Open Philanthropy donations made to Center for Global Development

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

Full donor page for donor Open Philanthropy

Basic donee information

ItemValue
Country
Facebook page cgdev
Websitehttp://www.cgdev.org/
Twitter usernamecgdev
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Global_Development
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Center+for+Global+Development

Full donee page for donee Center for Global Development

Donor–donee relationship

Item Value

Donor–donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 10 333,550 1,096,821 49,942 49,942 50,000 250,000 300,000 333,550 1,000,000 1,184,720 1,800,000 3,000,000 3,000,000
Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness 2 49,942 149,971 49,942 49,942 49,942 49,942 49,942 49,942 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000 250,000
History of philanthropy 1 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000
Global health and development 3 3,000,000 2,100,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 300,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000
Scientific research 1 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550 333,550
Migration policy 3 1,184,720 1,328,240 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,184,720 1,184,720 1,184,720 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 Total 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2014 2013
Global health and development (filter this donor) 3 6,300,000.00 0.00 3,000,000.00 0.00 0.00 3,000,000.00 0.00 300,000.00
Migration policy (filter this donor) 3 3,984,720.00 1,000,000.00 0.00 0.00 1,800,000.00 0.00 1,184,720.00 0.00
Scientific research (filter this donor) 1 333,550.00 0.00 333,550.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness (filter this donor) 2 299,942.00 250,000.00 0.00 49,942.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
History of philanthropy (filter this donor) 1 50,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 50,000.00
Total 10 10,968,212.00 1,250,000.00 3,333,550.00 49,942.00 1,800,000.00 3,000,000.00 1,184,720.00 350,000.00

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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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.
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.
Suggestions for individual donors from Open Philanthropy Project staff2015-12-23Holden Karnofsky Open PhilanthropyChloe Cockburn Lewis Bollard Alexander Berger Nick Beckstead Howie Lempel Alliance for Safety and Justice Bronx Freedom Fund The Humane League The Humane Society of the United States Center for Global Development Center for Popular Democracy Ploughshares Fund Donation suggestion listCriminal justice reform|Animal welfare|Global healthOpen Philanthropy Project staff describe suggestions for best donation opportunities for individual donors in their specific areas. The post was originally published to the GiveWell blog.
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 (10 donations)

Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
Amount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 10)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
250,000.0082020-03Biosecurity and pandemic preparedness/COVID-19https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity/center-global-development-covid-19-local-response-guidelinesAndrew Snyder-Beattie Jacob Trefethen Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support work led by Jeremy Konyndyk on developing COVID-19 response guidelines and decision support tools to disseminate to local leaders. The guidelines and tools are intended to help local leaders take appropriate measures to limit the spread of the virus."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant is made around the time that COVID-19 is declared a global pandemic, and as efforts to fight the pandemic are ramping up. The grant page notes: "Konyndyk was formerly the director of the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, where he managed an annual budget of more than $1.4 billion and helped lead the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant is made around the time that COVID-19 is declared a global pandemic, and as efforts to fight the pandemic are ramping up.

Other notes: Announced: 2020-03-18.
1,000,000.0052020-03Migration policy/labor mobilityhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program-2020Alexander Berger Zachary Robinson Donation process: This renews a previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program (2017-03). A conversation https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Michael_Clemens_11-29-17_%28public%29.pdf (2017-11-29) with Michael Clemens happens between the two grants.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support its migration program, led by Dr. Michael Clemens. [...] this funding includes one additional year at the previous funding level and two subsequent years at a funding level that we believe may be more sustainable for the long run. This funding is intended to support Dr. Clemens’s ongoing research and policy work on immigration." https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/CGD/CGD_Migration_Program_Description.pdf describes the activities that the previous grant (renewed by this) funded; this grant is likely similar.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant page says: "this funding includes one additional year at the previous funding level and two subsequent years at a funding level that we believe may be more sustainable for the long run." The previous funding level was $600,000 per year, so this breaks down to $600,000 for one year and $200,000 each for the next two years.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant is made right at the end of the timeframe for the previous three-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program#About_the_grant (2017-03).
Intended funding timeframe in months: 36

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The framing "funding level that we believe may be more sustainable for the long run" in the grant page suggests that Open Philanthropy is planning to renew funding at the reduced level ($200,000/year) after this three-year grant ends.
3,000,000.0012019-06Global health and developmenthttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2019Alexander Berger Jacob Trefethen Donation process: This is a grant renewal of another grant of the same size three years ago. The grant page says: "Our renewal decision at this stage was based largely on our previous decision and the view that three years was too short a window on which to update for a mature but hits-based organization like CGD."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Grantee "is a think tank that conducts research on and promotes improvements to rich-world policies that affect the global poor." For the previous grant: "CGD says it used to conduct research on aid effectiveness, U.S. development policy, universal basic income in India, and taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and sugar."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant renews a previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016 and the reasons remain the same as specified in that grant write-up. The grant page says: "Our renewal decision at this stage was based largely on our previous decision and the view that three years was too short a window on which to update for a mature but hits-based organization like CGD."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant amount as well as structure of the grant exactly match the February 2016 grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016 namely $3 million over 3 years

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by the end of the previous three-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016 made in Februay 2016 (the renewal, in June 2019, is four months ago)
Intended funding timeframe in months: 36

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: According to the grant page: "We expect to undertake a more thorough evaluation of CGD’s performance approximately two years into this grant, which would be five years into our overall support."

Other notes: Announced: 2019-09-05.
333,550.0062019-01Scientific research/human health and wellbeinghttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/scientific-research/miscellaneous/center-for-global-development-gene-drive-researchAlexander Berger Discretionary grant to support research on the assessment and regulation of gene drive technology. CGD plans to use this grant to identify key political and social considerations that may inform global decisions on the development and deployment of gene drive technology, particularly with respect to malaria. CGD will conduct interviews and site visits to develop a better understanding of regulatory, social, and political considerations at play in different contexts. The research will be led by Gyude Moore, CGD visiting fellow and former Minister of Public Works in Liberia. Announced: 2019-02-15.
49,942.00102018-02Biosecurity and pandemic preparednesshttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity/center-for-global-development-pandemic-policy-project-jeremy-konyndykJaime Yassif Grant to support a project on "Policymaking during the Ebola Outbreak: Implications for Future Pandemics" led by Jeremy Konyndyk. Announced: 2018-03-08.
1,800,000.0032017-03Migration policy/labor mobilityhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-programAlexander Berger Donation process: The grant page does not discuss the process explicitly, but it's likely based on the follow-up exeecuted as part of https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-labor-mobility-research#Follow-up_expectations for the previous grant.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to fund the CGD 2017-2019 Migration Program. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/CGD/CGD_Migration_Program_Description.pdf has some details of activities funded. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program#Budget_and_room_for_more_funding says: "Our funding will continue to support Dr. Clemens’ salary, as well as costs of travel and working with consultants. Most of the increase in funding will cover the hiring of a full-time research fellow, plus additional support from administrative, communications, and policy staff."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program#About_the_grant gives the reasons for the grant, mostly centered around a positive evaluation of the outcome of the previous grant. Relevant excerpts include "the team has taken on some promising research projects" and "Our expectation is that this type of work may take a fairly long time to have noticeable effects, so even without concrete evidence of impact at this stage, extending our support seems to us like a worthwhile bet, and the immediate projects that Dr. Clemens’ team has proposed seem reasonable and potentially promising to us, though it is difficult for us to assess the value of the projects individually."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program#Budget_and_room_for_more_funding says: "This grant represents an increase in our yearly funding for CGD over our previous grant, from roughly $400,000 to roughly $600,000 per year. Our funding will continue to support Dr. Clemens’ salary, as well as costs of travel and working with consultants. Most of the increase in funding will cover the hiring of a full-time research fellow, plus additional support from administrative, communications, and policy staff."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant is made right at the end of the timeframe for the previous three-year grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-labor-mobility-research (2014-03).
Intended funding timeframe in months: 36

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program#Plans_for_learning_and_follow-up lists key questions and follow-up expectations. It also says: "We will likely consider it successful if Dr. Clemens’ upcoming book is extremely well-received (which we do not anticipate, just because of the prior unlikelihood of any given book selling especially well), if any of the team’s initiatives have an impact such that a rough cost-effectiveness estimate suggests a good return on our investment, or if ambitious plans lead us to significantly increase our support in the future. We believe there is only a roughly 50% chance that at least one of the above happens, but that the grant is still justified in expected value terms."

Donor retrospective of the donation: A followup conversation with Michael Clemens happens at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Michael_Clemens_11-29-17_%28public%29.pdf (2017-11-29). The grant gets renewed at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program-2020 (2020-03) though with a reduced funding level.

Other notes: Announced: 2017-06-27.
3,000,000.0012016-02Global health and developmenthttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016Alexander Berger Donation process: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016#Our_process says: "In mid-2014 [...] we told CGD that we were interested in funding more policy outreach work. In October 2014, CGD sent us a proposal for a $2.3 million grant to create a “Do Fund”, which would support policy outreach work for three years. In follow-up conversations, CGD told us that it would prefer unrestricted funding, and we shifted to considering that. [...] CGD sent us an outline of some hypothetical activities that it might undertake with different levels of additional unrestricted funding [...]. Before reaching a decision, we investigated the case studies summarized above to improve our understanding of CGD’s track record."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: The funding is unrestricted, but as part of the grant proposal, the grantee, CGD, shared a list of activities it may use the funds for: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016#Grant_timeline_and_proposed_activities The activities include various forms of additional research, hiring people (consultants, associates, researchers) and expanding a fellowship exchange program

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016#Considerations_in_favor_of_and_against_the_grant says: "We see our unrestricted grant to CGD as a way to support an organization with values closely aligned with ours. We think it is likely that CGD has produced a great deal more value for the global poor than it has spent as an organization, and the potential future activities that CGD has shared to date generally strike us as promising, so we see further unrestricted funding as an attractive grant opportunity. As is fairly typical of our policy grants, our modal guess is that this grant will have limited, if any, humanitarian impact, but that there is a sufficient probability of a very large positive impact to justify the grant." Earlier sections in the grant page discuss proposed activities and track record

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount of $3 million (which is to be distributed in three annual installments of $1 million each) determined based on what CGD requested (initially, $2.3 million), as well as what Open Phil considers an appropriate level of fundings

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined partly by the completion of the timeframe for the previous grant, and also by the time it took Open Phil and CGD to work out the case for the grant
Intended funding timeframe in months: 36

Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup conversation with Todd Moss and Kathy Smith of grantee organization at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Todd_Moss_Kathy_Smith_06-21-16_%28public%29.pdf on 2016-06-21. The grant would be renewed at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2019 in June 2019 for the same amount ($3 million over 3 years) for the same reasons. This suggests that Open Phil would continue to endorse the reasoning behind the grant

Other notes: Announced: 2016-02-24.
1,184,720.0042014-03Migration policy/labor mobilityhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-labor-mobility-researchAlexander Berger Donation process: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-labor-mobility-research#Our_process says: "The Center for Global Development submitted a proposal for this grant to Good Ventures in January 2014, following several conversations between GiveWell and Good Ventures staff and CGD Senior Fellow Michael Clemens about philanthropic opportunities related to labor mobility. We shared a draft version of this page with Center for Global Development staff 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/center-global-development-labor-mobility-research#Grant_documents links to various grant documents: https://www.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/CGD%20Proposal%20to%20Good%20Ventures_General%20Support%20and%20Migration%20Policy%20Research_2.6.14.pdf (concept note), https://www.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/CGD%20Migration%20Budget_Good%20Ventures%20Proposal%20Final.xlsx (budget proposal), and https://www.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/CGD%20Projected%20Statement%20of%20Expenditures%20and%20Good%20Ventures%20for%202014.xlsx (overall CGD budget).

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Listed reasons include: (1) priority for the cause cf. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/cause-reports/policy/labor-mobility and its selection for learning grants https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/givewell-labs-update (2) being impressed with the past work of Michael Clemens, (3) room for more funding -- the past work was funded by the MacArthur Foundation and there is no ongoing support for the full portfolio of work Clemens plans to do.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is based on the budget proposal https://www.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/CGD%20Migration%20Budget_Good%20Ventures%20Proposal%20Final.xlsx submitted by Michael Clemens.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-labor-mobility-research#Our_process indicates that the timing was based on the timing of the grant proposal and the due diligence that followed: "The Center for Global Development submitted a proposal for this grant to Good Ventures in January 2014, following several conversations between GiveWell and Good Ventures staff and CGD Senior Fellow Michael Clemens about philanthropic opportunities related to labor mobility."
Intended funding timeframe in months: 36

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-labor-mobility-research#Plans_for_learning_and_follow-up lists key follow-up questions and expectations. It says: "Towards the end of the duration of the grant (i.e. in the third year), we plan to attempt a more holistic and detailed evaluation of the grant’s performance, aiming to answer the questions above. We may abandon either or both of these follow-up expectations if labor mobility ceases to be a focus area, or perform more follow-up than planned if this work becomes a key part of our priorities."

Donor retrospective of the donation: There are three published followup conversations between this grant and the next. The writeup for the followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-migration-program (2017-03) includes a positive assessment of the outcome of the grant, saying "the team has taken on some promising research projects" and "Our expectation is that this type of work may take a fairly long time to have noticeable effects, so even without concrete evidence of impact at this stage, extending our support seems to us like a worthwhile bet, and the immediate projects that Dr. Clemens’ team has proposed seem reasonable and potentially promising to us, though it is difficult for us to assess the value of the projects individually."

Other notes: The grant page https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/center-global-development-labor-mobility-research#Plans_for_learning_and_follow-up has several more details including an extensive discussion of room for more funding and fungibility, and a section on risks. Followup grants: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/dr-michael-clemens-senior-fellow-center-global-development-cgd-and-cynthia-rathinasamy-program (2015-12-15), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Michael_Clemens_Cynthia_Rathinasamy_06-21-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-06-21), and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Center_for_Global_Development_11-22-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-11-22).
300,000.0072013-07Global health and developmenthttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-supportAlexander Berger Donation process: This grant was made by Good Ventures with input from GiveWell, before the Open Philanthropy Project was a clear and distinct entity.

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: The grant page says the grant is "to the Center for Global Development (CGD) in July 2013 for general operating support. The grant will support CGD’s research on topics related to global poverty and inequality."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "We’ve found CGD to be a valuable resource as we explore potential future focus areas for Good Ventures. Learn more about our rationale for awarding this grant and how CGD is informing our work. This award is a “learning grant,” meaning that it’s designed to help us learn more about an organization or cause we find promising. This grant is unrestricted so that the organization can decide for itself how best to translate the funds into impact." The linked blog post with the rationale is https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/grant-center-global-development-cgd

Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup conversation with Todd Moss and Kathy Smith of grantee organization at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Todd_Moss_and_Kathy_Smith_12-15-2015_%28public%29.pdf on 2015-12-15. Followup grants https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2016 and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/center-global-development-general-support-2019 suggest that the grant would be considered a success and Open Phil would continue to endorse its reasoning

Other notes: Intended funding timeframe in months: 36.
50,000.0092013-06History of philanthropyhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/history-of-philanthropy/update-millions-saved-project-- Grant for an update to the Millions Saved project.