Pushing the frontier of philanthropy.

A multidisciplinary database of visionary philanthropic experiments, advancing current social practices and rules for collective good.

Think different. Build different too.

“The failure of philanthropy is its failure to stay relevant,
to inspire us with what's possible”, Nadia Asporouhova

The non-profit sector is gaining increasing significance in the modern world, and it is currently one of the fastest-growing industries. From an economic standpoint, non-profits play a crucial role in addressing the issue of information asymmetry, which means they're highly valuable for our economy.

While all forms of charity are commendable, it is essential not only to provide direct assistance to individuals and communities during crises but also to focus on updating current social structures and rules to achieve far greater public benefits. Take, for instance, Dr. Kariko, a recent Nobel laureate, who faced significant challenges in securing funding for her groundbreaking research on mRNA. If the funding mechanisms for scientific work were different, we could have not only accelerated the development of her innovation but also facilitated numerous breakthroughs by other scientists.

Proposition of new funding mechanisms by independent organizations such as the Institute for Progress or Fast Grants perfectly illustrates the essence of philanthropy which involves “using private assets to experiment with public goods to identify unique ideas and solutions to implicit but important problems.

And while startups are ceasing to be the most ambitious and promising avenue for young people, philanthropy is beginning to be so. In fact, any social institution like governments, academia, media, education, technological labs, democracy and others need to be updated to address contemporary global challenges like climate change, the shift of geopolitical power to New Axis, degrowth, the emergence of new risky technologies, and more. Technical progress alone cannot resolve these challenges, so updating our institutions should become a central mission of the 21st century.

That’s why we believe that the true potential of philanthropy and more generally institutional experiments is greatly underrealized.

We have built this website to convene unique projects that aspire to reimagine particular public goods and provide contrarian insights about the world. We’re trying to build something that can bring those to you, to help you find inspiration, original ideas and interesting areas for making an impact. At the same time organizations would find new donors, followers, participants and even employees.

So, let’s start diving down those rabbit holes through the filters in the top right corner!

ABOUT

A term coined by Balaji Srinivasan to describe new crypto-centered alternative to nation-states.

HIGHLIGHTS

Created a schelling point for certain types of alternative coordination mechanisms

ABOUT

A platform streamlining high-demand citizenship products such as identity solutions and business services from unique small governments to the broader public.

HIGHLIGHTS

Building technical instruments for governments like Palau to export their unique citizen services

ABOUT

Advocacy & research group developing more house affordable urban policies in Ireland.

HIGHLIGHTS

Evidence based urban pro-housing policies

ABOUT

Strong Towns is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media advocacy organization, producing content that analyzes the failures of the post-war North American development pattern while giving citizens the knowledge and tools to start making our places better today.

HIGHLIGHTS

Livable cities for the US

ABOUT

The San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association is a nonprofit public policy organization developing solutions to the problems that cities face.

HIGHLIGHTS

Development of public policy for healthy cities

ABOUT

An open-source community development toolkit for designing future cities.

HIGHLIGHTS

New tools for the urban industry

ABOUT

A Legal and Public Policy Consulting Firm Equipping Charter Cities and Special Economic Zones to Shape the Future of Governance.

HIGHLIGHTS

A leading SEZ consulting firm

ABOUT

Adrianople Group is a research and business advisory services provider focused primarily on Special Economic Zones and similar projects.

HIGHLIGHTS

Business research of SEZs

ABOUT

An experiment in a pop-up mini-city.

HIGHLIGHTS

Playing with new societies in a real life

ABOUT

A company building (tech) infrastructure for charter/startup cities.

HIGHLIGHTS

New tech for emerging industry of charter cities

ABOUT

A group building a Charter City for Hong Kongers.

HIGHLIGHTS

New form (foundation & company), creating political alternatives

ABOUT

A company developing satellite cities in emerging markets, first focused on Caribbeans.

HIGHLIGHTS

Expanding Charter Cities ecosystem in Carribeans

Something missing from our list?

If you know of an exciting philanthropic organization that we have not included, let us know!

or

© New Institutions 2023

Organizations pursuing national prosperity and power
National challenges
Organizations building new corporate models
Ownership structures
Organizations trying to radically change or re-imagine current model of city and nation state
Cities, states and geographies
Organizations experimenting with new formats of media
Media
Organization and tools for radical enhancing human’s thinking and cognitive capabilities
Thinking
Organizations developing new educational social technologies
Education
Organizations trying to achieve more democratic society
Democracy
Organizations re-imaging capitalism economic model
Beyond capitalism
Organizations studying and building new institutions
Institutions
Organizations trying to unlock bottlenecks for creating radically new technologies
Technological progress
Organizations making philanthropy more effective and unique
Philanthropy
Organizations trying to disrupt financial institutions
Finance
Organizations trying to re-imagine mechanisms of talent discovery and support
Talents
Organizations trying to change social processes and rules in academic institutions
Academia
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inspiration
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AI
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family
#
justice
#
institution
#
infrastructure
#
policy entrepreneurship
#
new corporate structures
#
cooperative ownership
#
externalities
#
public goods funding
#
market-making
#
citizen science
#
crowdsourcing
#
quadratic voting
#
retroactive funding
#
private philanthropy
built around a new way to do an existing activity
#
new model
establishing a unique organizational structure
#
organizational form
creating an overview of some industry or ecosystem
#
mapping
creating art as a main activity of the org
#
art
prioritizing concrete action for tangible outcomes
#
actions
a collection of resources
#
aggregator
support and care about Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities
#
BIPOC
#
open-source
building a community around a shared interest or project
#
community
Here is a helpful tid bit to assist the user in understanding how a certain feature works.
#
crowdsourcing
uses blockchain technology
#
blockchain
public or state funding in the form of procurement, grants, etc.
#
government funding
creating or changing an established cultural phenomena
#
culture
#
advocacy
inventing new financial contracts
#
new contracts
re-purposing existing expertise in a field
#
expertise
existing of grounds in the form of an emerging theoretical or empirical mainstream
#
extensions
creating new ideas in particular niche
#
new ideas
discovery some existing phenomena which can be reused in a very unique way
#
repurposing
using technologies of VR/AR
#
virtual reality
unique ways of making money (e.g. voluntary prices)
#
revenue model
development and implementation of new standards for particular industry
#
new standards
production of new kind of goods/services
#
new good
developing new rules of governing people’s interactions
#
new rules
a residence-based program
#
residency
financed via venture capital from investors
#
venture capital
using a not-for-profit business model
#
non-profit
#
education
public-facing content production
#
content
#
research
#
digital
exit to new emerging “market” which became possible due to social and technological changes in the industry
#
new niche
new tools for some use case/industry
#
tool-driven
#
inspiration
#
AI
#
family
#
justice
#
institution
#
infrastructure
#
policy entrepreneurship
#
new corporate structures
#
cooperative ownership
#
externalities
#
public goods funding
#
market-making
#
citizen science
#
crowdsourcing
#
quadratic voting
#
retroactive funding
#
private philanthropy
built around a new way to do an existing activity
#
new model
establishing a unique organizational structure
#
organizational form
creating an overview of some industry or ecosystem
#
mapping
creating art as a main activity of the org
#
art
prioritizing concrete action for tangible outcomes
#
actions
a collection of resources
#
aggregator
support and care about Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities
#
BIPOC
#
open-source
building a community around a shared interest or project
#
community
Here is a helpful tid bit to assist the user in understanding how a certain feature works.
#
crowdsourcing
uses blockchain technology
#
blockchain
public or state funding in the form of procurement, grants, etc.
#
government funding
creating or changing an established cultural phenomena
#
culture
#
advocacy
inventing new financial contracts
#
new contracts
re-purposing existing expertise in a field
#
expertise
existing of grounds in the form of an emerging theoretical or empirical mainstream
#
extensions
creating new ideas in particular niche
#
new ideas
discovery some existing phenomena which can be reused in a very unique way
#
repurposing
using technologies of VR/AR
#
virtual reality
unique ways of making money (e.g. voluntary prices)
#
revenue model
development and implementation of new standards for particular industry
#
new standards
production of new kind of goods/services
#
new good
developing new rules of governing people’s interactions
#
new rules
a residence-based program
#
residency
financed via venture capital from investors
#
venture capital
using a not-for-profit business model
#
non-profit
#
education
public-facing content production
#
content
#
research
#
digital
exit to new emerging “market” which became possible due to social and technological changes in the industry
#
new niche
new tools for some use case/industry
#
tool-driven
Tools for academia
Refugee cities
Investigations
Democracy methods
Energy
Open source
Cyber security
Longevity
Residency
Official cities
Free cities
Financial mechanisms
Financial institutions
Policy research (del)
Pro-immigration
Pro-reforms
Pro-energy
Pro-housing
Pro-people
Technologies for democracy
Diversity
Alignment
Startup cities
Teaching
Venture capital
Space governance
Solidarity economy
Sea cities
Research institutions
Progress studies (del)
Private cities
Policy entrepreneurship (del)
Platform
Personal projects (del)
Parallel academia
Optimism
New economies
Metascience
Learning
Mapping institutions
Creating institutions
Progress promotion
Insitutions' proposition (del)
Infrastructure (del)
Green economy
Futurism
The Web
Studying institutions
Science funding
Funding
Support
Effective donations
Donation innovations
Funding R&D (del)
Technological breakthroughs
Digital states
Crypto cities
Ownership
Cooperatives
Community (del)
Co-living (del)
Career development
Thoughtful discussions
Book publisher
Better cities
AI
Academia re-structure
Way of thinking
Tools for thinking