Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of
effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between
GiveWell and
Good Ventures. Its current chief executive officer is Alexander Berger, and its main funders are
Cari Tuna and
Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin says that their wealth, worth $11 billion, is "pooled up around us right now, but it belongs to the world. We intend not to have much when we die."[2][3]
History
Dustin Moskovitz made an $11 billion fortune through co-founding
Facebook, and later
Asana.[2] He and his wife
Cari Tuna were inspired by
Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save, and became the youngest couple to sign Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s
Giving Pledge, promising to give away most of their money.[4][5] Tuna quit her journalist job at The Wall Street Journal[5] to do philanthropy full-time,[4] and the couple started the
Good Ventures foundation in 2011. Good Ventures partnered with
GiveWell, a charity evaluator founded by
Holden Karnofsky and
Elie Hassenfeld.[1] The partnership named itself the "Open Philanthropy Project" in 2014, and began operating independently in 2017.[6][7] Good Ventures holds the funds and distributes them according to recommendations by Open Philanthropy.[8] It is the fifth largest foundation in Silicon Valley.[9]
Operations
Open Philanthropy's grantmaking is based on the methodology of
effective altruism.[3][1][10] The organization does not have a mission centered around a cause area. Rather, it does "substantial empirical research"[1] before funding projects that "deliver the greatest social benefits as efficiently as possible".[11] Open Philanthropy recommended more than $600 million in grants in 2022.[12] The organization has published a spreadsheet ranking US policy issues by how effectively money might be able to have an impact on their website.[10] They calculate impact using
disability-adjusted life years.[1] Moskovitz and Tuna hope that by being open about their work, they can "help others become better philanthropists".[11] They consider their work "high-risk philanthropy", and expect "that most of our work will fail to have an impact".[11] Open Philanthropy can also "fund longer timelines than government or industry".[13] Notable people that Open Philanthropy has consulted with include
Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence under US President
Joe Biden,[14] and political scientist Steven Teles.[1] Other funders who have contributed to Open Philanthropy include
Instagram co-founder
Mike Krieger, who pledged $750,000.[1]
Focus areas
Open Philanthropy has four categories of focus areas: global health and development, US policy, global catastrophic risks, and science.[2][3][1][15] The organization also invests in animal welfare.[16]
Global health and development
Open Philanthropy's investments in
global health and
development include efforts to cure iodine deficiencies, repair the environment,[3] and prevent malaria.[17][18] Of their global health and development giving, Tuna said, “I am still optimistic that we can do better than just giving money to poor people, but in the meantime, we’re doing a lot of just giving money to poor people.”[1] In 2021, GiveWell decided to defer $110 million out of its $300 million annual grant from Open Philanthropy, including money allocated to GiveDirectly, which gives money to poor people, to be spent in future years.[19][20] This was done because GiveWell expects that "they'll be able to spend all of the money in a way that's at least five times as effective as giving money directly to the world's poorest people".[19]
Grants include:
$17.5 million to
Target Malaria, for gene-drive technology to control malaria-carrying mosquitoes[16]
Over $47 million to
GiveDirectly,[11] partially for research to compare the effectiveness of giving money with more traditional developmental aid,[10] and including at least $16 million to be given directly to extremely poor people in Kenya and Uganda[21]
Open Philanthropy ranks US policy issues based on how effectively they predict their funding might be able to move the issue forward.[1][10] Past issues have included
criminal justice reform and
macroeconomic stabilization policy.[10] For criminal justice reform, the organization calculates that "a year in prison is half as good as one on the outside"[1] and notes that "the United States incarcerates a larger percentage than almost any other country in the world at great fiscal cost and it has highest rate of criminal homicides in the developed world".[2] For macroeconomic stabilization policy, the organization expects that the value of preventing recessions will be so many times higher than the cost of effective advocacy work that it is willing to invest in it despite success being "highly uncertain".[1] Open Philanthropy has also made grants to help advance marriage equality.[17][18]
$6.3 million to the Accountable Justice Action Fund[22]
$50 million to Just Impact Advisors, to advise philanthropists and make grants related to criminal justice[23]
$3 million to the
Pew Charitable Trusts' Public Safety Performance Project, to “reduce incarceration and correctional spending while maintaining or improving public safety and concentrating prison beds on high level offenders" at the state level[1]
$500,000 to California
YIMBY.[24][25] Open Philanthropy was the first institutional funder of the YIMBY movement;[26] however, the movement has garnered individual financial support from many tech executives.[24]
Moskovitz and Tuna have also given tens of millions of dollars to political campaigns and parties as individuals.[29][30][31][32][15] Of this giving, Dustin states, "This decision was not easy, particularly because we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections. That said, we believe in trying to do as much good as we can, which in this case means using the tools available to us (as they are also available to the opposition)."[15]
Global catastrophic risks
Under their
longtermism portfolio, Open Philanthropy supports organizations aimed at tackling
global catastrophic risks.[33][34] This category includes over $200 million given for
biosecurity and pandemic preparedness,[35] and over $300 million for
potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.[36] Open Philanthropy has also invested in mitigating asteroid collision risk.[3] The organization has been criticized for its narrow focus on risks that might "kill enough people to threaten civilization as we know it".[1] Some have claimed that by "flooding" money into biosecurity, Open Philanthropy is "absorbing much of the field’s experienced research capacity, focusing the attention of experts on this narrow, extremely unlikely, aspect of biosecurity risk".[37]
$11.3 million to the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design to develop a universal flu vaccine[39][13][38]
About $23 million for the purchase of
Wytham Abbey as a conference venue for Effective Altruism-related meetings[40][41]
Science
Open Philanthropy named eleven areas in science "that it considers neglected by other funders", "including
tuberculosis,
chronic pain and
obesity".[16] Grants within the science bucket include the areas of human
health and
wellbeing,
scientific innovation, science supporting biosecurity and pandemic preparedness,
transformative basic science, and other scientific research areas. Funding for science was $40 million in 2017, with the intention of increasing "several times over the coming years".[16] The money was given to four teams of scientists whose proposals had been rejected by the
National Institutes of Health.[16] Grants include $6.4 million to Stephen Johnston and his team at Arizona State University to test a cancer vaccine for middle-aged pet dogs.[16]
Animal welfare
Holden Karnofsky has claimed that Open Philanthropy "is the largest funder in the world of farm animal welfare", including investing in alternative proteins and animal welfare advocacy.[26] Open Philanthropy made an investment in
Impossible Foods in 2016, to support the development of non-animal meats.[16] It is also a patron of
The Good Food Institute.[42] Research done by Open Philanthropy includes an investigation on the pros and cons of industrializing insect meat production[43] as well as an investigation of the economic viability of
cultivated meat.[42]
^Meyer, Theodoric; Thompson, Alex (January 4, 2021).
"Inside Blinken's corporate work". POLITICO.
Archived from the original on September 10, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.