Equality by lot

Fortune tells the story of Marlene Engelhorn who is busy dispensing with €25 million which she inherited.

Engelhorn settled on an idea: Let 50 strangers decide how to give it away.

Those strangers, all of whom live in Engelhorn’s native Austria, will meet for the first time this weekend at a hotel in Salzburg. Dubbed the Guter Rat, or Good Council, they were chosen through a statistical process run by research group Foresight and range in location, age, race, socioeconomic background and other demographic factors chosen in an effort to be representative of the overall Austrian population.

Engelhorn’s goal is not only to give away €25 million, but also to spark conversations on wealth inequality. She’s frustrated that her windfall wasn’t taxed — Austria eliminated its inheritance tax in 2008 — and doesn’t see traditional philanthropy as a good solution because it still gives her too much power.

“I’m just one brain, I’m just one person and so to me, this is a huge relief knowing that the process of redistribution is much more legitimate and thorough and democratic than I could ever do it,” she said in an interview. “Nobody needs another foundation.”

The project was announced in January, when the Guter Rat team, with the help of Foresight, sent invitations to 10,000 randomly selected people all over Austria above the age of 16. Engelhorn held a press conference announcing the undertaking so people didn’t think it was a scam.

The response was immediate: Within the first two days they received 700 emails from people who’d heard about the plan, with many sharing their own ideas on how to spend the money, said Alexandra Wang, who is leading the project. (Wang and Engelhorn met when the former was a fundraiser for a progressive Austrian think tank to which the latter was a donor.)

Of the 10,000 people the invitation was sent to, 1,424 registered to participate, which is an unusually high response rate, said Martin Haselmayer, a researcher at Foresight. A rate of 5% to 7% is normal for citizens’ assemblies, he said.

The 50 people who were ultimately selected will meet a total of six times between now and June. The first two gatherings will be primarily educational: This weekend, after collecting Guter Rat merch and settling into the Salzburg hotel, participants will hear from two economists about wealth distribution. The second weekend will involve a broader philosophical conversation about what a just society looks like, said Wang, who hopes the project will create a road map for others.

“This is a lighthouse project that I hope will inspire a few people out there to rethink their values,” she said.

Starting on the third weekend, the participants will really dig into the fate of Engelhorn’s money and aim to decide what to do with her €25 million by the summer. If all 50 members can’t agree on where the money should go, it will be returned to her, but Engelhorn and Wang don’t expect that to happen.

Aside from being the face of the project, Engelhorn is no longer involved in the process, but she will give a brief speech to thank the participants this first weekend.

Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition |