U.S. Association for International Migration 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 1 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483
Migration policy 1 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483 1,310,483

Donation amounts by donor and year for donee U.S. Association for International Migration

Donor Total 2014
Open Philanthropy (filter this donee) 1,310,483.00 1,310,483.00
Total 1,310,483.00 1,310,483.00

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

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Update on the Open Philanthropy Project’s Work on Migration Liberalisation2016-04-08Sebastian Nickel Open Borders: The CaseOpen Philanthropy Center for Global Development U.S. Association for International Migration Protect the People ImmigrationWorks Foundation No Lean Season Niskanen Center New York University Third-party coverage of donor strategyMigration policyThe blog post provides an update to https://openborders.info/blog/overview-of-the-open-philanthropy-projects-work-on-migration-liberalisation/ (a blog post from a year ago), providing updates on the grants discussed in the previous post, as well as descriptions of new grants. A section titled "Closing thoughts" gives the author's take on events; it stresses the difficulty of figuring out how best to effect political change, and the longer time horizon needed for efforts to bear fruit.
Overview of the Open Philanthropy Project’s work on migration liberalisation2015-03-18Sebastian Nickel Open Borders: The CaseOpen Philanthropy Center for Global Development ImmigrationWorks Foundation U.S. Association for International Migration Evidence Action Third-party coverage of donor strategyMigration policyThe blog post reviews Open Philanthropy's philanthropy strategy related to promoting freer migration in the context of their broader thinking, and discusses grants made so far to the Center for Global Development, ImmigrationWorks Foundation, and U.S. Association for International Migration. It also has a section on work related to migration within national borders that Open Philanthropy is funding. A conclusion section discusses the author's overall takeaways, and includes the sentence: "I am very impressed with the Open Philanthropy Project’s work on labour mobility."

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (1 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 1)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Open Philanthropy1,310,483.0012014-07Migration policy/labor mobility/seasonal migrationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haitiAlexander Berger Donation process: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Our_process says: "We approached Michael Clemens of CGD looking for funding opportunities in labor mobility in November 2013. He suggested we speak with IOM Haiti staff about a migration facilitation mechanism and we began to do so starting in December 2013. After a few more conversations with IOM staff and feedback on an earlier draft, a final proposal was submitted in June 2014. We shared a draft version of this page with IOM and CGD staff, and incorporated some of their suggestions, prior to the grant being finalized."

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Proposal_summary links to a project proposal http://www.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/USAIM.IOM%20Haiti_H2A%20Visa%20Project%20_Narrative.pdf and a budget http://givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/USAIM.IOM%20Haiti_H2A%20Visa%20Project_Budget.xls (Excel). The goal is to increase the use of U.S. H-2A visas by Haitians; Haiti recently became eligible for H-2A. The proposed work is a collaboration between five groups: the grantee, the International Organization for Migration, the Center for Global Development, Protect the People, and Haiti's National Office for Migration.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Case_for_this_grant talks about high gains per Haitian who uses the program, with an estimate of $1 million in gains in one year if the project succeeds. It also discusses upside from creating a sustainabe flow of Haitians if usage can be expanded and overstaying and abuse can be limited, with a BOTEC of $50 million in income gains over a period of ten years.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): http://givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/USAIM.IOM%20Haiti_H2A%20Visa%20Project_Budget.xls (Excel) has the budget. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Proposal_summary gives the two main pieces: $450,655 to cover the preparation phase of work, estimated to take 4 months and $1,039,849 for the seasonal migration and follow up work, estimated to take 10 months.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Our_process hints at timing by providing the back story: "We approached Michael Clemens of CGD looking for funding opportunities in labor mobility in November 2013. He suggested we speak with IOM Haiti staff about a migration facilitation mechanism and we began to do so starting in December 2013. After a few more conversations with IOM staff and feedback on an earlier draft, a final proposal was submitted in June 2014."
Intended funding timeframe in months: 14

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Plans_for_learning_and_follow-up includes follow-up questions and expectations. The second tranche of funding is conditional to success of the first tranche. Further grants are not explicitly discussed.

Donor retrospective of the donation: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Updates links to several updates including https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti/december-2014-update-iom-haiti-grant (2014-12) and http://givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/IOM%20Haiti%20-%20LM0257%20-%20H2A%20Visa%20Program%20-%201st%20Interim%20Report%20Redacted.doc (2015-03). The later grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti (2016-02) to Protect the People expresses the view that this grant did not deliver the expected magnitude of results.

Other notes: The grant page says: "On November 1, 2018, the grant amount on the website was reduced from the original of $1,490,505 to an updated value $1,310,483, with a note: (May 2016 note: $180,022 in unspent funds were returned to us.)". Affected countries: United States|Haiti.