Does anyone know whether the essay is also published somewhere else (preferably without a pay-wall)? I have a NYT subscription but apparently some friends of mine can’t access it.

Not sure if you are aware of this or simply consider this to be fundamentally different from your approach, but there are some companies out there who are majority-owned by charitable foundations. An example is Robert Bosch GmbH (one of the largest industrial companies in Germany). Most (if not all) of the profits go to the Robert Bosch Foundation which spends them on charitable causes (not EA-aligned though). See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_Stiftung

Hope this helps to assess the viability of your approach & learn from existing solutions. There are more companies like this out there, let me know if you want me to point you to them.