The practice of charity is the voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act, unmotivated by self-interest. There are a number of philosophies about charity, often associated with religion.
GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the organization's budget that is spent on overhead.
Dustin Aaron Moskovitz is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found Asana with Justin Rosenstein. In March 2011, Forbes reported Moskovitz to be the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, on the basis of his 2.34% share in Facebook. As of November 2022, his net worth is estimated at US$11.3 billion.
The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty is a 2009 book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, in which the author argues that citizens of affluent nations are behaving immorally if they do not act to end the poverty they know to exist in developing nations.
Asana is a web and mobile "work management" platform designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. It is produced by the San Francisco-based company of the same name. The company was founded in 2008 by Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein. The product launched commercially in April 2012. In September 2020, the company was valued at $5.5 billion following its direct listing.
Justin Michael Rosenstein is an American software programmer and entrepreneur. He co-founded the collaboration software company Asana in 2008.
Holden Karnofsky is an American nonprofit executive. He is a co-founder and co-chief executive officer of the research and grantmaking organization Open Philanthropy. Karnofsky co-founded the charity evaluator GiveWell with Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 and is vice chair of its board of directors.
GiveDirectly is a nonprofit organization operating in East Africa that helps families living in extreme poverty by making unconditional cash transfers to them via mobile phone. GiveDirectly transfers funds primarily to people in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda.
Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, called effective altruists, often choose careers based on the amount of good that the career achieves while donating to charities based on maximising impact. The movement developed during the 2000s, and the name effective altruism was coined in 2011. Prominent philosophers influential to the movement include Peter Singer, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill. Several books and many articles about the movement have since been published, and the Effective Altruism Global conference has been held since 2013. As of 2022, several billion dollars have been committed to effective altruist causes.
80,000 Hours is a London-based nonprofit organisation that conducts research on which careers have the largest positive social impact and provides career advice based on that research. It provides this advice on their website and podcast, and through one-on-one advice sessions. The organisation is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, affiliated with the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. The organisation's name refers to the typical amount of time someone spends working over a lifetime.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) is a donor-advised community foundation serving the Silicon Valley region. It is the largest charitable foundation in Silicon Valley.
Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen is an American philanthropist, educator and author.
Vicarious was an artificial intelligence company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. They use the theorized computational principles of the brain to attempt to build software that can think and learn like a human. Vicarious describes its technology as "a turnkey robotics solution integrator using artificial intelligence to automate tasks too complex and versatile for traditional automations". Alphabet Inc acquired the company in 2022 for an undisclosed amount.
GivingTuesday, often stylized as #GivingTuesday for the purposes of hashtag activism, is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It is touted as a "global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world". The organization of the same name is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit that supports the global movement.
ImmigrationWorks USA was a national 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization in the United States that advocated for freer movement of workers, representing the interests of businesses who would like to be able to hire migrant workers more freely. It linked 25 state-based coalitions of businesses. The organization also had a sister foundation, ImmigrationWorks Foundation, that was a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Founders Pledge is a London-based charitable initiative, where entrepreneurs make a commitment to donate a portion of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business. Inspired by effective altruism, the mission of Founders Pledge is to "empower entrepreneurs to do immense good".
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 co-chief executive officers are Holden Karnofsky and 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."
Cari Tuna is an American nonprofit businessperson. Formerly a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she co-founded and works for the organizations Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures.
ICONIQ Capital is an American wealth management and investment firm based in San Francisco, California. It functions as a family office that provides wealth management services to high net worth clients such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Weiner. The firm also is involved in investments related to Private Equity and Venture Capital.
