Last year I posted about my idea for Black Swan Philanthropy, which would be focused on funding projects aimed at preventing or coping with very low probability events that would have cataclysmic outcomes for humanity.  The idea has taken on quite a bit more shape since then, thanks to helpful discussions with friends.  As two examples,  Fred suggested in a comment to the original post the ability to just contribute to an overall fund and Steven Johnson had a bunch of wonderful ideas for how to get the science community involved.

The next step now is to actually get going and for that I am looking for help.  To start with I want to set up a not-for-profit entity so that even the early organizational work can be funded by donations (including my own).  This is not something I have done before nor is it a staple for the lawyers that I usually work with.  So I would very much welcome any advice on how to do this right, any suggestions of people to work with (e.g. lawyers for forming the not-for-profit entity) and any volunteers to help with early organizational tasks.   Also, if you come up with a better name – please let me know!