Open Philanthropy donations made (filtered to cause areas matching Politics)

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 donor information

ItemValue
Country United States
Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions)GiveWell Good Ventures
Best overview URLhttps://causeprioritization.org/Open%20Philanthropy%20Project
Facebook username openphilanthropy
Websitehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/
Donations URLhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants
Twitter usernameopen_phil
PredictionBook usernameOpenPhilUnofficial
Page on philosophy informing donationshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/vision-and-values
Grant application process pagehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/guide-for-grant-seekers
Regularity with which donor updates donations datacontinuous updates
Regularity with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update)continuous updates
Lag with which donor updates donations datamonths
Lag with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update)days
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Open+Philanthropy

Brief history: Open Philanthropy (Open Phil for short) spun off from GiveWell, starting as GiveWell Labs in 2011, beginning to make strong progress in 2013, and formally separating from GiveWell as the "Open Philanthropy Project" in June 2017. In 2020, it started going by "Open Philanthropy" dropping the "Project" word.

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: Open Philanthropy is focused on openness in two ways: open to ideas about cause selection, and open in explaining what they are doing. It has endorsed "hits-based giving" and is working on areas of AI risk, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and other global catastrophic risks, criminal justice reform (United States), animal welfare, and some other areas.

Notes on grant decision logistics: See https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/our-grantmaking-so-far-approach-and-process for the general grantmaking process and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/questions-we-ask-ourselves-making-grant for more questions that grant investigators are encouraged to consider. Every grant has a grant investigator that we call the influencer here on Donations List Website; for focus areas that have Program Officers, the grant investigator is usually the Program Officer. The grant investigator has been included in grants published since around July 2017. Grants usually need approval from an executive; however, some grant investigators have leeway to make "discretionary grants" where the approval process is short-circuited; see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/discretionary-grants for more. Note that the term "discretionary grant" means something different for them compared to government agencies, see https://www.facebook.com/vipulnaik.r/posts/10213483361534364 for more.

Notes on grant publication logistics: Every publicly disclosed grant has a writeup published at the time of public disclosure, but the writeups vary significantly in length. Grant writeups are usually written by somebody other than the grant investigator, but approved by the grant investigator as well as the grantee. Grants have three dates associated with them: an internal grant decision date (that is not publicly revealed but is used in some statistics on total grant amounts decided by year), a grant date (which we call donation date; this is the date of the formal grant commitment, which is the published grant date), and a grant announcement date (which we call donation announcement date; the date the grant is announced to the mailing list and the grant page made publicly visible). Lags are a few months between decision and grant, and a few months between grant and announcement, due to time spent with grant writeup approval.

Notes on grant financing: See https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/guide-for-grant-seekers or https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/who-we-are for more information. Grants generally come from the Open Philanthropy Fund, a donor-advised fund managed by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, with most of its money coming from Good Ventures. Some grants are made directly by Good Ventures, and political grants may be made by the Open Philanthropy Action Fund. At least one grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/working-families-party-prosecutor-reforms-new-york was made by Cari Tuna personally. The majority of grants are financed by the Open Philanthropy Project Fund; however, the source of financing of a grant is not always explicitly specified, so it cannot be confidently assumed that a grant with no explicit listed financing is financed through the Open Philanthropy Project Fund; see the comment https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/october-2017-open-thread?page=2#comment-462 for more information. Funding for multi-year grants is usually disbursed annually, and the amounts are often equal across years, but not always. The fact that a grant is multi-year, or the distribution of the grant amount across years, are not always explicitly stated on the grant page; see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/october-2017-open-thread?page=2#comment-462 for more information. Some grants to universities are labeled "gifts" but this is a donee classification, based on different levels of bureaucratic overhead and funder control between grants and gifts; see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/october-2017-open-thread?page=2#comment-462 for more information.

Miscellaneous notes: Most GiveWell-recommended grants made by Good Ventures and listed in the Open Philanthropy database are not listed on Donations List Website as being under Open Philanthropy. Specifically, GiveWell Incubation Grants are not included (these are listed at https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php?donor=GiveWell+Incubation+Grants with donor GiveWell Incubation Grants), and grants made by Good Ventures to GiveWell top and standout charities are also not included (these are listed at https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php?donor=Good+Ventures%2FGiveWell+top+and+standout+charities with donor Good Ventures/GiveWell top and standout charities). Grants to support GiveWell operations are not included here; they can be found at https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php?donor=Good+Ventures%2FGiveWell+support with donor "Good Ventures/GiveWell support".The investment https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/impossible-foods in Impossible Foods is not included because it does not fit our criteria for a donation, and also because no amount was included. All other grants publicly disclosed by open philanthropy that are not GiveWell Incubation Grants or GiveWell top and standout charity grants should be included. Grants disclosed by grantees but not yet disclosed by Open Philanthropy are not included; some of them may be listed at https://issarice.com/open-philanthropy-project-non-grant-funding

Donor donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 6 360,000 606,433 200,000 200,000 250,000 250,000 360,000 360,000 400,000 628,600 628,600 1,800,000 1,800,000
Migration policy 3 360,000 320,000 200,000 200,000 200,000 200,000 360,000 360,000 360,000 400,000 400,000 400,000 400,000
Criminal justice reform 1 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000
Politics 2 628,600 1,214,300 628,600 628,600 628,600 628,600 628,600 628,600 1,800,000 1,800,000 1,800,000 1,800,000 1,800,000

Donation amounts by cause area and year

If you hover over a cell for a given cause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

Note: Cause area classification used here may not match that used by donor for all cases.

Cause area Number of donations Number of donees Total 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015
Politics (filter this donor) 2 1 2,428,600.00 0.00 1,800,000.00 0.00 628,600.00 0.00 0.00
Migration policy (filter this donor) 3 1 960,000.00 200,000.00 0.00 400,000.00 0.00 0.00 360,000.00
Criminal justice reform (filter this donor) 1 1 250,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 250,000.00 0.00
Total 6 3 3,638,600.00 200,000.00 1,800,000.00 400,000.00 628,600.00 250,000.00 360,000.00

Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by subcause area and year

If you hover over a cell for a given subcause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

For the meaning of “classified” and “unclassified”, see the page clarifying this.

Subcause area Number of donations Number of donees Total 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015
Politics 2 1 2,428,600.00 0.00 1,800,000.00 0.00 628,600.00 0.00 0.00
Migration policy/politics 3 1 960,000.00 200,000.00 0.00 400,000.00 0.00 0.00 360,000.00
Criminal justice reform/politics 1 1 250,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 250,000.00 0.00
Classified total 6 3 3,638,600.00 200,000.00 1,800,000.00 400,000.00 628,600.00 250,000.00 360,000.00
Unclassified total 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 6 3 3,638,600.00 200,000.00 1,800,000.00 400,000.00 628,600.00 250,000.00 360,000.00

Graph of spending by subcause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by subcause area and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by donee and year

Donee Cause area Metadata Total 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015
The Center for Election Science (filter this donor) 2,428,600.00 0.00 1,800,000.00 0.00 628,600.00 0.00 0.00
Niskanen Center (filter this donor) WP 960,000.00 200,000.00 0.00 400,000.00 0.00 0.00 360,000.00
Vote Safe (filter this donor) 250,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 250,000.00 0.00
Total -- -- 3,638,600.00 200,000.00 1,800,000.00 400,000.00 628,600.00 250,000.00 360,000.00

Graph of spending by donee and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by donee and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by influencer and year

If you hover over a cell for a given influencer and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

For the meaning of “classified” and “unclassified”, see the page clarifying this.

Influencer Number of donations Number of donees Total 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015
Willam MacAskill 1 1 1,800,000.00 0.00 1,800,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Alexander Berger 3 1 960,000.00 200,000.00 0.00 400,000.00 0.00 0.00 360,000.00
William MacAskill 1 1 628,600.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 628,600.00 0.00 0.00
Chloe Cockburn 1 1 250,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 250,000.00 0.00
Classified total 6 3 3,638,600.00 200,000.00 1,800,000.00 400,000.00 628,600.00 250,000.00 360,000.00
Unclassified total 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 6 3 3,638,600.00 200,000.00 1,800,000.00 400,000.00 628,600.00 250,000.00 360,000.00

Graph of spending by influencer and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Donation amounts by disclosures and year

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Donation amounts by country and year

If you hover over a cell for a given country and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

For the meaning of “classified” and “unclassified”, see the page clarifying this.

Country Number of donations Number of donees Total 2020 2018 2016 2015
United States 4 2 1,210,000.00 200,000.00 400,000.00 250,000.00 360,000.00
Classified total 4 2 1,210,000.00 200,000.00 400,000.00 250,000.00 360,000.00
Unclassified total 2 1 2,428,600.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 6 3 3,638,600.00 200,000.00 400,000.00 250,000.00 360,000.00

Graph of spending by country and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by country and year (cumulative)

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

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
The Center for Election Science Year End EA Appeal (GW, IR)2019-12-17Aaron Hamlin Effective Altruism ForumOpen Philanthropy The Center for Election Science Donee donation casePoliticsAaron Hamlin of the Center for Election Science (CES), an organization that promotes approval voting in the United States, posts an end-of-year fundraising appeal post for CES to the Effective Altruism Forum. The post talks about the finances of CES, and compares the funding of CES to the much larger total funding going to ranked choice voting (RCV), a competing effort that he considers inferior. He argues that with slightly more funds, CES could show much more than RCV in terms of victories in adoption of approval voting, per dollar spent
Thanks for putting up with my follow-up questions. Out of the areas you mention, I'd be very interested in ... (GW, IR)2019-09-10Ryan Carey Effective Altruism ForumFounders Pledge Open Philanthropy OpenAI Machine Intelligence Research Institute Broad donor strategyAI safety|Global catastrophic risks|Scientific research|PoliticsRyan Carey replies to John Halstead's question on what Founders Pledge shoud research. He first gives the areas within Halstead's list that he is most excited about. He also discusses three areas not explicitly listed by Halstead: (a) promotion of effective altruism, (b) scholarships for people working on high-impact research, (c) more on AI safety -- specifically, funding low-mid prestige figures with strong AI safety interest (what he calls "highly-aligned figures"), a segment that he claims the Open Philanthropy Project is neglecting, with the exception of MIRI and a couple of individuals.

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

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

Graph of donations and their timeframes
DoneeAmount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 6)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Niskanen Center200,000.0062020-01Migration policy/politicshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-center-research-on-immigration-policy-2020Alexander Berger Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support [grantee's] work on immigration policy. The Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank, seeks to reduce barriers to immigration by developing and disseminating information, arguments, and policy ideas."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: This is a renewal of a previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration-2018 (2018-01) and is being offered as an exit grant to give the grantee time to transition out.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is at the same rate per year ($200,000) as the previous grant, that was $400,000 over two years. The shorter timeframe (and hence lower amount) is a reflection of the "exit grant" nature.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant is made at the end of the timeframe foor the previous two-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration-2018 (2018-01).
Intended funding timeframe in months: 12

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: This is an exit grant, so there are no plans for further grants.

Other notes: Affected countries: United States.
The Center for Election Science1,800,000.0012019-02Politicshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/the-center-for-election-science-general-support-2019Willam MacAskill Grantee is a US-based nonprofit that promotes alternative voting methods to plurality voting. The grant is a renewal of December 2017 support https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/the-center-for-election-science-general-support which allowed the grantee to organize a ballot initiative for approval voting https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/11/15/18092206/midterm-elections-vote-fargo-approval-voting-ranked-choice that was adopted by Fargo, North Dakota. The renewal is intended to help CES scale up its operations and replicate ballot initiatives for approval voting in other cities. Announced: 2019-03-01.
Niskanen Center400,000.0032018-01Migration policy/politicshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration-2018Alexander Berger Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support [grantee's] work on immigration policy. [...] Niskanen has grown its immigration program to approximately $1M/year."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "Because we do not expect significant positive movement on immigration at the federal level over the next few years [a likely reference to the Trump presidency at the time], we view this support primarily as a way to ensure the Niskanen Center is able to continue developing relationships and policy ideas in advance of any future opportunities for progress."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The previous grant was $360,000 for two years; this grant amount is pretty comparable. The grant page says: "Niskanen has grown its immigration program to approximately $1M/year." So this grant now accounts for only 20% of the cost of the program.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant is made around the end of the timeframe for the previous two-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration (2015-10).
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24

Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-center-research-on-immigration-policy-2020 (2020-01) would be an exit grant. Open Philanthropy does not provide reasons for the exit, so its retrospective evaluation of this grant isn't clear.

Other notes: Affected countries: United States; announced: 2018-01-30.
The Center for Election Science628,600.0022017-12Politicshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/the-center-for-election-science-general-supportWilliam MacAskill Grantee is a US-based nonprofit that promotes alternative voting methods to plurality voting, with an emphasis on cardinal methods and a special focus on approval voting. The grant is intended to go toward CES’ general expenses over the next year such as salaries, marketing, office supplies, as well as its Ballot Initiative Education Campaign project. In October of 2018, Open Phil added $30,000 to the original award amount of $598,600. Announced: 2018-01-23.
Vote Safe250,000.0052016-02Criminal justice reform/politicshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/vote-safe-criminal-justice-reform-policy-advocacyChloe Cockburn Grant personally by Cari Tuna. Grantee is affiliated with Californians for Safety and Justice (CSJ), an advocacy and policy reform organization that developed the first statewide network for crime victims supporting justice reform. Vote Safe crafted and ran the successful campaign for Proposition 47, a 2014 California ballot measure that reduced incarceration by changing several low-level felonies to misdemeanors, and reallocating the prison cost savings to prevention and treatment. Related separate grant to the Alliance for Safety and Justice that is trying to replicate similar strategies on a national level: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/alliance-safety-and-justice-general-support. Affected countries: United States; affected states: California; announced: 2018-06-28.
Niskanen Center360,000.0042015-10Migration policy/politicshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigrationAlexander Berger Donation process: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration#Our_review_process says: "We approached Niskanen in June 2015 to discuss funding opportunities relating to advocacy for lower-skill immigration, and a series of conversations about its work culminated in a request for funding. We solicited background feedback about the Center from a few other sources prior to making a decision about funding it." The immigration policy counsel proposal https://files.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/Niskanen-Immigration-Policy-Counsel-Proposal.pdf is what the grant would ultimately fund; the Sources section includes links to that and to many conversations in the "series of conversations" mentioned.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration#Budget_and_proposed_activities says: "Niskanen asked us for $360,000 over two years, which would be enough to pay for an additional full-time Immigration Policy Counsel along with associated costs." https://files.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/Niskanen-Immigration-Policy-Counsel-Proposal.pdf is the full Immigration Policy Counsel Proposal.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration#Case_for_the_grant says: "Our conversations with staff from the Niskanen Center gave us the sense that they share our goal of allowing significantly more migration, including by lower-skilled people and those from low-income countries. [...] The Niskanen Center’s strategy is to try to get information, arguments, and new policy ideas directly into the hands of key decision-makers, rather than building long-term interest group alignment or changing public opinion. [...] We can imagine a scenario in which Niskanen is able to popularize a proposal that ends up as part of comprehensive immigration reform package in 2017, or is able to provide information that leads to a tweak in enacted legislation, and believe that the grant is likely to be very worthwhile in such a case. Our impression is that the Niskanen Center is plausibly well-positioned to execute this strategy successfully [...]."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is as requested in the immigration policy counsel proposal https://files.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/Niskanen-Immigration-Policy-Counsel-Proposal.pdf that also includes a breakdown.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration#Our_review_process gives a hint about the timing by giving the start of investigation and the process: "We approached Niskanen in June 2015 to discuss funding opportunities [...] We solicited background feedback about the Center from a few other sources prior to making a decision about funding it."
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration#Plans_for_learning_and_follow-up includes goals for learning and follow-up, key folllow-up questions, and follow-up expectations. It ends with: "We expect to provide an update on this grant after one year either by publishing public notes or by producing a brief writeup. After the grant is spent down, we plan to attempt a more holistic and detailed evaluation of the grant’s performance. However, we may abandon either or both of these follow-up expectations or perform more follow-up than planned if the circumstances call for it."

Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup conversations with the grantee include: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/David_Bier_12-14-2015_%28public%29.pdf (David Bier, 2015-12-14), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Niskanen_Center_07-22-16_%28public%29.pdf (many people, 2016-07-22), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Conversations/Niskanen_Center_02-14-17_(public).pdf (many people, 2017-02-14), and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Niskanen_Center_06-22-17_%28public%29.pdf (Kristie De Peña and Matthew La Corte, 2017-06-22). Followup grants would be made: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-immigration-2018 (2018-01) and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/niskanen-center-research-on-immigration-policy-2020 (2020-01) with the latter being an exit grant.

Other notes: Affected countries: United States; announced: 2015-10-29.

Similarity to other donors

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