Fonds Zukunft bewahren

The "Zukunft bewahren" donation fund run by Effektiv Spenden pools donations for organisations that reduce the probability of global catastrophes. Its scope covers war between major powers and the use of nuclear weapons, pandemics both natural and engineered, and risks from new military and civilian technologies, above all advanced artificial intelligence.¹ Effektiv Spenden decides on grants twice a year together with Longview Philanthropy, a non-profit philanthropic advisory specialised in exactly these risks.¹

Why "Zukunft bewahren" matters

The events at stake here happen rarely. That is precisely why so little is spent on preventing them, and precisely why the damage they could do has almost no ceiling.

On 27 January 2026 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has stood since the clock was introduced. The reasons given included the modernisation and expansion of nuclear arsenals, a degraded capacity to respond to biological events, and competition being placed ahead of cooperation in the regulation of artificial intelligence.² The Federation of American Scientists estimates the global inventory at the start of 2026 at roughly 12,187 nuclear warheads across nine states, of which about 9,745 sit in military stockpiles, 3,912 are deployed with operational forces and around 2,100 are on high alert.³

Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles by country. Data from the Federation of American Scientists, processed by Our World in Data.⁴

What a pandemic costs, by contrast, can be counted. The World Health Organization estimates the excess mortality associated directly or indirectly with COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 at approximately 14.9 million deaths, within a range of 13.3 to 16.6 million.⁵ COVID-19 was a pathogen of natural origin.

There is no market that rewards preparing for events like these. Those who work on them depend on foundations and private donations.

How the fund selects

Research and fundraising are not in the same hands:

• Longview Philanthropy analyses which risks are most pressing and which organisations can put additional funding to effective use. Its own Emerging Challenges Fund serves as the reference point, granting to work on AI governance, biosecurity and nuclear policy.¹⁶ Effektiv Spenden reports that Longview has advised more than $170 million in donations towards reducing catastrophic risks since 2018.⁷
• Effektiv Spenden pools the donations in the fund and issues the tax receipts. It retains no fees for processing donations.¹

Longview states its own standard as requiring a legible theory of impact and a benefit from additional, broadly spread funders.⁶ The recommendations are not fixed: Effektiv Spenden and Longview decide afresh every six months where the money goes.¹

Who is supported

The grants from the second half of 2025, forwarded to the organisations in May 2026. In that half-year the fund received €606,000 from 1,774 donors.⁸

What the fund supported in the preceding rounds:¹

• First half of 2025, forwarded in August 2025: SaferAI, €170,227, and the Meselson Center at the RAND Corporation, €102,527, each carried in part by this fund.
• Second half of 2024, forwarded in March 2025: Pandemic Action Network, €243,000, the General Purpose AI Policy Lab, €233,000, The Future Society, €54,000 from this fund and €60,000 from "KI sicher gestalten".
• First half of 2024, forwarded in September 2024: CeSIA, approximately €195,000.
• Earlier rounds since the fourth quarter of 2022: among others the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for a New American Security, Global Shield, METR, Blueprint Biosecurity, Pour Demain and the Technology and Security Policy Center at the RAND Corporation.

Two older recommendations showed visible results in 2025. rani, formerly the Pandemic Action Network, convened EU actors in Brussels on pandemic preparedness; in December 2025 the European Commission put forward a proposal for an EU Biotech Act that would oblige DNA providers to screen customer orders for dangerous sequences. The Future Society contributed to the Code of Practice for the EU AI Act, which the major AI companies signed in August 2025.⁷

Impact and transparency

Impact here cannot be expressed as a cost per life saved. Anyone who lowers the probability of a catastrophe cannot show what would have happened otherwise; a pandemic that never occurred has no control group.

What can be examined is the route to the decision. Effektiv Spenden lists the fund's grants with recipients and amounts and reports on the recommendation rounds on its own blog.¹⁷ Longview publishes its funding decisions and the reasoning behind them.⁶ Tax receipts for Germany and Switzerland are sent automatically at the end of February of the following year, even where the organisations funded are based abroad.¹

Why the Wealth for the World Fund funds Zukunft bewahren

Risks that lie in the future are systematically underestimated, and are therefore left underfunded. That is not a charge against individual donors, it is a pattern: people weigh a benefit today more heavily than the same benefit tomorrow, and what happens rarely never feels urgent in the present. How this present bias gets in the way of giving is described in the donation guide, in German: Warum es sich beim Spenden lohnen kann, geduldig zu sein.

The Wealth for the World Fund pays out to this fund rather than to a single organisation because impact here cannot be expressed as a cost per life saved. What can be examined instead is the route to the decision, and this fund makes it public: research and grantmaking are not in the same hands, every round is decided afresh instead of maintaining a fixed list of recipients, and every grant is published with recipient, amount and purpose. A fund is also more mobile than a single recommendation: it can move money to whichever gap is largest in a given half-year.

More about the fund on the Effektiv Spenden website and at Longview Philanthropy.

Footnotes

1. Effektiv Spenden, "Spendenfonds: Zukunft bewahren". effektiv-spenden.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "It is 85 seconds to midnight", 27 January 2026. thebulletin.org ↩

3. Federation of American Scientists, "Status of World Nuclear Forces". fas.org ↩

4. Our World in Data, "Nuclear warhead stockpiles". ourworldindata.org ↩

5. World Health Organization, "14.9 million excess deaths were associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021", 5 May 2022. who.int ↩

6. Longview Philanthropy, "Emerging Challenges Fund". longview.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Effektiv Spenden, "Spendenempfehlungen 2025", 19 December 2025. effektiv-spenden.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Effektiv Spenden, "746.000 € für nukleare Sicherheit und sichere KI", 20 May 2026. effektiv-spenden.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴