Open Philanthropy

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]

For the philanthropic doctrine, see Open philanthropy (doctrine).

Open Philanthropy
NicknameOpen Phil[1]
FormationJune 2017 (2017-06)
Founders
Location
Area served
Global
MethodsGrants, funding, research
Co-Chief Executive Officers
President
Cari Tuna
Websitewww.openphilanthropy.org
Formerly called
Open Philanthropy Project

History
Cari Tuna speaking at EA Global 2016 in her Fireside Chat about doing philanthropy better

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
Women and children receive anti-malarial bednets in Malawi. Nets were provided by the Against Malaria Foundation and distributed by local organizations.

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:

US policy

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]

Grants include:

  • $335,000 to the Full Employment Project at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities[1]
  • $100,000 to the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign[1]
  • $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]
  • $2.4 million to the Center for Election Science[27][28]

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]

Grants include:

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.[40] Research done by Open Philanthropy includes an investigation on the pros and cons of industrializing insect meat production[41] as well as an investigation of the economic viability of cultivated meat.[40]

References
  1. Matthews, Dylan (April 24, 2015). "You have $8 billion. You want to do as much good as possible. What do you do?". Vox. Archived from the original on August 24, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  2. "Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy - The Washington Post". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 25, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  3. Weissman, Lilach. "Silicon Valley Billionaire Dustin Moskovitz And Cari Tuna On the Reasoned Art Of Giving". Archived from the original on August 24, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  4. "Wringing the Most Good Out of a Facebook Fortune". The Chronicle of Philanthropy. December 1, 2015. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  5. Carpenter, Scott (October 19, 2021). "Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz builds a second fortune". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  6. "Who We Are". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved July 12, 2019.
  7. Moses, Sue-Lynn (August 20, 2014). "Here's What Philanthropy Looks Like When Millennials From Tech and Finance Get Together". Inside Philanthropy. Archived from the original on August 19, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
  8. "Grantmaking Approach". Good Ventures. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  9. "Largest foundations in Silicon Valley". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Archived from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
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  24. "The big Yimby money behind housing deregulation bills - 48 hills". May 27, 2021. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
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  27. "The Center for Election Science — General Support". Good Ventures. Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved December 10, 2022.
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  35. "Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
  36. "Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
  37. "Will splashy philanthropy cause the biosecurity field to focus on the wrong risks?". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. April 25, 2019. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
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  40. "Is Lab Meat About to Hit Your Dinner Plate? – Mother Jones". Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
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