Cosmos Foundation

Cosmos Foundation

         I won one billion dollars in one of the biggest lotteries in the U S. My wife, Angela and I decided that we are going to move back to San Francisco and devote the rest of our lives to spending the money to improve the world by forming the cosmos foundation.

         We buy a 60-story quake-resistant building in downtown San Francisco that becomes the headquarters of the cosmos foundation. It was a mixed-use building, which was 100 percent powered by renewable energy on-site solar, and wind power, and had a water harvesting system that provided potable water to the building, and a roof-top garden.

         The building would be mixed-use with retail and restaurants and services to the building on the first five floors, officials include start-ups on floors six to ten, private apartments (half rental, half condos) 1 to 4 bedrooms, two per floor, half below market rate, and 10 percent low income, up to the 40th floor. The 40th to the 45th contained a gym, swimming pool, library, and service open to residents and workers in the building, members of the clubs, and their guests, then th 56th to the 57th would contain housing for the CEO and his senior staff. We would live on the 58th to -59th floors. The 60th floor would contain a rooftop restaurant, the rooftop would contain a rooftop garden, and a garden restaurant available for everyone in the building.

         We would give priority for residing in the building to people working in the building or the immediate vicinity. Eventually, 50 percent came from the neighborhood, 25 from the building itself. All part of our effort is to build sustainable housing for all. Every resident would receive transit passes and free veggies from the corporate garden. Residents would also be entitled to use the facilities for free. There would be an internal social media site that would allow residents to communicate with each other and with the building staff.

         We decided one of the first things we decided to do was to set up a scholarship fund called the Cosmos Scholarships which would be given to 100 people a year half would be from the US and how would be from foreign countries, and half the scholarships would be given to woman, 25 percent to people from marginal communities worldwide. Scholarships will be awarded based on showing considerable leadership potential or overcoming hardships at a relatively young age. Each applicant would write an essay or a video piece that would answer a simple question. What are the top problems facing humanity? And what would they do to solve that problem if they got the opportunity to do so? All the essays and videos were on our website and were widely shared with key decision-makers worldwide. Once a year we would have a conference where we would bring world leaders together with the Cosmos Scholars and address the issues they raised and look at the progress being made to address these problems.

         The scholarships could be redeemed at any university in the world but foreign Cosmos scholars would have to spend one year in the United States (regardless of citizenship status) US citizens have to spend one year studying overseas All Cosmos scholars would have to by the time they finish college test out at the 3-3 level in a language other than their native language and for the foreigners test out in English.


         Most Cosmos Scholarships recipients would spend their summers as paid interns in the Cosmos Foundation either at the headquarters or working on various projects that the Cosmos Foundation would fund all over the world. All Costume scholars would commit to spending two years after graduation in a public service position including the military, the peace corps, local, state, and federal governments, international organizations, or their equivalent back home. Upon fulfilling those requirements, applicants would be welcomed to apply for Cosmos Graduate scholarships which would be awarded to 50 people per year half international, half U.S. Finally, Cosmos Scholarship alums would be allowed to apply to work for the Cosmos Foundation worldwide with sponsorship for permanent residency for those selected. Eventually, 70 percent of the staff were former Cosmos Scholarship recipients.

         All Cosmos scholars and staff would also be expected to uphold a high personal code of conduct including no racist sexist or violent language or misconduct,

         We picked the top 100 candidates. Angela and I pick the candidates and we launched their castle scholarship. My friend Matt agrees to serve as my chief financial officer and with his help, the Cosmos Foundation set itself up to be a perpetuating foundation after I die.
We would have enough money left over to keep this Cosmos scholarship going on in perpetuity as well as other projects that we decided to fund besides the Cosmos scholarship which is our flagship product.

         We also would be funding public health promotions and we would also find a project to put public toilet facilities over the country cleaning up the United States and the world. Each public toilet would have a male and female separate toilet with a shower and a vending machine for necessities and would be guarded 24 hours a day by guards. We would fund the maintenance of the cosmos foundation toilets as we call them, and we would start by putting them up in high-traffic areas across the country and in tourist areas. They soon were a great hit and ideas spread around the world.


         Finally, we set up 15 university housing projects for our Cosmos Scholars and visiting staff to live in. They were located at Cal Berkeley, UCLA, University of Washington, University of the Pacific, and American University in DC. We eventually funded ten more Cosmos houses in the U.S. – Atlanta Athens Georgia, University of Ohio, University of Michigan and Boston, Chicago, Miami, and New Orleans, and six overseas (France, Spain, Germany. Japan, South Korea, the UK, India, Thailand, and South Africa..


The prompt was to write about winning a billion dollars in the lotto. I wrote the basic story a few years ago and updated it. I won four dollars last week.