International Refugee Assistance Project 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 United States
Facebook page RefugeeAssist
Websitehttps://refugeerights.org/
Donate pagehttps://refugeerights.org/donate/
Twitter usernameRefugeeAssist
Open Philanthropy Project grant reviewhttp://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support
Key peopleBecca Heller
Launch date2008

Donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 8 75,000 356,488 0 0 100 1,800 75,000 75,000 75,000 700,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,000,000
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Refugee assistance 1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Global health and development 1 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800 1,800
FIXME 1 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000 75,000
Migration policy 4 700,000 693,750 75,000 75,000 75,000 700,000 700,000 700,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,000,000

Donation amounts by donor and year for donee International Refugee Assistance Project

Donor Total 2021 2020 2019 2017 2016
Open Philanthropy (filter this donee) 2,775,000.00 0.00 1,000,000.00 1,075,000.00 0.00 700,000.00
Unbound Philanthropy (filter this donee) 75,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 75,000.00 0.00
Jacob Steinhardt (filter this donee) 1,800.00 1,800.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Elizabeth Van Nostrand (filter this donee) 100.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 0.00
Isabel Arjmand (filter this donee) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 2,851,900.00 1,800.00 1,000,000.00 1,075,000.00 75,100.00 700,000.00

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (6 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Understanding Open Philanthropy’s work on migration policy2021-11-19Vipul Naik Open Borders: The CaseOpen Philanthropy Labor Mobility Partnerships Center for Global Development Protect the People Niskanen Center Federation for American Scientists Mercy Corps International Refugee Assistance Project Third-party coverage of donor strategyMigration policyIn a similar vein as past blog posts https://openborders.info/blog/overview-of-the-open-philanthropy-projects-work-on-migration-liberalisation/ and https://openborders.info/blog/update-open-philanthropy-projects-work-migration-liberalisation/ on the site, the post reviews Open Philanthropy's grantmaking in the migration policy space. It discusses evidence and possible reasons for Open Philanthropy reducing its grantmaking in the area. See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mhp8pofioZpoW6k34/understanding-open-philanthropy-s-evolution-on-migration (GW, IR) for a cross-post to the EA Forum.
Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Staff - 20192019-12-18Holden Karnofsky Open PhilanthropyChloe Cockburn Jesse Rothman Michelle Crentsil Amanda Hungerfold Lewis Bollard Persis Eskander Alexander Berger Chris Somerville Heather Youngs Claire Zabel National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls Life Comes From It Worth Rises Wild Animal Initiative Sinergia Animal Center for Global Development International Refugee Assistance Project California YIMBY Engineers Without Borders 80,000 Hours Centre for Effective Altruism Future of Humanity Institute Global Priorities Institute Machine Intelligence Research Institute Ought Donation suggestion listCriminal justice reform|Animal welfare|Global health and development|Migration policy|Effective altruism|AI safetyContinuing an annual tradition started in 2015, Open Philanthropy Project staff share suggestions for places that people interested in specific cause areas may consider donating. The sections are roughly based on the focus areas used by Open Phil internally, with the contributors to each section being the Open Phil staff who work in that focus area. Each recommendation includes a "Why we recommend it" or "Why we suggest it" section, and with the exception of the criminal justice reform recommendations, each recommendation includes a "Why we haven't fully funded it" section. Section 5, Assorted recomendations by Claire Zabel, includes a list of "Organizations supported by our Committed for Effective Altruism Support" which includes a list of organizations that are wiithin the purview of the Committee for Effective Altruism Support. The section is approved by the committee and represents their views.
Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Project Staff - 20182018-12-20Holden Karnofsky Open PhilanthropyChloe Cockburn Lewis Bollard Amanda Hungerford Alexander Berger Luke Muelhhauser National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls Texas Organizing Project Effective Altruism Funds The Humane League Center for Global Development International Refugee Assistance Project Donor lottery Donation suggestion listCriminal justice reform|Animal welfare|Global health and development|Migration policy|Effective altruismOpen Philanthropy Project staff give suggestions on places that might be good for individuals to donate to. Each suggestion includes a section "Why I suggest it", a section explaining why the Open Philanthropy Project has not funded (or not fully funded) the opportunity, and links to relevant writeups. The post continues a tradition of similar posts published once a year.
Staff members’ personal donations for giving season 20182018-12-10Catherine Hollander GiveWellElie Hassenfeld Natalie Crispin Josh Rosenberg Devin Jacob Catherine Hollander Andrew Martin Christian Smith Isabel Arjmand James Snowden Dan Brown Olivia Larsen Amar Radia GiveWell top charities Donor lottery GiveDirectly International Refugee Assistance Project RAICES National Immigration Law Center CALmatters Center for Investigative Reporting ProPublica Malaria Consortium Against Malaria Foundation StrongMinds Planned Parenthood Action Fund Cool Earth Causa Justa::Just Cause Initiate Justice Sorea Te Land Trust No Means No Worldwide Stonewall (UK) Afrinspire Effective Altruism Funds Periodic donation list documentationGiveWell staff members describe where they are donating in 2018. The majority are donating most of their money to GiveWell top charities (i.e., to GiveWell for discretionary regranting). A few explicitly donate to Malaria Consortium, Against Malaria Foundation, and GiveDirectly. Many staff members announce intent to donate a small fraction of their donation budget for animal welfare charities, but explicit names of animal welfare charities are not included. A number of donors mention donating small amounts to charities focused on justice-related themes and local causes. Not all employees are present in the document (participation is optional). Amounts donated are not included, per a decision by GiveWell
[GUEST POST] The International Refugee Assistance Project2017-02-02Elizabeth Van Nostrand Slate Star CodexElizabeth Van Nostrand International Refugee Assistance Project Single donation documentationMigration policy/refugee assistanceDiscusses 100 dollar donation to International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) in light of the executive order by Donald Trump on 2017-01-27 banning entry of people from 7 countries. Highlights value of strong existing capacity in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that allowed for a quick response, and help from the IRAP in doing so. ACLU is well-funded, but IRAP has just gotten off the ground with a grant from the Open Philanthropy Project, so donating to that
Staff members’ personal donations for giving season 20162016-12-09Natalie Crispin GiveWellElie Hassenfeld Holden Karnofsky Natalie Crispin Alexander Berger Timothy Telleen-Lawton Josh Rosenberg Rebecca Raible Helen Toner Sophie Monahan Laura Muñoz Catherine Hollander Andrew Martin Lewis Bollard Chelsea Tabart Sarah Ward Chris Somerville Ajeya Cotra Chris Smith Isabel Arjmand A political campaign GiveWell top charities International Genetically Engineered Machine Foundation UPMC Center for Health Security Donor lottery EA Giving Group GiveDirectly Center for Applied Rationality Malaria Consortium Animal Charity Evaluators Northwest Health Law Advocates StrongMinds Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative The Humane Society of the United States The Humane League Mercy For Animals Humane Society International Compassion in World Farming USA The Good Food Institute Citizens for Farm Animal Protection The END Fund Causa Justa Planned Parenthood International Refugee Assistance Project Periodic donation list documentationGiveWell and Open Philanthropy Project staff describe their annual donation plans for 2016. Some of these are tentative and get superseded by further events. Also, not all employees are present in the document (participation is optional). Amounts donated are not included, per a decision by GiveWell

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (8 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 8)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Jacob Steinhardt1,800.0062021-06-23Global health and developmenthttps://bounded-regret.ghost.io/donations-19-20/-- Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The donation post says: "I felt that IRAP was plausibly in the same ballpark as global health interventions in terms of impact, since they focus on immigration reform, whose beneficiaries are primarily in other countries. This is a neglected policy area within the U.S., and policy can be a strong philanthropic lever in areas that are not entrenched along partisan lines. A secondary benefit is that better immigration policy could help recruit more talented researchers to the U.S., which could help in other areas such as AI."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The reason for the relatively small allocation to IRAP is explained in the donation post as follows: "I am less confident that these donations maximize impact compared to the ones above, although I do feel that IRAP is a very good organization. The main reason these wouldn't maximize impact is that they are U.S.-centric, while most of the strongest philanthropic opportunities lie abroad." It also includes context on the total amount ($45,000): "Each year I aim to donate around 10% of my income. [...] The impact of COVID-19 on poor countries made me better appreciate how much better I have it than most of the world, so I tried to donate closer to 20% of my 2020 income, and that will be my goal moving forward as well. Between 2019 and 2020, this came out to $45,000 in total."
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.00%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The donation post says: "Each year I aim to donate around 10% of my income. In 2019, I fell behind on this, probably due to the chaos of COVID-19 (but really this was just an embarassing logistical failure on my part). I've recently, finally, finished processing donations for 2019 and 2020."
Open Philanthropy1,000,000.0012020-11Migration policy/refugee migrationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2020Alexander Berger Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page links to the grant page for the first grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support (2016-05) for the rationale for supporting the grantee.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): No explicit reason is given for the amount, but both the amount and the timeframe match the previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2019 (2019-01).

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant is made right around the end of the timeframe of the previous two-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2019 (2019-01).
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24
Open Philanthropy75,000.0042019-05Migration policy/refugee migration/family reunificationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-family-reunificationAlexander Berger Donation process: Discretionary grant

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support a family reunification pilot project. IRAP intends to try to reunite approximately 125 refugee children with their families."
Open Philanthropy1,000,000.0012019-01Migration policy/refugee migrationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2019Alexander Berger Donation process: Between the previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support (2016-05) and this grant, Open Philanthropy had four conversations with Becca Heller, director of the grantee organization: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_05-09-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-05-09), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_07-06-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-07-06), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_10-05-17_%28public%29.pdf (2017-10-05), and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_03-15-18_%28public%29.pdf (2018-03-15).

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grant "for general support. IRAP plans to expand its work to Europe, focusing on family reunification, asylum, and humanitarian visas."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "In the past, our immigration policy work has not focused much on refugee resettlement, which we had assumed would be more crowded than other aspects of immigration policy with funders aimed at supporting increased opportunities for people to move to the U.S. for humanitarian reasons. While we continue to believe that is directionally correct, our increased interest in supporting advocacy around refugee resettlement is partially based on learning more about the fairly limited foundation funding for advocacy around refugee resettlement."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): No explicit reasons for the amount are given; the amount is slightly larger than the previous two-year grant of $700,000.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant is made a few months after the end of the timeframe for the previous two-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support (2016-05).
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24

Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2020 (2020-11) suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: Announced: 2019-03-29.
Unbound Philanthropy75,000.0042017-12-05FIXMEhttps://www.unboundphilanthropy.org/who-we-fund-- FIXME. Affected regions: FIXME; affected countries: United States.
Elizabeth Van Nostrand100.0072017-02-02Refugee assistance/capacity building/fighting executive excesshttp://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/02/guest-post-the-international-refugee-assistance-program/-- Cites need to have capacity to fight back against excesses of Donald Trump.
Isabel Arjmand----2016-12-09--https://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/09/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2016/-- One of a few organizations supported with the 1/3 of the charitable donation budget reserved for donations outside of GiveWell recommendations.
Open Philanthropy700,000.0032016-05Migration policy/refugee migrationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-supportAlexander Berger Donation process: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support#Our_process says: "After meeting with Becca Heller, we investigated IRAP’s track record by talking to one of their funders, several other organizations that work with them on refugee issues, and by reviewing documents about their historical role in increasing the number of SIVs. We then requested a proposal for how IRAP would use additional funds for advocacy and decided to contribute unrestricted funds instead." The proposal is at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/IRAP/International_Refugee_Assistance_Project_Proposal_Open_Philanthropy_2016.pdf

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support#Proposed_activities says: "IRAP plans to hire two new policy staff and one communications person. Focus areas for the policy hires will likely include: (1) Expanding its advocacy for eligible refugees to receive Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) (2) Creating new resettlement processes and pipelines to ensure that existing visas are effectively distributed [...] (3) Advocating for private refugee resettlement. IRAP does not plan to focus on advocating for higher refugee resettlement commitments from the United States [...]. Instead, IRAP believes its comparative advantage lies in identifying and fixing visa and refugee admission processes that might otherwise prevent current resettlement targets from being met." https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/IRAP/International_Refugee_Assistance_Project_Proposal_Open_Philanthropy_2016.pdf has more details.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support#Case_for_the_grant cites IRAP's "fairly strong track record of getting more refugees admitted and resettled with fairly limited staff capacity." It attributes a causal role to IRAP in "expanding access to SIVs for tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who worked with the U.S. military (and their families). These visas do not count against the U.S.’s annual cap on refugee admissions." It mentions being impressed with IRAP's impact in the policy sphere, and in particular with its director Becca Heller; this grant is partly a bet on her.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The funding proposal https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/IRAP/International_Refugee_Assistance_Project_Proposal_Open_Philanthropy_2016.pdf includes a request for $267,250; however, the amount actually granted is substantially higher ($700,000).

Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup conversations with Becca Heller, director of grantee organization at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_05-09-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-05-09), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_07-06-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-07-06), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_10-05-17_%28public%29.pdf (2017-10-05), and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Becca_Heller_03-15-18_%28public%29.pdf (2018-03-15). The followup grants https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2018 (2019-01) and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2020 (2020-11) suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: Intended funding timeframe in months: 24; affected countries: United States; announced: 2016-06-16.