Wealth Hacker's Challenge

We imagine a world where our fellow WealthHackers are encouraged to develop and launch their hacks, and are supported through a combination of financial and social capital and access to an aligned hacker community. We are partnering with our first supporting sponsor, the UK-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation, to launch the inaugural Hacking Wealth Challenge and to identify new ideas or works in progress that can be significantly advanced with a one-time infusion of GBP 15,000 over a 4 - 8 week sprint. 

What Qualifies as a Hack?

Below are example hacks that align inside of what we’ve identified as the five “dimensions” for these scalable subversions: 

Legal / Governance

• “Trust-busting” instruments that enable full expression of wealth

• Redefine “fiduciary duty” to be more than private wealth accumulation

• Alternative approaches to who are the legal guardians of wealth (eg. not trustee model)

Financial

• Models for making investment decisions more inclusive, participatory and democratic 

• Client service and business models that prioritise repair and the redistribution of wealth, power and privilege

• Alternative fund economics design and models that build community health and wealth

Digital

• Tools and practices for spend-down redistribution modelling 

• Financial Planning technology that supports holistic investment and financial planning decisions

• Alternative platforms, structures and tools that support investing in alternative economies

Accounting

•  Reimagine a P&L that captures all forms of value 

• Tax, regulatory and accounting policy reform and advocacy

• Tax planning that prioritises redistribution of wealth through solidarity, not charity

Behavioural

• Behavioural and psychological tools for wealth holders to redirect their wealth, manage family dynamics and replace misaligned intermediaries.

• Alternative approaches to stakeholder governance / accountability (eg. planning for future generations)

Hacking is tactical and applied, like the intervention a brilliant engineer made to attach a tiny rudder to the large rudder of a ship. It’s that little rudder, the trim tab, that initiates the turning of the entire ship, as Buckminster Fuller famously observed: 

“Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around.”

Similarly, hacks are specific, small innovations that have the capacity to turn the massive tanker that is the Wealth Defense Industry towards Justice.

• The Challenge opens on September 2, and closes September 30. 

• Good uses of funds include building a prototype of a product or service; adapting an existing intervention to another jurisdiction or language; or conducting applied research for a new intervention.

• Selected hackers will be announced in early November. They will have until January 15 to utilise the award funds to work on their intervention. 

• Selected hackers will also attend an in-person gathering of their peers and additional stakeholders in early  2025 in the United Kingdom. Location and dates will be announced in November. 

• All submissions will have an opportunity to join the forthcoming WealthHackers Community.

• While the proposed hacks do not need to originate in the United Kingdom, explicit statements for how they would work there are supportive.