billionaires on Earth, holding $20.1 trillion between them.
32.5%
of all US household wealth belongs to the top 1%, the largest share since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1989.
$100M
is still more than twice the Federal Reserve's line for the top 0.1% of US households, which is $45.8 million.
0.85%
is how much less the world receives with the line at $100M instead of $50M: $171.4B kept, out of $20.1 trillion.
How big is this?
Numbers too big to feel, made small enough to see.
Why pictures? Psychologist Paul Slovic found that people give more to help one named child than to help millions of people described in statistics. The bigger the number, the less we feel. He called it psychic numbing. So everything here, and every campaign that comes from it, tells the story one person at a time: one veteran with a home, one child who can see. Any family that helps gets its story told the same way.
The 12 richest people on Earth own more than the poorest half of humanity: 4.1 billion people.
Together the 12 hold $2.64 trillion. The poorest 4.1 billion hold $2.57 trillion between them. So on average, each of the 12 holds as much as about 342 million people combined.
$2.64 trillion
$2.57 trillion
Each dot is 1 million people: 4,100 dots in all. On that same scale, the 12 above wouldn't fill a single dot.
Line them up
Stand everyone shoulder to shoulder, at about half a meter each. The 12 make a line six meters long: about the width of a living room. The 4.1 billion make a line 2.1 million km long: more than five times the distance to the Moon, which is 384,400 km away.
six meters
Earth, then the Moon's distance five times over, and still going
If a dollar were a second
Count one dollar every second, day and night, and see how long it takes.
$1 million11.6 days
$100 million3.2 years
$1 billion31.7 years
$1 trillion31,700 years
The line takes years to count. The largest fortunes would take lifetimes upon lifetimes. Bars are on a log scale.
One square is $1 million
This is the line: 100 squares. The typical American family is worth $215,900, which wouldn't fill one square. The line alone is the wealth of 463 typical families.
The richest person on Earth, at $839 billion, would need 8,390 grids like this one. Here they are, each shrunk to a single dot.
Across the world, the top 10% own three-quarters of all wealth, while the bottom half holds only 2%.
The richest 0.001%, fewer than 60,000 people, hold three times as much as the poorest half of humanity combined.
In the US, the average adult's wealth is $696,277, but the typical adult's is $68,998. When the average is 10 times the typical, a few people are pulling it up.
And it can change. Adjusted for prices, the share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 36.2% in 2000 to 10.1% in 2024. The World Bank warns that progress has slowed almost to a standstill. This is about getting it moving again.
Before you get angry
Aim it at the problem, not at people.
If those numbers made you angry, that's human. Here's where that feeling does the most good.
Blame backfires
Shame tends to make people defensive and distant, not constructive. Pushy, controlling language provokes resistance. Even messages built to make people feel guilty help only a little on average, and spelling out who's to blame can backfire. The researchers' advice: keep the focus on the people who need help.
Nobody here is a villain
No one person built this system, and almost anyone in their shoes would hold on too. This is an invitation, not an accusation.
Admiration works
In one field study, gifts made in front of the person asking were 25% larger than gifts made in private. People also give modestly more when they learn others give: students told that more of their classmates gave were 4.6 percentage points likelier to give themselves. But a private thank-you call, tested on 500,000 new donors, didn't make them any more likely to give again. So this campaign thanks people where everyone can see.
Your part
Share the stories of people who give. Thank them where others can see. Invite people in. And please never mock anyone who hasn't joined yet.
And if you're the one deciding: we know some of your friends may judge you for this, maybe even people close to you. Choosing it anyway takes real courage, and we understand that. You won't be alone. We'll stand with you the whole way, and we'll be more grateful than we can say.
Reality check
We know a fortune isn't a pile of cash.
Most of a fortune this size is ownership: shares in a company someone built or inherited. The company's own money pays its people and builds its products, and that's separate. So the real question isn't where the cash is. It's who all that ownership works for.
Nobody sells the company
Shares above your line can move into a trust or foundation you steer. The company keeps running, and nothing floods the market.
You keep control
You and your family steer your initiatives. The money is committed to the mission and can't come back to you, and that's what makes it count.
It's a process, done properly
Years, not days, set up by your own advisors, lawyers and tax experts, at your pace. Ryan's part is the conversation and the campaign, never the legal work.
Nobody hands Ryan a cent
Committed money goes to initiatives you control. It never passes through Ryan, and this page asks nobody for money.
Where a fortune actually sits
A founder's fortune
Company shares
Ownership and votes. Most of it.
Investments
Stocks, bonds, funds
Homes, art, cash
A small slice
The company
Its own money pays its people and builds its products. That part isn't the owner's fortune.
How it can move without selling a thing
You keep $100M
Your life stays exactly as it is.
Shares above your line
The part that can do the most.
A trust or foundation you steer
It holds the shares. The company keeps running.
Dividends and steady, planned sales
Money every year, without flooding the market.
Your initiatives
The causes your family chose.
Patagonia's founder did exactly this in 2022, giving the company to a trust and a nonprofit while his family still guides it.
Your $100 million life
Here's what the line still buys.
What you keep
$100 million
The line
The line
$50 million$500 million
It starts at the line, $100 million. Want more room? Slide it up. Wherever you draw your line, everything above it can still go to work.
Pick the homes, the cars and the way you'd live. Homes and cars come out of what you keep, once. Everything else is paid every year from what the rest earns.
Why charter and not own? Industry benchmarks put a superyacht's running costs at 10% to 15% of its price, every year.
Where these prices come from+
A penthouse in New York, $8.8 million. A home of 300 square meters at Knight Frank's prime price for New York.
A villa on Lake Como, $18 million. A four- or five-bedroom villa on the water, at the top of Knight Frank's price guide.
A home in Aspen, $13.2 million. The median sale price of a single-family home in Aspen in 2025.
A townhouse in London, $9.1 million. A home of 300 square meters at Knight Frank's prime price for London.
An apartment in Monaco, $18.8 million. A home of 300 square meters at Knight Frank's prime price for Monaco.
A home in Miami, $5.2 million. A home of 300 square meters at Knight Frank's prime price for Miami.
A Rolls-Royce Cullinan, $441,350. Its US starting price.
A Porsche 911 Turbo S, $270,300. Porsche's US starting price.
A Ferrari Purosangue, $432,986. Its US starting price.
A beach week in St. Barths, $90,000. A week in a four-bedroom villa high on Point Milou, the whole villa, at its starting price.
A ski week in Revelstoke, $90,000. A week in an eight-bedroom chalet in Canada's ski country, with its own helipad for heliskiing, at its starting price.
A weekend at the Ritz Paris, $6,438. Three nights at its starting rate of $2,146 a night.
A safari week in Tanzania, $74,025. A week in a two-bedroom cottage for up to four at Singita Sasakwa, at its peak rate of $10,575 a night, with meals, drinks and game drives. Park fees are extra.
An estate manager, $185,000. Median pay at the senior level in 2026, before benefits.
A private chef, $120,000. Median pay at the senior level in 2026, before benefits.
An assistant, $95,000. Median pay at the senior level in 2026, before benefits.
A nanny, $97,500. Median pay at the senior level in 2026, before benefits.
A housekeeper, $115,000. Median pay at the senior level in 2026, before benefits.
A private driver, $75,000. Median pay at the senior level in 2026, before benefits.
Try it yourself
Pick a fortune. Slide to your line.
You keep
$1 billion
You commit
$0
Your line
Keep it allBonus zone
Your line is $100 million. Past it is the bonus zone, down to $50 million.
Drag the slider, or use the arrow keys.
You commit 0% of the fortune. Each square is a hundredth of it.
Malaria
0
lives saved this year
About $5,500 saves a life with bed nets: GiveWell's estimate for the Against Malaria Foundation.
An average from recent years. At a far larger scale each life would cost more, so the count never passes the yearly toll.
Each cause's price and its whole need, with sources. Outcomes are for one year, and none ever passes the whole need.
Malaria
About $5,500 saves a life with bed nets: GiveWell's estimate for the Against Malaria Foundation. The whole need is every life malaria takes in a year, 610,000.
An average from recent years. At a far larger scale each life would cost more, so the count never passes the yearly toll.
Less than $1.70 a person a year gives access to chlorinated water at shared water points. The whole need is everyone without safely managed drinking water, 2.1 billion people.
Access isn't use: a later survey found about 2 million people using the dispensers, not the 5 million estimated.
About $64 a year gives a child decent school meals in the world's poorest countries. The whole need here is the 73 million children school meals didn't reach before the pandemic.
The World Food Program calls that price a tentative benchmark.
About $120 a surgery, the full cost at India's Aravind Eye Care System. The whole need is everyone whose sight is impaired by cataract, 94 million people.
Costs measured at one system in India over a decade ago. Elsewhere surgery can cost more.
About $23,400 a year houses a veteran through HUD-VASH: rent help from HUD and case management from VA. The whole need is every veteran counted as homeless on a night in January, 32,495.
Our arithmetic from GAO's figures for 2024: what both agencies spent, divided by the vouchers in use.
On average, every dollar erases about $100 of medical debt, bought for pennies through Undue Medical Debt. The whole need is all the medical debt counted in America, at least $200 billion.
Honest limit: a large randomized study found erasing old medical debt brought no measurable gains in people's mental or physical health or financial wellness. Preventing new debt matters as much as erasing the old.
About $59 a cat to spay or neuter, vaccinate and return to its colony. The whole need here is the low end of estimates of America's community cats, 30 million.
Some of those cats are already fixed, and colonies refill without steady work, so this is an upper bound.
About $182 a year gives a person palliative care, pain relief included, by the Lancet Commission's costing for Rwanda. The whole need is everyone living with serious health-related suffering, 73.6 million people in 2023.
Only about 14% of people who need palliative care get it, and money isn't the only barrier: restrictive rules on morphine keep relief from many.
About $191 treats a severely malnourished child through to recovery, in a recent field costing in Mali. The whole need is every child with severe wasting, the deadliest form, 12.2 million children at any one time.
Costs vary widely by place, from $103 to $1,267 per child treated across studies, and more children fall ill over a year than are sick on any one day, so this need is cautious.
Keeping tropical forest under funded protection costs up to about $8.00 a hectare a year: our arithmetic from a costing for the Brazilian Amazon. The whole need here is the tropical forest in the countries a new global forest fund would support, over 1 billion hectares.
A protected hectare isn't always a saved one: protected areas cut deforestation by about 41%, not to zero.
Lowering the extinction risk of every threatened species would cost an estimated $3.41 billion to $4.76 billion a year. The IUCN Red List counts 49,505 species threatened with extinction. Paying the higher estimate in full, each year, is the whole need.
Money isn't the same as protection: one study found no evidence that heavy anti-poaching spending cut rhino poaching, while dehorning did.
Campaigns that win cage-free commitments from companies have spared hens from cages for about $0.80 a hen each year, by Rethink Priorities' most cautious estimate. The whole need here is America's egg-laying hens still in cages, about 167.4 million: our arithmetic from USDA's flock and cage-free counts.
An average from past campaigns, not a promise for the next dollar, and cage-free isn't pain-free, though it cuts hens' worst pain sharply.
Bringing health centers in poorer countries reliable power costs roughly $5 for every person they serve, by Sustainable Energy for All's estimate. The whole need is everyone served by a health center without reliable electricity, close to 1 billion people.
Power isn't the same as care: in a randomized trial in Uganda, solar raised the quality of maternity care by 4 percentage points, and a year on, many sites had parts not working.
A speech device with an evaluation and ten training sessions costs about $10,900: our arithmetic from Medicare's rates. The whole need here is everyone in America who may benefit from a way to communicate beyond speech, about 5 million people.
Many people do well with a tablet setup of $500 to $800, so this price is cautious, and without training and support, about a third of devices go unused.
About $530 treats a child born with clubfoot, with casting and years of bracing, by GiveWell's estimate. The whole need here is the babies born with clubfoot in low- and middle-income countries each year who aren't reached, about 136,000: our arithmetic from the newest global survey.
About 26.4% of children relapse, mostly when bracing stops, and clubfoot programs can absorb less than $20 million a year, by one estimate. Cleft surgery is in the chapter, not the slider.
A proven school anti-bullying program costs about $27 a pupil in its first year: our arithmetic in dollars from a randomized trial's costs. The whole need here is every student in America's public schools, about 49.5 million.
The effect is modest and was measured in British primary schools: the share of pupils bullied fell to 17.7%, against 20.7%. It targets bullying among peers, not strangers online.
A few nurse visits at home after a birth cost about $500 to $700 a family, and the slider uses the higher figure. The whole need here is every family with a new baby in America, about 3.6 million a year.
A statewide rollout may cost more, closer to $1,300 a family in Oregon, and the one independent study of this model found few significant effects.
About $9.63 puts a child through two years of catch-up classes in Zambia's national program, support costs included. The whole need here is the 387 million primary-age children who can't read proficiently, a count from before the pandemic, so it's likely higher now.
The price buys a place in a proven program, not a guaranteed reader: the gains in Zambia were modest, and only a third of children attended on a given day.
About $336 keeps a child with sickle cell disease in sub-Saharan Africa on hydroxyurea, with lab checks, for a year: our arithmetic from African drug prices and a Ugandan costing. The whole need here is everyone with the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, about 5.68 million people.
Finding children and keeping them in care is the real bottleneck, and costs extra: in one screening network, only about a third of babies who screened positive got a confirming test.
Each chapter is the long version of a cause in the slider: the problem, what works, what a family could fund, and the honest limits. Every line is sourced, and more chapters are on the way.
23 more chapters are coming, so the Blueprint covers every major thing a fortune could fix. Each will get the same care: every number sourced, the limits said plainly.
Health
Childhood cancer
Research and treatment for the cancers children get.
ALS
Research toward better treatments, and care for families now.
Mental health
Care and support for people who are struggling.
Diabetes prevention
Programs that help people at risk stay healthy.
Safer steps for seniors
Balance classes and home fixes that help older people avoid falls.
Food and water
Growing food
School gardens, home gardens and the know-how to grow food.
Children and families
Time with a new baby
Paid leave for parents at small businesses, with a job to come back to.
Young people leaving foster care
A home, a mentor and a real start when care ends.
Survivors of trafficking
Safety, services and a way forward.
Sports and play for every kid
Teams, coaches and time outside, whatever a family can afford.
Protecting elders from scams
Help that stops fraud before savings are lost.
Homes and communities
A home for everyone
Supportive housing for people without a home, beyond veterans.
Free community classes
Cooking, fitness and learning classes open to everyone.
Safe houses of worship
Security for every faith, in the form each congregation chooses.
Parking lots into parks
Green space within a short walk of every home.
Animals and nature
Rhinos
Science and rangers racing to bring rhinos back from the edge.
Trees that last
Planting trees, and making sure they survive.
Climate and energy
Solar for schools
Clean power and lower bills for schools.
Cutting carbon
The best-evidenced ways to cut and remove carbon, honestly measured.
Learning and culture
Children's educational TV
Shows that help young children get ready for school.
Local news
Nonprofit newsrooms for towns that have lost theirs.
Libraries and museums
Open doors, and collections cared for.
Disability and technology
Eye-gaze and mobility tech
Technology that gives independence back.
Together
Not one hero. Many.
This was never meant to fall on one family, or five, or even a hundred. The more who join, the less it asks of each.
Ending hunger, shared by all
$27.1 million
a year, for each billionaire
Ending hunger by 2030 would take about $93 billion more each year. Shared by all 3,428 billionaires, that's around 0.5% of the average fortune.
Choose what you love.
People believe different things, worship in different ways and love different places. That's the strength of this: many families, each choosing the cause closest to their heart, reach more of the world than any one family could.
We'll shape it with you.
My team will work with you and your advisors to find that cause and build an initiative you're proud of, one that prevents problems as well as treating them, so they're less likely to come back.
Remembered for generations.
Your company may be what people know you for today. Generations from now, they could remember the family that helped end hunger, or kept a rainforest standing.
How it works
Start to finish, step by step.
Step 1
A private conversation
You, your family or your advisors talk with me. Nothing is public, nothing is announced, and nothing is binding.
Step 2
Your line
You keep $100 million, or whatever amount of your wealth you choose to keep for yourself. The line is in today's dollars and rises with inflation, so it never quietly shrinks. Anyone who wants to go further can. Nobody has to.
Step 3
Your causes
Each person in the family chooses what they care about most: medicine, veterans, animals, schools, wild places. A fortune built online could protect kids online. A cause can carry the family's own story.
Step 4
Your initiatives
Independent philanthropy advisors and lawyers set up a trust or foundation for each cause, and you steer it. The money is committed to the mission and can't come back, and company ownership can move without selling a single share.
Step 5
The money moves
Not parked. Each initiative pays out more each year than the 5% US private foundations are required to, or sets a date by which everything is given. It backs organizations already proven to work, starting at home.
Step 6
Proof
Independent evaluators check what the money actually did. The results are published, the misses right next to the wins. The first initiatives start with work that's proven and quick to measure, so everyone can see early what's possible.
Step 7
The story
A truthful public campaign celebrates what was proven, and invites your peers to join. That isn't vanity: studies find public recognition genuinely increases giving. And nothing about you goes public without your yes. You choose how you're named, or stay anonymous.
It's been done
Others have already gone further than this.
Chuck Feeney
$8 billion
given away, much of it anonymously. He kept about $2 million for himself and closed his foundation in 2020, having given everything else. Warren Buffett called him an inspiration.
MacKenzie Scott
$26 billion
given in more than 2,700 gifts, with no strings attached. About 90% of recipients surveyed said it strengthened their finances for the long term.
Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia
$3 billion
company given to a trust and a nonprofit in 2022. The family still guides it, and its profits fund work on the environmental crisis: projected at about $100 million a year when the gift was made.
Marlene Engelhorn
€24.9 million
of her inheritance, given away by 50 randomly chosen residents of Austria, who chose 77 organizations to receive it. She let them decide.
Your legacy arc
This isn't giving it away. It's founding something.
When does a person truly die?
A person only truly dies when they are forgotten.
A person only truly dies when they are forgotten.
English
Read it in
After Dr. Hiriluk, in Eiichiro Oda's One Piece.
A fortune is remembered for what it built. Your initiatives keep your family's name alive the best way there is: in the lives they change, year after year.
Your biggest venture yet
You'd be founding something, and you'd run it: the most ambitious thing your family will ever start.
A seat for everyone
Each family member can lead a cause of their own, with real work to do and real results to show.
A story the world can see
If you want one, Ryan's team runs a truthful public campaign: interviews, visits to the work, and the people it helped, one story at a time. Or full privacy, if you'd rather.
Proof, not promises
Independent evaluators check every result, so the story holds up to anyone who looks.
Your life stays yours
You keep $100 million, enough for the life you want.
Endowed, an initiative can run forever, paying out every year. Spent down, its results outlive everyone who funded them. Either way, the good it did stays with your family's name, if you want it to.
To be clear
What this is, and what it isn't.
What this is not
Not anti-anyone. The line keeps you among the wealthiest people alive. Nobody here is a villain.
Not a fundraiser. This page doesn't collect money, and committed money never passes through me. If you hire my team to run the campaign, that's a normal, separate, disclosed engagement.
Not advice. Nothing here is tax, legal or financial advice. Your own advisors lead on all of that.
Not a replacement for good public systems. It works alongside them, never instead of them.
How we keep it honest
Every number on this page links to its source, with the date it was last checked.
Claims about impact are checked by someone independent before the campaign repeats them.
Results are published, the misses next to the wins.
If something here turns out to be wrong, it gets corrected in public, right here, with a note saying what changed.
Hard questions
The questions you'd ask, answered.
What if I want to keep more than $100 million?+
Then keep more. The slider works at any amount, and every dollar committed does good. The line is the goal, not the gate, and the conversation with Ryan is open either way.
Why $100 million?+
Because it barely changes what the world receives and makes a yes far easier. Setting the line at $100M instead of $50M keeps just 0.85% more of the total with the families who built it, and keeps every one of them among the wealthiest people on Earth.
Most of my wealth is my company. I can't just sell it.+
You don't have to. Ownership can move into a trust or foundation you steer, so the company keeps running and its profits fund your initiatives. No fire sale, and no loss of the thing you built. Patagonia's founder did exactly that.
Didn't they earn it?+
Yes, and nothing here takes that away. The line keeps you extraordinarily wealthy. This was never about whether anyone deserves what they have. It's about what the money above the line could do.
If it's that affordable, why hasn't it happened already?+
My honest read: the pieces have never been put together. Fortunes are mostly ownership, which takes time and care to move. A lot of giving waits, or sits: one analysis found 80% of what the Giving Pledge's earliest signers gave went into their own private foundations. Money alone can't end a war, and conflict is the main driver of hunger in most of the world's food crises. And people go numb at numbers this big, so millions of people in need start to feel abstract. What has never existed is a shared line, a standard for proof, and a campaign that gives real credit for real results. That's the missing piece. It's what this is.
Why not just raise taxes?+
That's a real debate, and it isn't this page's fight. Economists have proposed a 2% yearly minimum tax on billionaires, estimated to raise $200B to $250B a year, and it hasn't been adopted. This is the voluntary path: on your terms, starting now, with credit for what it achieves.
Who decides where the money goes?+
You and your family choose the causes, and independent experts check what works. Some go further and let ordinary people decide: Marlene Engelhorn asked 50 randomly chosen residents to give away her inheritance.
Isn't this just PR?+
Only if it's dishonest, and the rules here make that hard. The campaign celebrates only what independent evaluators have verified, and it publishes the misses too. Recognition done honestly works: studies find public credit genuinely increases giving.
Why does the money have to move?+
Because money can sit. US private foundations only have to pay out about 5% a year. One analysis found that 80% of what the Giving Pledge's earliest signers gave went into their own private foundations. That report comes from a group critical of the Giving Pledge, but the lesson stands: committed should mean moving.
What does Ryan get out of this?+
The chance to do the work I'm best at for the best cause I can imagine. Committed money never passes through me. If you hire my team to run the campaign, it's a normal, separate, disclosed engagement.
Is this real?+
Yes. I've been in business since 2011 and have run a digital marketing company since 2017. If you want to talk, I'll come to you.
Not a billionaire?
You can still help this reach one.
You don't need a fortune to move one. Here's how anyone can help this reach the people who can say yes.
I'm not wealthy myself, and I'm not writing this from envy. Nobody here is a villain. Most great fortunes were built inside, or born into, an economic system so complicated that no one fully chose their part in it. Many of you never asked for the cameras, the security details, or the public verdicts on your lives. I understand that it isn't simple.
What I see is an opportunity that has never existed before: enough money, in enough hands, to change how the world works within a single generation, and a family name that means good things for generations after that. Whatever you believe, this is a rare moment.
I'm serious about this. If you'd like to talk, I'll travel to meet you, on your schedule, under NDA if you prefer.
US Government Accountability Office, 30 March 2026. Checked 15 October 2026.
Spending by HUD (rent help) and VA (case management) on HUD-VASH in fiscal year 2024, and the vouchers in use that year. Veterans also pay part of their rent.
Medical debt owed at the end of 2023, from the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation. A floor: debt carried on credit cards or owed to family can be missed.
Reporting a peer-reviewed costing (da Silva and others, Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, 2022) of the yearly cost of managing the Amazon's protected areas and Indigenous lands.