, the cap table, that is. No investor ever got a company to change course by staying away or selling their stock. Those shares simply got bought by someone else, probably someone with less interest in human welfare and global stability. If we want to wield any influence on the companies of the future, we need to engage with them.
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In the end, we put our trust in the founder and the team. We spend time getting to know them so that, when they make that profound breakthrough, we’re confident they’ll make the right choices, both for their returns and for society.
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We apply this same approach to the way we deploy funds to non-profits. Assessing their founders is not so different from assessing those in charge of for-profit enterprises. If we buy into their vision and ambition, we’re happy to let them run with their ideas.
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In the world of social impact, it’s a very different approach from one that relies on grant applications and box-ticking exercises. It’s an approach based on trust and an understanding that these leaders know far more than we do about what it takes to fix seemingly intractable problems.  

Returns with a bigger, broader benefit

So where does that leave us? Excited is one word for it. We’re excited by the companies we’re investing in, excited by the returns that we’re seeing ahead of us and excited by the impact those returns could make through our non-profit partners.
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Take those children whose lives will be cut short without live-saving treatments. Using a powerful AI platform, Every Cure seeks out the most promising ideas for the repurposing of existing drugs before evaluating them in the lab and through clinical trials. The idea, says founder David Fajgenbaum is to reach as many patients as possible with treatments that are hiding in plain sight. We want our support for Every Cure to help it reach even more patients.
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“It’s hard to describe what it feels like to save someone’s life with a drug that wasn’t meant for their disease,” David told us. “It’s incredible and even more incredible when you see what they go on to do in their lives, get married, see their kids graduate high school, start a new profession, continue doing the work they always loved doing.”
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On first talking to David we were, as they say, sold. It’s a feeling we got when meeting all the leaders of our non-profits partners. But while helping advance their work, there’s one more goal on our agenda: leading by example. Are there other investors and family offices out there who might take a similar approach? We hope so. We’d like to inspire others to ensure that giving is treated as an integral part of making a profit, not an afterthought.
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We don’t have all the answers and our model may not work for everyone. But on one thing we can surely agree: using wealth to help all fellow humans succeed is simply the right thing to do.