Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security donations received

This is an online portal with information on donations that were announced publicly (or have been shared with permission) that were of interest to Vipul Naik. The git repository with the code for this portal, as well as all the underlying data, is available on GitHub. All payment amounts are in current United States dollars (USD). The repository of donations is being seeded with an initial collation by Issa Rice as well as continued contributions from him (see his commits and the contract work page listing all financially compensated contributions to the site) but all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies belongs to Vipul Naik. Current data is preliminary and has not been completely vetted and normalized; if sharing a link to this site or any page on this site, please include the caveat that the data is preliminary (if you want to share without including caveats, please check with Vipul Naik). We expect to have completed the first round of development by the end of July 2024. See the about page for more details. Also of interest: pageview data on analytics.vipulnaik.com, tutorial in README, request for feedback to EA Forum.

Table of contents

Basic donee information

ItemValue
Country

Donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 4 1,200,000 1,786,157 44,627 44,627 44,627 1,200,000 1,200,000 1,200,000 2,400,000 2,400,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000
Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness 4 1,200,000 1,786,157 44,627 44,627 44,627 1,200,000 1,200,000 1,200,000 2,400,000 2,400,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000

Donation amounts by donor and year for donee Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security

Donor Total 2020 2018 2017
Open Philanthropy (filter this donee) 7,144,627.00 3,600,000.00 44,627.00 3,500,000.00
Total 7,144,627.00 3,600,000.00 44,627.00 3,500,000.00

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (0 documents)

There are no documents associated with this donee.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (4 donations)

Graph of top 10 donors (for donations with known year of donation) by amount, showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
DonorAmount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 4)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Open Philanthropy2,400,000.0022020-03Biosecurity and pandemic preparednesshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-march-2020Andrew Snyder-Beattie Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grant "to provide general support and to support GHSS project activities on deliberate events and global health security."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant is an "exit grant" intended to provide approximately two years of operating support. It follows a February 2020 grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-2020 and is probably intendd to give the grantee enough time to find other sources of support.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant page says that the grant "will provide GHSS with approximately two years of operating support." This is probably considered a reasonable amount of time for the grantee to find alternativ sources of support.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Reasons for timing are unclear; it seems that the timing is determined by Open Phil's decision to stop supporting GHSS long-term. The decision seems relatively sudden, considering the February 2020 operating support grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-2020 just one month before this exit grant.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: This grant is an exit grant, which means that Open Phil plans to make no further grants to GHSS.

Other notes: This exit grant comes at around the time that the COVID-19 pandemic is beginning to be recognized, and Open Phil is doubling down on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness spending related to COVID-19. The relationship of this exit to COVID-19, if any, is unclear. Announced: 2020-04-27.
Open Philanthropy1,200,000.0032020-02Biosecurity and pandemic preparednesshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-2020Andrew Snyder-Beattie Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: The intended uses are not described explicitly, but the previous three-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support that this renews had a list of intended uses, and this renewal likely has similar intended uses.

Donor retrospective of the donation: Just one month later, in March 2020, Open Phil would make an exit grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-march-2020 to the grantee, covering two years of operating support. This suggests a change of some sort within the interim one-month period in Open Phil's evaluation of GHSS.

Other notes: Intended funding timeframe in months: 12; announced: 2020-03-09.
Open Philanthropy44,627.0042018-02Biosecurity and pandemic preparednesshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-2018Jaime Yassif Donation process: Discretionary grant

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to collect data about Libya’s pandemic preparedness capacity and also to establish a model process that can be applied in other countries in the region where it is difficult to obtain data due to political instability or ongoing conflict."

Other notes: Announced: 2018-03-14.
Open Philanthropy3,500,000.0012017-03Biosecurity and pandemic preparednesshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-- Donation process: The grant page says: "To investigate this grant, we had several phone conversations with GHSS leadership and reviewed materials they shared, including project proposals, budgets, and information about the track record of core staff."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grantee plans to spend the majority of the grant funding on three main activities: (1) "Improving the capacity of the international community to respond to biological attacks." (2) "Researching international best practices for building laboratory capacity within national-level biosurveillance systems." (3) "Conducting a review and financial audit of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), an international effort that is organizing hundreds of millions of dollars in donor funding to build capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks." Also: "GHSS plans to use most of the remaining funds on one or more additional projects that will be chosen in consultation with the Open Philanthropy Project; some to research new project ideas; and a small amount to cover minor infrastructure improvements."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Reasons for the grant include: (1) Main activities listed are in line with Open Phil priorities for biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. (2) "The co-leaders of GHSS, Rebecca Katz and Julie Fischer, are internationally recognized experts on the World Health Organization (WHO) International Health Regulations and global health security capacity building." (3) "This grant will free up GHSS staff time to do research on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness issues that are important to us" (by moving away from project-specific contracts with the United States government). (4) "Support for GHSS will help to build capacity for biosecurity and pandemic preparedness analysis and advocacy outside of government". (5) "Few other centers research similar topics".

Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup grants https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-2018 (2018) and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity-and-pandemic-preparedness/georgetown-center-global-health-science-and-security-general-support-2020 (2020) suggest that Open Phil would continue to have a positive impression of the grantee.

Other notes: Intended funding timeframe in months: 36; announced: 2017-03-24.