This is a pattern that all these guys do. Even Warren Buffet just gave his money to Gates.
You'd think a guy who spends his life picking out successful businesses would be able to recognize this in non-profit / social ventures, but he's so removed from real problems he can't.
If you want to save the world, save the world first.
Stop. Fucking. Waiting.
I don't understand what you're suggesting. Is Trigg (the programmer who joined Wall Street) "waiting"? What does "not waiting" look like?
Getting to small version of the change you want to see is vastly preferable than trying to be Buffet and then starting a foundation. By then, you've lost all connection to the problems you wished to solve and the mentality of even trying to make this change.
Again: Stop waiting guys! You can actually do this now and grow your little org into a great force for change.
It's just that it's sub-optimal if he can actually run an org to solve the problems. Especially the risk of not increasing donation size with increased conspicuous consumption.
You can get soft quickly if you're not thinking lean...
If you want to do ROI calculations on problems spaces - there's a group that publishes strategies for these:
Copenhagen Consensus [PDF]:
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/Outco...
How many times do they go into it thinking this and just end up with a bunch of cars and naming rights to a building at Harvard at best... We see it the vast majority of the time.
Startup orgs (for- or non-profit) allow you to actually start serving people now, not later, and that gives you better insight into solving problems and picking them.
The main problems of that much money is that you get into investment mode which is more conservative, top-heavy, etc. This means it's slower, less likely to find the best innovations, and lower social-ROI.
However, some problems require such capital - like what Elon Musk is working on at SpaceX, but again that's focused capital.
Warren Buffet realized that a new charitable foundation wasn't needed and that by donating money through the Gates foundation he could accomplish more.