What If the Infrastructure Gave Automatically?
An Open Letter to Bill Gates
Dear Mr. Gates,
You’ve committed $200 billion over the next 20 years. You’ve said the Gates Foundation will close in 2045. You’ve decided to spend down rather than exist in perpetuity.
I want to ask you a question: What happens after 2045?
The Giving Pledge Problem
The Giving Pledge has enrolled 256 signatories. Reports suggest many haven’t followed through. The critique is structural: pledges depend on individual decisions, individual timelines, individual priorities. When the billionaire dies or changes course, the giving stops.
You’ve addressed this for yourself by accelerating the timeline and committing to spend down. But what about the infrastructure of giving itself?
A Different Model
Liana Banyan is a platform cooperative where charitable funding is structural, not discretionary.
Three commercial portals generate revenue. That revenue permanently funds six charitable initiatives:
- LifeLine Medications — prescription access for people who can’t afford their medicine
- Scholarship Initiative — education funding distributed through the platform
- Civic Infrastructure — tools for democratic participation and community organization
The funding doesn’t depend on any individual’s decision. It’s built into the operating model. As long as the commercial portals operate, the charitable initiatives receive funding.
Cost + 20%. That’s the platform margin. Everything else flows to creators and, through them, to the initiatives they choose to support.
Why This Matters
You’ve said philanthropists can’t cover the cuts to foreign aid. You’re right. No foundation — not even yours — can replace government action.
But what if the infrastructure of commerce itself generated charitable outcomes? What if every transaction, by design, contributed to healthcare access, education, civic participation?
That’s not philanthropy. That’s architecture.
The Healthcare Angle
LifeLine Medications addresses a problem you’ve worked on globally: people dying because they can’t afford treatment. In the U.S., 1 in 5 people can’t afford their prescriptions. The platform creates a funding mechanism that doesn’t depend on government appropriations or billionaire decisions.
The economics are transparent. The funding is structural. The model is designed to outlast any individual founder — including me.
The Ask
You’ve spent 25 years learning what works in global health and development. You’ve seen initiatives succeed and fail. You understand systems.
What I want to know:
- Does structural giving work at scale? Or do the economics break down somewhere I’m not seeing?
- What would you stress-test? If the Gates Foundation evaluated this model, what would concern you?
- Is this worth attention? Not funding — scrutiny. Does this model merit serious analysis?
The Bigger Question
The Gates Foundation will close in 2045. What you’ve built will have transformed global health. But the infrastructure of giving itself — the dependence on individual billionaires making individual decisions — will remain.
I’m proposing infrastructure where the giving is automatic. Where the architecture of commerce generates charitable outcomes by design. Where no individual decision-maker can turn it off.
Is that possible? I think so. But I need people who understand systems to tell me where I’m wrong.
Jonathan Jones Founding Manager, Liana Banyan Corporation November 2025
Full economics at Cephas.LianaBanyan.org LifeLine Medications initiative details available on request
406-578-1232 Support@LianaBanyan.org
P.S. — You’ve said “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them.” I’m building something where that question doesn’t depend on any individual’s determination.