If someone gave you 5 billion dollars to improve the world in any way you see fit, what would you do?

Pay for drone strikes on all the world's dictators.

Wholesale murder of my fellow billionaires
- Great idea! But what happens then? There'd be some fear, but more importantly, a certain vacuum of power. How could you make sure another power-hungry, sociopathic populist wouldn't rise? Or, again more importantly, make sure people cannot fall into these traps again, which only happens due to a lack of ideology, generalized ignorance and a belief in 'moral relativism' (among other issues)?
  Btw, Frank Herbert explored this in Dune... it requires a virtually immortal prophet! 😅
  
  People who seek power being more scared that being exploitative has consequences, so they limit exploitation.
  It took hundreds of years of revolts to get from absolute monarchies to representative systems in most European countries. You could argue the French revolution failed because it was succeeded by Napoleon. You could also understand it as an important step forward.
  Take another example in Europe. Initial plans were to create an US style capitalism in Western Germany after WW2. However it was understood this would create a large class of disenfranchised and poor people. This would have given communism a chance to become the dominating ideology in Europe. So instead capitalism had to be coated with social security, access to opportunities by education, access to home ownership... Structures that were subsequently damaged and destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union as now the ruling class thought themselves to be able to exploit people with impunity. Something that will fail eventually, but get much worse until then.
  It is like brushing your teeth. Yes they will get dirty again. But not having the perfect solution to keep them clean forever cannot dissuade you from brushing them regularly. On the contrary it makes it all the more important to keep brushing them.
  
  Great idea! But what happens then?
  Not my problem because I would have to die too.
- You don't need to be a billionaire to eat the rich, but it definitely helps to insulate you from the legal ramifications thereof.

Hire a LOT of hitmen
Take power everywhere i could and force permanent wealth equality.
Then redistribute the rest.

[ Removed by Reddit ]

Develop High yield and sophisticated lab controlled food production facilities that could run all year without fear of climate instability to rev the throttle on sustainable long term food production.

Best that I can think of would be to create an endowed institute of political scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, et cetera, dedicated to studying and developing ways to counter right-wing populism, and de-program people who fall under its sway.
- Let's congratulate you for being the only poster that did not want to go on a killing spree. If you want to change the world, you can do that by killing people. If you want to improve the world and start that with killing people you will never succeed. Thanks for that.
  Leftist fascism killing people is not better than right wing fascism killing people. In the end everybody is dead and nothing is better. People after the second world war understood that. We have forgotten that and start looking for blood again, just to learn that expensive and painful lesson again.

One million dollars per assassin until one of them eventually gets through to Trump, then Vance, than Musk, Than the Republican Supreme Court. After that, a 50,000 dollar bounty on any sitting member of Trump's Cabinet and any sitting member of the GOP.
Even if it takes every penny to finish that list and I end up right back where I started. I'll still consider it money well spent.
Anything less than a full Nuremberg level cleanse of nazi's in America is just not going to be sufficient.
Kill them all.
And I'm not being even the least bit facetious.

I'm going to build a shit ton of housing.

Use every last dollar to fund a revolution.

Buy the US House and Senate.
$5 B / 435 = 11,494,252 per person. Sounds do-able. Shit, Bob Menendez sold out for $480,000. 11 mil. would go a LOOONG way.

Move to an undisclosed remote location and start posting massive crypto bounties on the heads of the shittiest people in the world. Like, $100M a pop. Pay a digital sweatshop to spam social media with AI generated posts and memes about it until the whole world is aware. Then wait. See if anyone is able to collect.

5 billion is a lot, but it's not quite change the world money.
I'm not looking to go on a murder spree, even if there are people out there who might deserve it. Not to mention that going after other billionaires is basically the one thing that billions of dollars can't insulate you from.
I'd probably find an underserved region of the world, start up a hospital and health clinic, pay for good doctors, and treat patients for free for as long as we still have money.

Assassins
- I like where your mind is at, truly the best decision.

I would fund community-led projects that align with my values such as:
mutual aid collectives
community-run gardens, libraries, and clinics
labor and tenant unions / cooperatives
intentional communities
food pantries / soup kitchens
parks and other 3rd spaces
art collectives
sustainability initiatives (rooftop solar, heat pumps, microgrids, rewilding, permaculture / indigenous farming practices, etc.)
public multimodal transportation infrastructure
My focus would be on empowering people to help each other even after the money runs out.

Invest the money, and use the after-inflation income to do the work.
That way, you have a constant and near-permanent resource stream with which to do the work. It’s only if the markets crash as a whole that you need to worry, and nothing says you cannot build additional revenue streams along side that wealth.
I would start with the most pressing issues for Canada - housing, and the homeless crisis that arises from shitty wages combined with exploding costs. Buy large tracts of land within each city, then economically force the cities to approve large arcologies that blend residential with business spaces. Make it super-attractive for even the wealthy to want to rent homes there, but turn around and then make assisted living units available in those same areas to low-income families and homeless people who want to get off the street. Have those communities to be tightly integrated across all social strata, so everyone benefits. Plus, actual social support that helps those traumatized by homelessness to get their lives together and return to being contributing members of society.
- Exactly what I would do. Build tiny house communities for low income housing that sustain themselves.
  They would have some community features like a tool library and food garden and a dog area, and individual indoor and outdoor spaces for everyone.
  A portion of either the rent or sale price would be set aside for each person for financial advice or mental health support annually.
  Ideally built by a combination of master craftspeople and trainees from at risk youth.

$5b wouldn't do much in the grand scheme of things but it would make me the wealthiest person in my city 10x over. I'd fund progressive campaigns across the board to stack the legislate with like-minded people and then work on building my local community and hope that it has leeching effects on the surrounding area, state(s), country.
- I feel like we have very different beliefs on what "grand scheme of things" means because I don't believe $5b will make an immediate difference right away for most people, but you can implement small things that will create ripple effects that greatly change the grand scheme of things for the future.
  
  There are billionaires out there right now who are investing their money in trying to solve the world's problems. Bill Gates has given away $60 billion dollars of his own money so far through his foundation as of the end of last year.
  That money goes further being spent on developing nations as opposed to the USA so people don't seem to notice. The WHO is trying to eliminate malaria by 2050 and we've gone from there being ~1,000,000 deaths per year in 2000 to ~300,000 cases per year in 2024.

distribute guillotines
- Kill off the other billionaires.

In the US, so free health insurance for those making under 100k for 6 months (or likely less - whenever the money runs out). Maybe that would give enough people a taste of universal healthcare that they would start voting for policies that get us closer to that.

Establish non profit in country that is not part of international patent sytem and move there.
Invest in university(ies) in that country and start close cooperation.
Start making hardware / manufacturing device specifications and publish them as opensource.
Establish something like github but for hardware + manufacturing. Establish open factory / manufacturing project.
Publish free books about building houses / vehicles / electronics / manufacturing.
Invest in alternative opensource software to Autodesk / Solidworks / Catia.
Start open medicine project that shows how medicines are producded from herbs and plants.

I would start a non profit foundation that develops and maintains cost effective, autonomous boats to clean up the great garbage patch.
I am envisioning something like a small fleet of autonomous boats that dock with large motherships dump their cargo of garbage and head out again The motherships can also work with manned crafts that can handle heavier e
The motherships should be nuclear powered, have water treatment plant so the garbage can be dryed and brought to land .

Invest it, assuming 5% return, spend the interest money of 250 million per year on feeding the hungry, educating kids, and helping animals. Somewhere along the way, buy a couple of beers for myself.

I would set up a program where the teachers in Philadelphia public schools would have their school supplies highly subsidized by myself.
The local food banks would receive five figure donations directly from myself.
I would look into water retention and distribution in drought stricken parts of Mexico. If I could help I would leverage my money effectively to make sure humans have access to safe drinking water in the region. If acting directly would cause harm I would fund researchers until an appropriate solution could be found.
Create an app that teaches the indigenous languages of the Americas while hiring native speakers for accuracy.
Edit:
Donate to an owl sanctuary.
- I like your very targeted responses!
  With money in the billions, I agree that I couldn't not help fellow humans first.
  Your proposals also have some fairly immediate benefits to a number of different groups of underserved people.
  And then you even came back in the end to include some of the critters as well!
  I like your style.
  
  If I got billions of dollars at this point how could I not throw a little at the owls. I would feel guilty everyday I open my subscriptions.

You get to keep only enough to maintain a very modest lifestyle in a low-cost-of-living area
Am I allowed to still be employed to earn an income for my own lifestyle?
Anyhow, probably fund lab-grown egg and meat (lab grown dairy already exists) and deal with the red tape and political obstacles it is facing.

I always wanted to see if I could 'fix' the Berkley Pit mine. It's a superfund site with some of the most acidic water in the world. It was a cooper mine for decade that went bust. When the owners walked away, it started filling up with rain water. But, because of the way mines work, that water became VERY acidic. So now there's this lake of acid out in Montana that no one wants to deal with.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit
Inter-mountain Histories: https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/376
ChemAnalyst News - Pit might have rare earth minerals: https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/montana-toxic-legacy-could-become-america-rare-earth-savior-36626

Find out the best application of money to buy companies and turn them into worker coops.

Hire assassins to take care of the 1%

Set up a global ~~bounty~~ GoFundMe that anyone can contribute to anonymously.
It keeps an up-to-date ranking of everyone worth over 1 billion, and pays out to anyone who removes someone from the list.

I would develop some city neighborhoods and set up some community land trusts to run them.

A 100 bed (or so, idk what number it would actually come out to) hostel / shelter / halfway house for chronically institutionalized people who don't know how to function in normal transitional housing. Instead of a larger number of beds they might also be split into multiple smaller buildings.
Each unit would have one small room with
a twin bed
a closet with a storage compartment on the bottom that takes a standard lock
a desk
a few of those bars on the wall you can slide posters and papers into to hang
a single-unit sink-toilet-shower stall with groutless faux tile and a detachable shower head (so that to clean it you just cover it in bleach and use the showerhead to hose it down).
an electric kettle
WiFi
a locking door that the staff have a copy of the key to but have received specialized education on renters rights and education on what specifically constitutes a safety concern.
Public facilities include:
cafeteria that provides 3 hot meals as well as a vending machine with reconstitutable MRE style meals that can be made with hot water
laundry
library / public access computers
meeting rooms that are reservable but also host supportive and educational group therapies
a large public chalkboard wall with 7 sections that are wiped down one at a time in sequence throughout the week with additional discretion of the staff to erase hatespeech
a non-denominational / non-religion-specific "chapel" that any religious leader may rent for one hour a week in exchange for some minimum monetary donation. They also receive a listing on an updatable placard posted just outside or near the entrance on the inside listing their contributions publicly in addition to being listed on the monthly accounting posting. It is designed so that vestments can be interchangeably hung and they may also rent a closet to store them in.
Residents do pay rent but it's only enough to keep the facility running and the accounting books are publicly available on a monthly basis. If the model does well enough and receives enough outside support, rent may be a symbolic amount like $5-10 just to legally maintain the facility as a transitional public service as opposed to a long term housing solution (although that would be another great thing to donate this money to, but my personal focus would be the people that would struggle to function in that environment without some sort of actual rehabilitation).
They can get a discount by performing tasks to run, clean, and maintain the facilities including both the public areas and turning over rooms between residents or maintaining the rooms of disabled residents (while those residents are elsewhere for the day). Their names are not listed on the public books, just the number of people contributing in this manner. Any money they make for tasks performed outside the facility is theirs to keep.
There are no drug tests but no drugs (or weapons) are allowed on the premises. Any paid staff are background checked and any 24-hr safety staff (so not kitchen / EVS) who do not already have a license or advanced degree in health and human services receive somewhere between a 2-week to 1-month 8hr per day classroom education on human rights, nonviolent crisis deescalation, CPR, safety and sanitation, and policy training on how to assess and what to do if they suspect drugs or weapons have been brought on the premises (probably some other stuff too but idk. I'd make the class longer if I thought it would be financially possible / likely to get enough people to attend). Would also probably help to have 1 hour of monthly continuing education on a bunch of those topics but also to help them contextualize their experiences with this population.
The floors are sex segregated with the exception of one floor (or a smaller proportion) that is co-ed and allows persons of any gender presentation provided they have no history of sex or gender targeted charges.
If I think of anything else I'll add it, but these are my thoughts having worked with this population and wishing there were more services focused on helping them reenter society.
Also tbph I'd probably actually live there myself, eat in the cafeteria, have a weekly movie night in one of the public meeting rooms, etc, the only thing I'd be missing is a workshop, but I could do with maybe a slightly larger permanent suite in the basement or on the roof or something. The tradeoff would be dealing with the bullshit that would necessarily arise on a 24/7 basis, LOL. I might also want a bigger bed if my husband wanted to live there with me, which he might because his 5b idea is almost definitely a free or low cost cafeteria (I'm a nurse, he's a cook) but he's also much more misanthropic than me and might want more privacy / emotional distance.

Expand food banks and shelters. Then donate water to places that need it.
- This completely. You cant end capitalism with that kind of money, but you can provide cheap or free alternatives to basic needs to force the price-gouging vendors to actually compete for once and align their businesses better with the consumer.

Kick them in the nuts (or the stomach, in case they don't have nuts), because relying on individuals with money to solve our problems is one of our fucking problems.

Found a for-profit (to circumnavigate laws about non-profit having to be apolitical) with the goal of lifting people in poverty from poverty by providing jobs, education and zero interest loans
- 527 organizations don’t have to be apolitical?

I set up a for profit corporation whose stated goal is to make the world a better play. I donate all the money to that corporation.
As the sole owner, I now have 5 billion dollars so I change the mission to something else because I don't have time to deal with the poors who did work as hard as me to become this successful.

Bribe politicians to add a constitutional amendment for a mandatory 30% minimum tax to gross income over $1M and assets/holdings over $1B.
- I truly don't believe $5b is anywhere close to being enough to do that.
  
  The requirement to pass is only a 2/3 majority. $5b might be enough.

I would build housing for the homeless. Simple rule, no muss no fuss: need a place to live? Get a place to live. Live there for free until you can get clean and/or find a job and get back on your feet. Maybe throw in some job training too, or some kind of work-study program where they can get (paid, ofc) experience while they learn a new trade to help cover gaps in their work history and such. I'm imagining apartment complexes built around some kind of combination trade school/recovery program that teaches people to be plumbers, welders, electricians, etc while helping to get and keep them clean, offer group support for reintegrating into society, the full package.
I could help a lot of people that way with $5 billion. I'd show up in places like NY/LA with large homeless populations with a greyhound bus that said 'free apartment and a good job this way' on the side or something too, and just bus 'em in as new housing became available.
- I wanted to do something similar to your apartment idea but for teens and young adults in poverty-stricken areas. Get them into a stable environment, teach them the necessary life skills like credit management, budgeting, cooking for yourself, etc. and give them job training. All of that would also go just as well for the homeless population. I grew up in an area that was riddled by the crack epidemic and had no resources for kids/teenagers to do anything other than crimes. The city didn't pay for anything to keep us out of trouble, and our drug addict parents sure weren't going to do it either. So I always felt like if I had a ton of money I would focus on program to help teens in those situations learn to be proper adults, because nobody else is teaching them. Schools won't, parents won't, we're defunding every program that helps outside of the home. It's a mess.
  
  That sounds pretty good too, yeah. The program could be expanded to include safe spaces/training for teenagers and such too, probably include a rec center that always has stuff going on for them to participate in, etc. At that point it turns from a housing/job training project to basically a community, built around safe spaces, opportunities, and education for the future.

Change it into British pounds, set up a political party or movement.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’d rather just opt out and keep living my current lifestyle than dedicate the rest of my life to something I’m not an expert in - and honestly, don’t even find particularly interesting.
- That is very fair.

Use it to hire most of the best minds to be found with the sole purpose of creating an expansive infrastructure to provide regular people the means to organize as one.
The undertaking would be staggering. Reviewing all the known history of man, considering all the languages, cultures, failures and successes.
Researching and combining all known technologies.
All to set the groundwork for a global union of human kind to be able to collectively counteract the disease that is the upper most classes.
After much daydreaming on the subject. I think this is the way of long term existential survival for the human race.
TL;DR: Basically, the Star Trek federation.

I have an ok lifestyle with the people in my house all working now, so would put all of it to use, that's fine. If I am allowed to keep this in my community and city, I would put it in a trust that could only be used to extend the trolley system here back to at least what it was in the 1940s, and as much farther as practical with that $ and make it free to ride. An endowment that could generate enough money to keep that going and to modernize it.
If it must be global, how many people are there? 8,9 billion ? That's not even a dollar each, I'm not sure. Maybe plant 5 billion trees, or buy up land & rewild it.

Thought about this before. I'd build out the high-speed internet structure to encompass all the populated parts of the world (omitting coverage across large swaths of open sea) and provide free, no-questions-asked WiFi internet service to absolutely everyone.
(Yes, a lot of places don't have devices, but parallel programs already exist to get people enabled on cheap devices)
The obstruction would be legal battles with current stakeholders that have regional monopolies and are very addicted to making odious profit. (Looking at you, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc.)

Idk, whatever I can come up with would probably have massive unintended negative consequences.

I would donate the vast majority to education in the rest of homelessness

If the Big, Beautiful Bill in the US gets passed in the Senate with the provision requiring plaintiffs to put up a bond to sue the government over these illegal actions then I'd be bankrolling every citizen and group that is interested in suing to fight them, including putting up a bond.

I'd create a new city from scratch, sort of kick-starter style with like-minded residents and businesses. It would be built up with good public transit from the beginning and solid anti-NIMBY policies. Something radical like not being able to own your property. Instead the city would be owned collectively and you could have shares. But you would never have an incentive to deny development to increase your own home's value.
There'd be participatory planning and cutting edge democracy: participatory, deliberative, representative.
- That's why I say I'd do it Kickstarter style. I'd get investments from business and people who wanted to live there and if it went south we could at least sell off the land.

Nuke mar a lago from space

You get to keep enough to maintain a very modest lifestyle in a low-cost-of-living area
Don't know why I must move to a cheap area... no, I would probably decide to stay here at least for half of each year. My lifestyle remains modest as well, but I would actually rebuild some parts of this old house.
the rest of it has to go towards improving the world in some way.
There's only a small part of the world that I could actually influence so far in my life.
With the billions, I would try to expand this radius of course, but only slowly, only reluctantly, trying to stay wise. I would focus at first on the ones that are closer to me, and mitigate their needs. You did not require me to improve the whole world after all.
- Yeah, cheap area will likely be a not-so-desirable place, unless you’re the type who likes to live in the boonies.
  
  Thats the point.
  The money isn't for you, and you don't get any of the benefits of having it. The only reason I allowed for a stipen for a modest living in a cheap area is because I knew that half the comments would be "First I buy land build houses for me and all my friends and family, buy everyone cars, and fund all their colleges, then with the hundred million left over, I'll help some homeless people" OR if I would have said you get no money at all, everyone would have said they wouldn't have time to do anything good because they still had to work full time and half to afford their bills. So, the compromise is you get a modest lifestyle in an undesirable area fully funded, or no money at all and you can continue to work full time and a half to afford your basic ass lifestyle while not helping anyone.

Step 1) Pay my rent for the next 10 years. Freaking out about it month to month is shredding years off of my life span. Also buy a new hard drive because I ran out of space for memes earlier today...
Step 2) Go to the grocery store and get a shitload of groceries, distilled water and cat food so that isn't a concern for a long time. I can not eat. The cat? Not so much.
Step 3) At the grocery store, buy every single gift card they have. I mean all of them, not just the ones on the shelves. I'd go to the manager and say to get someone for me and me alone. Open a till and go through every box of every gift card, activate them all and sell all of them to me. ALL OF THEM.
Step 4) Go to every food bank in my city and give them every gift card as well as a massive cash donation. Some of the gift cards are for the staff. Otherwise 30% goes to various purchases that will help if they wanna keep the cash for a while. The other 70% gets put in with stuff that people pick up.
Step 5) Find every charity in my local area and pay them out. Reach their goals and then some.
Step 6) Make an agreement with the city to fund an ENTIRE overhaul of the transit system. My city isn't very big but the transit here is horrific. City won't make moves on it because cost of shifting it around will mess with the budget. So, I pay for it and over the course of a very long time, I take an incredibly small amount of any money gained from transit over the amount they made prior to overhaul. That money does not go to me but instead back into those local charities.
Step 7) Open my own vet clinic that has pricing based off of income. It'd be about the same prices as any other vets in the area overall, but if you make below a certain amount then the price drops. Keeps dropping based on how much you make. So much so that if you are homeless (as I used to be) with no income at all, you can have your furry friend treated at no charge. Hire someone who is exceptionally good at destroying competition and have them do absolutely everything in their power to obliterate any other vet clinics in the area. Absolutely fucking destroy them until they can no longer function because they simply do not have enough patients. Only those with no other option than to go to them because of travel distance. When they are utterly desperate and about to be foreclosed on, give them a generous payout as well as a hiring offer. Convert their location into another branch of my own with the same low income stipulations. No one deserves to be worried about their friend simply because they cannot afford it.
Step 8) Hire a bunch of Star Trek actors to come to Newfoundland for the biggest Trek convention ever, ideally by having the Star Trek cruise set off from there after a big blowout. Brings in a ton of tourism from nerds with disposable income and as we have some pretty exceptional views you don't get anywhere else, we can cross over the tourism WITH the Trek. Make a big festival saying it's a new planet or something. This is 100% just personal love but it can help the island too so why not?
Step 9) Invest in small-scale renewables and set up programs to help lower-income people lower their electricity costs (heating in my area is all electric so the prices are fucking absurd in winter). Have solar panels or whatever else hooked up with peoples homes and have the programs set to help mantain them at a minimal cost, ideally at least 30% lower than current electricity costs. That's about $400 a year saved.
Step 10) Make some deal with the provincial government to get the moose fences set up faster. It's a local thing.
Step 11) ALL REMAINING MONEY is to be invested in trains on the island. Absolutely none exist at the moment. We shut down the railway in Newfoundland in the 80s or 90s. First off, I'm autistic and love trains. Second, trains would make travel around this island insanely fucking easy. Requires more upkeep with the weather but as it stands the road system is awful, it takes too long to transport anything anywhere and we only have one bus route that crosses the island. It sucks and is a miserable experience. Set up a train hub at Port-Aux-Basques with spidering networks that go out to the various hotspots on the island.
Edit: Lmao the downvotes are hysterical

I honestly don't know.
My first thought was hiring PMCs/wet work specialists to take care of some particular people (but what if they get a counteroffer and they change their minds? Even the 5 billion might be nothing compared to what these people could offer and it's not like the people doing this kind of job have a moral compass and care about the great good on average, lol) and put some fear in their hearts. I guess if they don't fear God, they'll certainly fear for their lives (you can't be a hedonist if you're dead after all). But would that work? Would the ones remaining take care of spinning this in a way that brings the proles even closer to them? Trump and his team have been able to do it after all. But this is a necessary step to control public discourse and create enough fear that those at the top fear for their lives, act a little bit better and cannibalize each other at the top in the chaos.
The second step would require/involve making people fear God (believe you'll be judged for your actions by the Merciful, the Gracious after death so you work good deeds and avoid evil). I don't think that's possible, at least not for me. After all, every sort of moral teaching and parable has already been made and it's out there, for free. Maybe if they understood that Voltaire was right, and we'd have to invent God if He didn't exist FOR OUR OWN COLLECTIVE GOOD IN THIS WORLD, maybe that would be enough. But how? Voltaire was right, but I don't have to invent Him, I'd just have to remind people of Him enough (but I'd need a literate populace and that's a dying breed)... Maybe the PMCs should focus on big people in the media and spin but wouldn't someone else just fill their shoes? Anyway, in the end, I don't know, lol. I don't know how to make an impact in the world to make it better in the long term to such a magnitude, not with 5 billion. Maybe 500, and then I'd have some chats with the Chinese to take care of the PMCs before they get out of control or something (they get to showcase/try out their toys, the rest of the world gets rid of an actual/extremely possible danger of military dictatorship).

I'd be hesitant to use the money to do anything political in my country. Have watched Musk throw around money during the last presidential election in the states and it's not a good look.
So that leaves some kind of charity. Charities benefit from economies of scale so it would be better to give more money to a single charity than to split it up amongst many charities. Probably would have to start my own since I don't trust many of the existing ones (too much money going on executive pay). Pretty sure dysentery is the biggest killer worldwide so would put half into that, then maybe half into libraries in my country. Libraries are a bit of a selfish choice but they have a lot of social utility beyond just having books (by my own logic I should be putting it all into dysentery too).

Robots that sow kelp and kill zombie urchins

Free mental health care for those struggling the most plus housing subsidies for those struggling to stay off the street due to mental illness.

I guess I'd better hire someone to help educate me about fundraising, tax and other applicable laws, because establishing a (pre?)k-12 private school with above-standard education, three nutritiously sound meals/day, built-in well/sick/before/after school care, extracurricular activities and free clinic with it's own free pharmacy, both to be offered to low-income community that will last generations is going to be expensive. Plus I'd imagine a team of attorneys on retainer being necessary is foreseeable, if capitalism is still a thing.
- That's at most only 5-10% of 5 billion
  
  What? Land, surveys, taxes, permits, land-use studies, environmental impact studies, architects, engineers, living wage construction workers, materials, faculty, staff, doctors, pharmaciststs, care providers, business, health, property, other insurances, dieticians, meals, maintenance...I want these things funded for centuries. May as well include uniforms, so parents don't come out of pocket, lawyers, potential lawsuits...5 bn isn't going to last long.

I'd immediately invest most of it in stable, developed economies where the far-right doesn't seem close to taking power—so somewhere like Finland or Singapore—and invest the rest in Syria because God knows they need it. This way I'll have a permanent stream of change-the-world money that I can use to support pro-democracy and worker organization efforts in the third world and in countries such as Turkey where there are serious efforts to democratize. With whatever remains from that I'd then go around funding relief efforts in Africa and the like.