Last Tuesday, Austrian millionairess and philanthropist Marlene Engelhorn announced the start of “Guter Rat” (“Good Advice”), a project which involves the creation of a group of 50 people who, in the coming months, will have to help her decide how to spend a good part of the 25 million euros she inherited in 2022 after the death of her grandmother. Engelhorn is in fact one of the descendants of Friedrich Engelhorn, founder of BASF, one of the largest chemical companies in the world.
The members of the “Good Council” will discuss during several meetings what are the best ways to redistribute the assets of Engelhorn, who does not want to resort to traditional forms of philanthropy, such as the creation of private charitable foundations, which in his opinion are tools that give rich people who want to give to charity power they shouldn’t have. “Redistribution is a process that shouldn’t just involve me,” he said.
The 50 members of the “Good Council” will be selected from an initial sample of 10 thousand people drawn by lot, and will receive invitations in their mailboxes in the coming weeks. Participants must be at least 16 years old, but do not necessarily have to be Austrian citizens or speak German: it is sufficient that they are domiciled in Austria.
Inside the letters they will find questionnaires to fill out, which will then be examined by a special commission: at the end of the process the group will be reduced to 50 people, who will have to represent the country’s population based on variables such as sex, age, income and area of origin.
The group will meet from March to June to take part in a series of meetings relating to issues such as the distribution of wealth and how non-governmental organizations are funded – all members will have the option to remain anonymous, unless they choose to disclose your identity publicly. All meetings will be moderated by experts, and 15 replacement members will be selected in case anyone is unable to attend.
To have greater economic independence and be able to dedicate themselves full time to the project, the members of the “Guter Rat” will receive 1,200 euros per week. Additionally, Engelhorn staff will cover room, board and travel expenses.
Il site of the project provides for a series of limitations for the destination of the funds, which cannot go to “unconstitutional, hostile or inhumane” individuals or organizations and cannot be invested in profit-making activities. Furthermore, the money cannot be redistributed to members of the group or to people “connected to them”. In the event that the group is unable to reach a shared agreement, the money will be returned to Engelhorn.
The “Guter Rat” project reflects ideas of social justice that Engelhorn has been pursuing for years: he has long asked that the Austrian government adopt more effective wealth redistribution measures, including the reintroduction of the inheritance tax (the tax that applies to assets inherited from a person), which was abolished in 2008. Furthermore, Engelhorn is part of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of American and European millionaires who demand that governments around the world impose higher taxes on those as rich as They. The actor Mark Ruffalo, the heiress Abigail Disney (granddaughter of Walt Disney) and Nick Hanauer, an American entrepreneur who was among the first to invest in Amazon, also joined the group.
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The actual part of the inheritance that Engelhorn allocated to the project was not specified, but according to Bernhard Madlener, one of the spokespersons for “Guter Rat”, it is a “large part”.