Open Philanthropy donations made to Helen Keller International

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 HelenKellerInternational
Websitehttp://www.hki.org
Twitter usernameHelenKellerIntl
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller_International
Instagram usernamehelenkellerintl

Full donee page for donee Helen Keller International

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 3 8,059,000 8,089,333 6,500,000 6,500,000 6,500,000 6,500,000 8,059,000 8,059,000 8,059,000 9,709,000 9,709,000 9,709,000 9,709,000
Global health 3 8,059,000 8,089,333 6,500,000 6,500,000 6,500,000 6,500,000 8,059,000 8,059,000 8,059,000 9,709,000 9,709,000 9,709,000 9,709,000

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 2018
Global health (filter this donor) 3 24,268,000.00 17,768,000.00 6,500,000.00
Total 3 24,268,000.00 17,768,000.00 6,500,000.00

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

Graph of spending should have loaded here

Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)

Graph of spending should have loaded here

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

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Recommendation to Open Philanthropy for Grants to Top Charities2019-11-26GiveWellOpen Philanthropy Malaria Consortium Helen Keller International Sightsavers Against Malaria Foundation The END Fund GiveDirectly Development Media International Dispenses for Safe Water Food Fortification Initiative Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation Iodine Global Network Living Goods Project Healthy Children GiveWell Periodic donation list documentationGlobal health and developmentThe document details GiveWell's recommendation in 2019 for grants by Good Ventures (via the Open Philanthropy Project) to GiveWell top and standout charities. The overall amount of money recommended for allocation is $54.6 million, and the document explains that Open Phil's calculation that it may make sense to spend down more slowly was the reason for reducing the allocation from last year. It discusses the principles used for allocation: (1) Put significant weight on cost-effectiveness estimates, (2) Consider additional information not explicitly modeled about the organization, (3) Consider additional information not explicitly modeled about the funding gap, (4) Assess funding gaps at the margin, (5) Default to not imposing restrictions on charity spending, (6) Default to funding on a 3-year horizon, and (7) Ensure charities are incentivized to engage with the process. The three charities that get significant grants are Malaria Consortium for its SMC program ($33.9 million), Helen Keller International ($9.7 million), and Sightsavers ($2.7 million). Against Malaria Foundation, The END Fund, and GiveDirectly receive the minimum "incentive grant" amount of $2.5 million that all top charities should receive. The top charity Deworm the World Initiative is not given an incentive grant because it received a previous grant through GiveWell discretionary grant that more than covers the incentive grant amount. 8 standout charities get $100,000 each
Our updated top charities for giving season 20182018-11-26Catherine Hollander GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Open Philanthropy GiveWell top charities Malaria Consortium Helen Keller International Against Malaria Foundation Deworm the World Initiative Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Sightsavers The END Fund GiveDirectly GiveWell Evaluator consolidated recommendation listGlobal health and developmentGiveWell annual top charities list. GiveWell recommends that donors donate to GiveWell to regrant to top charities at its discretion, but also provides details on the individual top charities so that people can make an informed decision. In addition, the amounts determined for GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund and for donation by Good Ventures are also included, though details of the amount recommended to Good Ventures are in a separate blog post https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-recommendation-to-good-ventures/

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (3 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 3)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
8,059,000.0022020-12Global health/nutrition/Vitamin A supplementationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/helen-keller-international-vitamin-a-supplementation-december-2020GiveWell Donation process: The grant is based on GiveWell's recommendation. GiveWell made the recommendations as part of its end-of-year recommendations to Open Philanthropy, along with allocations to other GiveWell top and standout charities. The total budget of $100 million is set by Open Philanthropy, but GiveWell decided to allocate only $70 million in end-of-year grantmaking and defers the remaining $30 million to early 2021. GiveWell explains the process in detail at https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation (published February 2021).

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Helen_Keller_International-s_vitamin_A_supplementation_program says the grant is to (1) "Extend its funding runway for its current programs through 2023 ($5.4 million). We estimate that the cost-effectiveness of these programs is 15-50x cash." (2) "Expand to Benue State, Nigeria ($2.6 million for 2021-2023). We estimate that the cost-effectiveness of VAS in Nigeria is 25x cash."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Our_recommended_allocation_to_Open_Philanthropy describes the overall thinking behind the grant. This grant is listed under "fully-vetted opportunities for 2021-2022 that are more than 10x cash" and in particular this grant is listed as over 15x cash.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Helen_Keller_International-s_vitamin_A_supplementation_program gives the expected breakdown in spending of the grant. It also lists various funding gaps that it chose not to fill, including expansion to Cameroon, expansion to Kenya, and expansion to one more Nigerian state. Although these opportunities are also estimated to be 10x or more cash, GiveWell does not recommend any of them since they are not time-sensitive and other funders might fill some of these gaps.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.51%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Part of GiveWell's end-of-year recommendations for Open Philanthropy, so the timing is determined by the timing of end-of-year recommendations (which is usually the week after Thanksgiving in the United States). The grant is made by Open Philanthropy shortly after the recommendations.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 36

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Helen_Keller_International-s_vitamin_A_supplementation_program lists some other funding gaps of HKI that are not yet being funded, despite being over 10x cash. Some of these might be recommendd in the future.

Donor retrospective of the donation: The HKI Vitamin A supplementation program would continue to be recommended by GiveWell in 2021 and get GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund money in 2021 at GiveWell's recommendation, suggesting continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: See https://www.givewell.org/charities/helen-keller-international/November-2020-version for GiveWell's review of Helen Keller International at the time of the grant recommendation.
9,709,000.0012020-01Global health/nutrition/Vitamin A supplementationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/helen-keller-international-vitamin-a-supplementation-january-2020GiveWell Donation process: The grant is based on GiveWell's recommendation. GiveWell made the recommendations as part of its end-of-year recommendations to Open Philanthropy, along with allocations to other GiveWell top and standout charities. The total budget is based on guidelines set by Open Philanthropy. GiveWell explains the process in detail at https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation (published November 2019).

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Helen_Keller_International-s_VAS_program gives the expected allocation of this money plus $2.6 million from the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund: "$5.5 million to continue its work in five countries (Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Niger), including supplementing its budgets in 2020 and 2021 and extending its funding runway to 2022. Cost-effectiveness: 31x cash, $4.5 million to start a new program in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with funding to cover 2020-2022. Cost-effectiveness: 27x cash, $2.4 million to expand its program to Bauchi State, Nigeria, with funding to cover 2020-2022. Cost-effectiveness: 25x cash."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Our_process says: "This work is highly cost-effective. We estimate that it is 28 times as cost-effective as cash transfers ("28x cash") overall, and, by country, ranges from 19x cash to 38x cash."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Helen_Keller_International-s_VAS_program gives the expected allocation of this money plus $2.6 million from the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund. It further says: "We chose not to recommend that Open Philanthropy provide funding for HKI to begin new programs in Cameroon ($1.8 million at 14x cash) and Kenya ($1.5 million at 11x cash). When we model multiple funding gaps as having similar cost-effectiveness, we generally prefer continuing programs to starting new ones, in order to avoid undue disruption."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Part of GiveWell's end-of-year recommendations for Open Philanthropy, so the timing is determined by the timing of end-of-year recommendations (which is usually the week after Thanksgiving in the United States). The grant is made by Open Philanthropy shortly after the recommendations.

Donor retrospective of the donation: Helen Keller International would continue to retain GiveWell top charity status in the coming years and continue receiving annual grants from Open Philanthropy at GiveWell's recommendation.

Other notes: See https://www.givewell.org/charities/helen-keller-international/November-2019-version for GiveWell's review of Helen Keller International at the time of the grant recommendation. Affected countries: Guinea|Mali|Burkina Faso|Côte d'Ivoire|Niger|Democratic Republic of the Congo|Nigeria.
6,500,000.0032018-12Global health/nutrition/Vitamin A supplementationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/helen-keller-international-vitamin-a-supplementation-december-2018GiveWell Donation process: The grant is based on GiveWell's recommendation. GiveWell made the recommendations as part of its end-of-year recommendations to Open Philanthropy, along with allocations to other GiveWell top and standout charities. The total budget is based on guidelines set by Open Philanthropy. GiveWell explains the process in detail at https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-recommendation-to-good-ventures/ Charity status updates in 2018 are at https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/updates-in-november-2018#Sightsavers-_deworming_program

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant to support the Vitamin A supplementation (VAS) program, which has GiveWell top charity status; see https://www.givewell.org/charities/helen-keller-international HKI provides technical assistance, engages in advocacy, and contributes funding to government-run vitamin A supplementation programs.

Donor reason for selecting the donee: GiveWell recommends HKI's VAS program for the following reasons: (1) Strong evidence base and strong cost-effectiveness. (2) Track record. (3) Standout transparency. (4) Room for more funding. The full GiveWell review is at https://www.givewell.org/charities/helen-keller-international and the top charity selection is at https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-updated-top-charities-for-giving-season-2018/

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): GiveWell explains the principles affecting its decision of how much money to allocate to each charity in https://blog.givewell.org/2018/11/26/our-recommendation-to-good-ventures/ (1) Put significant weight on our cost-effectiveness estimates. (2) Consider additional information about an organization that we have not explicitly modeled. (3) Assess charities’ funding gaps at the margin, i.e., where they would spend additional funding, where possible. (4) Default towards not imposing restrictions on charity spending. (5) Fund on a three-year horizon, unless we are particularly uncertain whether we will want to continue recommending a program in the future. (6) Ensure charities are incentivized to engage with our process. Ultimately, GiveWell decides to allocate $6-10 million two of its deworming charities as well as to HKI; HKI ends up getting $6.5 million

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Part of GiveWell's end-of-year recommendations for Open Philanthropy, so the timing is determined by the timing of end-of-year recommendations (which is usually the week after Thanksgiving in the United States). The grant is made by Open Philanthropy shortly after the recommendations

Other notes: Even accounting for this grant, GiveWell identifies a remaining funding gap of $20.6 million for HKI's VAS program.