Open Philanthropy

Last updated

Open Philanthropy
FormationJune 2017;6 years ago (2017-06)
Founders
Location
Area served
Global
MethodsGrants, funding, research
Chief Executive Officer
Alexander Berger
President
Cari Tuna
Website www.openphilanthropy.org
Formerly called
Open Philanthropy Project

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." [1] [2]

Contents

History

Cari Tuna speaking at EA Global 2016 in her Fireside Chat about doing philanthropy better Cari Tuna speaking at EA Global 2016.png
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. [1] 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. [3] [4] Tuna quit her journalist job at The Wall Street Journal [4] to do philanthropy full-time, [3] 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. [5] 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 principles of effective altruism. [2] [5] [10] The organization makes grants across a variety of focus areas, with the goal of “help[ing] others as much as [it] can”. [11] They calculate impact for some programs using back-of-the-envelope calculations, and decide which opportunities to fund using a “bar” for cost-effectiveness. At the same time, they consider their work "high-risk philanthropy", and expect "that most of [their] work will fail to have an impact". [12] In 2023, Open Philanthropy recommended more than 750 million in grants. [13]

Focus areas

Open Philanthropy has four categories of focus areas: global health and development, US policy, global catastrophic risks, and science. [1] [2] [5] [14] The organization also invests in animal welfare. [15]

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. Women and children receive anti-malarial nets in Malawi.jpg
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, [2] and prevent malaria. [16] [17] 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.” [5] 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. [18] [19] 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". [18]

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. [5] [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" [5] 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". [1] 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". [5] Open Philanthropy has also made grants to help advance marriage equality. [16] [17]

Grants include:

Moskovitz and Tuna have also given tens of millions of dollars to political campaigns and parties as individuals. [28] [29] [30] [31] [14] 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)." [14]

Global catastrophic risks

Under their longtermism portfolio, Open Philanthropy supports organizations aimed at tackling global catastrophic risks. [32] [33] This category includes over $200 million given for biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, [34] and over $300 million for potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence. [35] Open Philanthropy has also invested in mitigating asteroid collision risk. [2] The organization has been criticized for its narrow focus on risks that might "kill enough people to threaten civilization as we know it". [5] 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". [36]

Grants include:

Science

Open Philanthropy named eleven areas in science "that it considers neglected by other funders", "including tuberculosis, chronic pain and obesity". [15] 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". [15] The money was given to four teams of scientists whose proposals had been rejected by the National Institutes of Health. [15] 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. [15]

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. [25] Open Philanthropy made an investment in Impossible Foods in 2016, to support the development of non-animal meats. [15] 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]

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References

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  3. 1 2 "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.
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  6. ↑ "Who We Are". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved July 12, 2019.
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  11. ↑ "About us". Open Philanthropy. 2023. Retrieved April 24, 2024.
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  13. ↑ "Our Progress in 2023 and Plans For 2024". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved April 24, 2024.
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  30. ↑ Goldmacher, Shane (April 20, 2021). "Dozen Megadonors Gave $3.4 Billion, One in Every 13 Dollars, Since 2009". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  31. ↑ Confessore, Nicholas (September 10, 2016). "Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook Co-Founder, Pledges $20 Million to Aid Democrats - The New York Times". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 29, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  32. ↑ "Longtermism - Open Philanthropy". Open Philanthropy . June 30, 2021. Retrieved September 15, 2022.
  33. ↑ MacAskill, William (August 5, 2022). "Opinion | The Case for Longtermism". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved September 15, 2022.
  34. ↑ "Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
  35. ↑ "Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
  36. ↑ "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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  39. ↑ Murray, Sarah (May 22, 2020). "Philanthropists play a crucial role in developing vaccines". Financial Times. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  40. ↑ Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (August 8, 2022). "The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism". The New Yorker . Retrieved November 29, 2023.
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