I’ve signed up for the founders pledge inspired through Y Combinator’s blog post.

With Founders Pledge, founders can sign a pledge to donate some portion of their personal equity and then figure out the recipients for the donation later. Founders Pledge handles all the legwork. As a charity itself, pledges are eligible for tax relief at time of exit and funds can be deployed globally.

Founders Pledge (1) allows founders to decide now that charitable giving is important to them, (2) doesn’t impact other stockholders of their company and (3) requires only about 5 minutes of time and no participation costs. Founders Pledge also provides substantive post-exit support including cause area analysis, charity sourcing, deep due diligence, and impact reporting.

I’ve been keeping my donations private so far, but moving forward, I hope I can nudge someone out there just a little bit more by making my commitments more open and public.

I believe in the quote “be the change you want to see in the world.”

As a mere mortal, I’ve made lots of mistakes in the past and will continue to make more mistakes, but hopefully this will be one of those decisions that will be certain to bring good outcomes.