What is the most good I can do with $50 million?

Apologies for the clickbait title, but I just inherited $50 million dollars after tax and I'm really not sure what to do with it. I don't need the money, as I've already got a good career and I'm not really into conspicuous consumption.<br><br>I'd like to use it in a way that benefits humanity the most in the long run, and I want to make sure that I don't mess it up. I'm considering putting it into an endowment that will disburse the money over a long period of time. Here are a few things I'm considering:<br><br>1. **Climate change**: This is the biggest issue of our time, as far as I can tell. It seems like the amount of money I have won't even be a drop in the bucket, and I don't know enough about the space to make a dent. Maybe investing in a carbon capture company? I don't even know where to begin.<br>2. **Pandemics**: With the Covid pandemic fresh in everyone's mind, I imagine there's a lot of progress that can be made on preventing the next big pandemic. I don't know if $50 million would be the most useful here, but I could imagine one of the top pandemic research centers at a top university would really like to have $50 million.<br>3. **Basic income guarantees**: I listen to a lot of podcasts, and they all seem to agree that UBI will be a big deal in the future. I don't know if it's a good idea to just go out and give a million people $50 each for a year, and I don't think my money could even move the needle on the politics of UBI.<br>4. **Space exploration**: Humanity's destiny is in the stars. I really like the idea of investing in space exploration, but I don't think $50 million is enough to make a dent here. I think there are some companies that would really like to have $50 million, but I don't know enough about the field to pick out the best candidate.<br>5. **Public education**: I really like the idea of donating to public education, but I don't want to just dump $50 million into a large bureaucracy. I'd like to give it to an organization that will make good use of it, but the best use may be to fund something that increases graduation rates or something.<br>6. **Mental health**: Mental health seems like one of the largest problems facing society today, and I'm not sure it's getting enough attention. Maybe hiring 20 therapists and training them in some new mental health modality would be the best way to spend the money, but I'm not an expert so I don't know.<br><br>Right now I'm leaning towards just hiring 10-20 people in their 20s and paying them $250k/year to just go out and make the world a better place. It seems like if I chose the right people and gave them the right instructions, they'd figure out how to make the world a better place. It seems like this approach would also give me the best bang for my buck, as I'd essentially be hiring 10-20 full time employees (not accounting for overhead) and telling them to go out and make the world a better place.<br><br>I'm also thinking that maybe there's some small field that no one knows about, like how Feenberg discovered the strong nuclear force. I'd be happy to just hire someone to go work in a lesser-known field that has a lot of promise but is underfunded.<br><br>So, economists, what should I do with the money? I really want to use it to benefit humanity as much as possible, and I have 3-6 months to figure it out.