
When Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett unveiled the Giving Pledge in 2010, it sounded almost radical: convince the world's richest to part with at least half their fortunes for the greater good.
The idea carried the moral weight of a handshake, not the force of law, but it came wrapped in the urgency of "giving while living," a philosophy championed by Chuck Feeney—the billionaire who famously gave away every dollar of his $8 billion fortune before he died.