JustLeadershipUSA 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 7 300,000 777,143 40,000 40,000 50,000 100,000 100,000 300,000 650,000 650,000 900,000 3,400,000 3,400,000
Criminal justice reform 6 100,000 856,667 40,000 40,000 50,000 50,000 100,000 100,000 650,000 900,000 900,000 3,400,000 3,400,000
FIXME 1 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000

Donation amounts by donor and year for donee JustLeadershipUSA

Donor Total 2017 2016 2015 2014
Open Philanthropy (filter this donee) 4,440,000.00 100,000.00 3,440,000.00 900,000.00 0.00
Google.org (filter this donee) 650,000.00 0.00 650,000.00 0.00 0.00
MacArthur Foundation (filter this donee) 300,000.00 0.00 300,000.00 0.00 0.00
Public Welfare Foundation (filter this donee) 50,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 50,000.00
Total 5,440,000.00 100,000.00 4,390,000.00 900,000.00 50,000.00

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (2 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
GiveWell’s Top Charities Are (Increasingly) Hard to Beat2019-07-09Alexander Berger Open PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy GiveDirectly Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Target Malaria JustLeadershipUSA GiveWell Broad donor strategyGlobal health and development|Criminal justice reform|Scientific researchIn the blog post, Alexander Berger discusses how, originally, Open Philanthropy Project donations for near-term human well-being (primarily in the areas of criminal justice reform and scientific research) are compared against a cost-effectiveness benchmark of direct cash transfers, which is set as 100x (every $1 donated should yield $100 in benefits). However, since GiveWell has recently made its cost-effectiveness calculations for top charities more thorough, and now estimates that top charities are 5-15x as cost-effective as cash (or 500-1500x, with 1000x as a median), Berger is now comparing all the existing near-term human well-being grants against the 1000x benchmarks. He finds that, using the back-of-the-envelope calculations (BOTECs) done at the time of justifying the grants, many of the criminal justice reform grants do not clear the bar; in total only $32 million of the grants clears the bar, and about half of it is a single grant to Target Malaria. Berger links to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GsE2_TNWn0x6MWL1PTdkZT2vQNFW8VFBslC5qjk4sgo/edit?ts=5cc10604 for some sample BOTECs.
Disrupting Bail: An Innovative Criminal Justice Reform Idea Gains Momentum—And Funders2018-05-22Philip Rojc Inside PhilanthropySandler Foundation Laura and John Arnold Foundation Heising-Simons Foundation Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Pershing Square Foundation Ford Foundation MacArthur Foundation Open Society Foundations Bail Project Bronx Freedom Fund Measures for Justice Civil Rights Corps Misdemeanor Justice Project JustLeadershipUSA Families Against Mandatory Minimums Review of current state of cause areaCriminal justice reform/bail reformThe article discusses the premise behind bail reform in the context of the United States criminal justice system: people temporarily put in prison often cannot get bail because they lack the funds needed to post as bond. By providing them these funds, they have to spend less time in local jails, and are also in a better position to get legal representation and turn down unfavorable plea deals

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (7 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 7)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Open Philanthropy100,000.0052017-05Criminal justice reformhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/justleadershipusa-close-rikers-campaign-summer-canvassingChloe Cockburn Discretionary grant to support advocacy campaign to close the Rikers Island Prison Compex in New York City. Continuation of grants https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/justleadershipusa-close-rikers-campaign and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/justleadershipusa-close-rikers-campaign-2016. Affected countries: United States; affected states: New York; affected cities: New York City; announced: 2018-01-19.
Open Philanthropy3,400,000.0012016-12Criminal justice reform/jail-closing campaignhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/justleadershipusa-close-rikers-campaign-2016Chloe Cockburn Grant renews a previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/justleadershipusa-close-rikers-campaign supporting a campaign to close Rikers Island. Detailed writeup on previous grant page. Affected countries: United States; affected states: New York; affected cities: New York City; announced: 2017-09-01.
Open Philanthropy40,000.0072016-07Criminal justice reformhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/justleadershipusa-general-supportChloe Cockburn Grant for general support, and part of suport for the campaign to close the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City. Grant by the Open Philanthropy Action Fund. As explained at https://groups.google.com/a/openphilanthropy.org/forum/#!topic/newly.published/F-AE_gVn6Zg the grant announcement was delayed till the Open Philanthropy Project was completely separate from GiveWell. Affected countries: United States; affected states: New York; affected cities: New York City; announced: 2017-12-28.
Google.org650,000.0032016Criminal justice reform/United Stateshttps://www.google.org/our-work/inclusion/-- Grant to transform the field of criminal justice reform by training a growing national network of formerly incarcerated leaders from across the country to lead reform efforts at the local, state, and national level, and provide fellows with devices to encourage connection and post-curriculum learning. Affected countries: United States.
MacArthur Foundation300,000.0042016FIXMEhttps://www.macfound.org/grants/-- in support of the participation of individuals directly impacted by the criminal justice system as reform partners in the Safety and Justice Challenge. Affected countries: United States; affected states: New York; affected cities: New York.
Open Philanthropy900,000.0022015-12Criminal justice reformhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/justleadershipusa-close-rikers-campaignChloe Cockburn Grant to support campaign to close Rikers Island. Affected countries: United States; affected states: New York; affected cities: New York City; announced: 2016-02-19.
Public Welfare Foundation50,000.0062014Criminal justice reformhttps://www.publicwelfare.org/grants/-- Term: 12 months. Support to increase the voice and leadership of formerly incarcerated individuals in calling for criminal justice reform. Affected regions: New York, NY; affected countries: United States.