Open Philanthropy donations made to Malaria Consortium

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 MalariaConsortium
Websitehttp://www.malariaconsortium.org/
Donate pagehttp://www.malariaconsortium.org/support/donate.htm
Transparency and financials pagehttp://www.malariaconsortium.org/pages/international-aid-transparency-initiative.htm
Twitter usernameFightingMalaria
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria_Consortium
GiveWell reviewhttps://www.givewell.org/charities/malaria-consortium
Instagram usernamemalaria_consortium

Full donee page for donee Malaria Consortium

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 27,076,757 29,200,919 26,600,000 26,600,000 26,600,000 26,600,000 27,076,757 27,076,757 27,076,757 33,926,000 33,926,000 33,926,000 33,926,000
Global health 3 27,076,757 29,200,919 26,600,000 26,600,000 26,600,000 26,600,000 27,076,757 27,076,757 27,076,757 33,926,000 33,926,000 33,926,000 33,926,000

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 87,602,757.00 61,002,757.00 26,600,000.00
Total 3 87,602,757.00 61,002,757.00 26,600,000.00

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 (4 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/
Approaches to Moral Weights: How GiveWell Compares to Other Actors2017-11-07GiveWellGiveWell Maximum Impact Fund Open Philanthropy GiveWell top charities Deworm the World Initiative Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Against Malaria Foundation Malaria Consortium GiveDirectly GiveWell Evaluator quantification approachIn-depth look at how the way GiveWell uses moral weights in cost-effectiveness analyses (such as the value of saving lives) compares with the way governments and others in public policy use it. One difference is that the target population GiveWell deals with is often in low and middle income countries (LMIC) for which estimates of the value of a life saved are more murky. The document also talks of the different moral weights associated with saving people at different ages. See https://blog.givewell.org/2017/11/07/how-givewell-and-mainstream-policymakers-compare-the-good-achieved-by-different-programs/ for a blog post by Josh Rosenberg announcing and summarizing the report. The earlier blog post https://blog.givewell.org/2017/06/01/how-givewell-uses-cost-effectiveness-analyses/ is also referenced. Also see https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/newly-published-givewell-materials/xeSpZ512VFw (2017-11-07) for the mailing list announcement
Good Ventures and Giving Now vs. Later (2016 Update)2016-12-28Holden Karnofsky Open PhilanthropyGood Ventures/GiveWell top and standout charities GiveWell top charities Against Malaria Foundation Schistosomiasis Control Initiative Deworm the World Initiative GiveDirectly Malaria Consortium Sightsavers The END Fund Development Media International Food Fortification Initiative Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition Iodine Global Network Living Goods Project Healthy Children GiveWell Reasoning supplementGlobal health and developmentExplanation of reasoning that led to $50 million allocation to GiveWell top charities

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
27,076,757.0022020-12Global health/malaria/seasonal malaria chemopreventionhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/malaria-consortium-seasonal-malaria-chemoprevention-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#Malaria_Consortium-s_seasonal_malaria_chemoprevention_program breaks down the programs funded by this money plus $3.8 million from the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund: (1) "Extend its funding runway for its current programs in Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria, and Togo through 2022 ($20.8 million) at the scale Malaria Consortium expects to achieve in 2021." (2) "Expand to newly-eligible states or local government areas (LGAs) in Nigeria in 2022 and maintain work in those new areas in 2023 ($7.8 million). We estimate that the cost-effectiveness of SMC in Nigeria is 14x cash." (3) "Put $2.2 million toward continuing its work in 2023."

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. Malaria Consoortium gets a grant because it is a GiveWell top charity, and additionoally gets a lot of additional money as the best opportunity (with $24.1 million of the funding at 14x cash) among the top charities.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2020/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Malaria_Consortium-s_seasonal_malaria_chemoprevention_program breaks down the programs funded by this money plus $3.8 million from the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund, It also lists several other unfunded opportunities that are not being filled at this time.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 38.68%

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#Malaria_Consortium-s_seasonal_malaria_chemoprevention_program lists some funding opportunities that are not being filled at this time because they are not sufficiently cost-effective and/or time-sensitive. SOme of them may be funded in the future.

Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup grants from the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund to Malaria Consortium in 2021 at GiveWell's recommendation suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: See https://www.givewell.org/charities/malaria-consortium/November-2020-version for GiveWell's review of Malaria Consortium at the time of the grant recommendation. Affected countries: Burkina Faso|Chad|Nigeria|Togo.
33,926,000.0012020-02Global health/malaria/seasonal malaria chemopreventionhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/malaria-consortium-seasonal-malaria-chemoprevention-february-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#Malaria_Consortium-s_SMC_program says: "This funding will enable Malaria Consortium to spend: (1) $30.1 million to fully fill its funding gaps in its three current countries of operation—Burkina Faso, Chad, and Nigeria—through 2021. This figure includes scaling up operations to cover additional areas in each country. Cost-effectiveness: 16x cash, (2) $3.8 million to expand its SMC program to a fourth country. Malaria Consortium has told us that this will most likely be Togo. Cost-effectiveness: 18x cash for Togo."

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 model this funding gap as 17x cash. In addition, Malaria Consortium performs well on our qualitative measures of organizational strength; this assessment supports our view that this gap is highly cost-effective to fill. The funding gap is time-sensitive. Malaria Consortium will need to begin planning for 2021 in 2020." https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/qualitative-assessments has the lined qualitative assessments. https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Principles_we_followed lists the general principles followed.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is chosen to be sufficient to cover Malaria Consortium's funding gaps till 2021. https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Malaria_Consortium-s_SMC_program says: "We are choosing not to recommend that Open Philanthropy fill some or all of Malaria Consortium's funding gap for 2022—a funding gap of $35.6 million at an estimated cost-effectiveness of 17x cash—in order to preserve our options for the future. We do not expect that having funding for 2022 would affect how Malaria Consortium operates in 2020."

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: 23

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/2019/open-philanthropy-recommendation#Malaria_Consortium-s_SMC_program says: "However, we think that the 2022 funding gap is the most cost-effective unfilled option among our top charities, and we're excited for individual donors to close this gap. Malaria Consortium's SMC program is our recommendation for donors who want to give directly to a specific charity."

Donor retrospective of the donation: Malaria Consortium would continue to remain a GiveWell top charity in 2020 and 2021, and receive several additional grants from the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund and Open Philanthropy on GiveWell's recommendation.

Other notes: See https://www.givewell.org/charities/malaria-consortium/November-2019-version for GiveWell's review of Malaria Consortium at the time of the grant recommendation. Affected countries: Burkina Faso|Chad|Nigeria|Togo.
26,600,000.0032018-12Global health/malaria/seasonal malaria chemopreventionhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-health-and-development/miscellaneous/malaria-consortium-seasonal-malaria-chemoprevention-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#Malaria_Consortium-s_seasonal_malaria_chemoprevention_program

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant for the seasonal malaria chemoprevention program, which has GiveWell top charity status; see https://www.givewell.org/charities/malaria-consortium The program distributes preventive anti-malarial drugs to children 3 to 59 months old in order to prevent illness and death from malaria

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Malaria Consortium's seasonal malaria chemoprevention program is recommended as a GiveWell top charity for these reasons: (1) program with a strong evidence base and strong cost-effectiveness, (2) track record of demonstrated past success, (3) room for more funding. The full GiveWell review is at https://www.givewell.org/charities/malaria-consortium 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. Based on these, GiveWell decided to recommend fully funding Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention program in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Chad.

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: The discretionary regranting decisions https://blog.givewell.org/2019/03/29/allocation-of-discretionary-funds-from-q4-2018/ (to Malaria Consortium) and https://blog.givewell.org/2019/06/12/allocation-of-discretionary-funds-from-q1-2019/ (to Against Malaria Foundation) can be viewed as a retrospective on this decision, insofar as they consider further funding gaps for Malaria Consortium after the grant

Other notes: Even accounting for this grant, GiveWell identifies a remaining funding gap of $43.9 million for Malaria Consortium, and identifies Malaria Consortium as the best target for donations at the current margin. See https://www.givewell.org/charities/malaria-consortium/November-2018-version for GiveWell's review of Malaria Consortium at the time of the grant recommendation. Affected countries: Nigeria|Burkina Faso|Chad.