Open Philanthropy donations made to Humane Society 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 HSIAustralia
Websitehttp://www.hsi.org.au
Twitter usernamehsi_australia
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Society_International

Full donee page for donee Humane Society 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 4 60,000 609,286 13,145 13,145 13,145 60,000 60,000 60,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,364,000 1,364,000 1,364,000
Animal welfare 4 60,000 609,286 13,145 13,145 13,145 60,000 60,000 60,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,364,000 1,364,000 1,364,000

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 2017 2016
Animal welfare (filter this donor) 4 2,437,145.00 60,000.00 13,145.00 1,364,000.00 1,000,000.00
Total 4 2,437,145.00 60,000.00 13,145.00 1,364,000.00 1,000,000.00

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 (2 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
How to end animal agriculture as soon as possible2017-09-27Robert Wiblin Lewis Bollard 80,000 HoursOpen Philanthropy Mercy For Animals Compassion in World Farming The Humane League The Humane Society of the United States Humane Society International The Good Food Institute Animal Equality Animal Charity Evaluators Broad donor strategyAnimal welfare/factory farmingPodcast with interview of Lewis Bollard (Farm Animal Welfare Program Officer at the Open Philanthropy Project) by Robert Wiblin of 80000 Hours, along with transcript. The podcast covers the strategy of the Open Philanthropy Project. 80000 Hours is an Open Philanthropy Project grant recipient and Wiblin was also on the board of Animal Charity Evaluators, an animal welfare-focused grant recipient that is discussed in the podcast.
Grisly Undercover Video Shows Chickens Being Starved To Produce More Eggs2016-10-11Nico Pitney Huffington PostOpen Philanthropy Humane Society International Mercy For Animals Animal Equality People for Animals The Humane League Third-party coverage of donor strategyAnimal welfare/factory farming/chicken/cage-free campaign/internationalProvides some context for the move by the Open Philanthropy Project in mid-2016 to expand its cage-free campaign funding internationally.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (4 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 4)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
60,000.0032020-05Animal welfarehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/humane-society-international-african-swine-fever-training-2020Lewis Bollard Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to conduct trainings in Vietnam in response to emergency disease outbreaks of African Swine Fever and other animal diseases. This funding is intended to pay for three two-day trainings for government officials in Vietnam and related travel expenses."

Other notes: Affected countries: Vietnam.
13,145.0042019-10Animal welfarehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/humane-society-international-african-swine-fever-trainingAmanda Hungerford Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to allow Dr. Dennis Will to provide expertise and training to World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Animal Welfare Focal Points in response to the emergency disease outbreak of African Swine Fever that has swept through Asia."
1,364,000.0012017-03Animal welfare/factory farminghttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/humane-society-international-east-asian-and-oie-projectsLewis Bollard Donation process: The grantee submitted a grant proposal https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/Humane_Society_International/HSI_East_Asia_and_OIE_outreach_budget.pdf

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support five projects to improve farm animal welfare, primarily in East Asia: (1) Re-granting to local East Asian groups that HSI has worked with on farm animal welfare campaigns, particularly in Indonesia, (2) Hiring supply chain consultants to work within major Asian food companies and a government agency to improve farm animal welfare, (3) Funding Asia Research & Engagement to support Ben McCarron, an expert in investor engagement, to work with institutional investors and banks to promote farm animal welfare in Asia, (4) Funding corporate outreach on cage-free egg and crate-free pork production in Japan and South Korea, (5) Funding travel and part-time consultants to engage with decision-makers at the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) to improve global animal welfare standards."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "We hope that this grant will lay the groundwork for future successful corporate advocacy on farm animal welfare in East Asia, where most of the world’s farm animals live, and potentially influence the only global animal welfare standards."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount seems to be influenced by the budget proposal https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/Humane_Society_International/HSI_East_Asia_and_OIE_outreach_budget.pdf though it is a little higher than the amount $1,240,000 specified in the budget proposal.

Other notes: Intended funding timeframe in months: 24; affected countries: Indonesia|Japan|South Korea; announced: 2017-04-19.
1,000,000.0022016-08Animal welfare/factory farming/chicken/cage-freehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/humane-society-international-international-cage-free-outreachLewis Bollard Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support [grantee's] work to end the confinement of hens in battery cages. [..] The present funding, part of a new series of grants focusing on international cage-free advocacy, will support Humane Society International’s work in Latin America and Asia."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The linked blog post https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/initial-grants-support-corporate-cage-free-reforms lists several reasons for the general focus on cage-free reforms, and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chickens-animal-abuse-video_us_57fac5c5e4b0e655eab5485d describes the reasons for the internationalization phase.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing matches the timing of other grants in this second phase (internationalization) of corporate cage-free campaign spending.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 24

Donor retrospective of the donation: Further grants to the grantee suggest continued satisfactioon with the outcome of this grant.

Other notes: Affected countries: Latin America|Asia; announced: 2016-10-03.