Open Philanthropy donations made to Protect the People

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

Full donee page for donee Protect the People

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 2 50,000 300,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 550,000 550,000 550,000 550,000 550,000
Migration policy 2 50,000 300,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 550,000 550,000 550,000 550,000 550,000

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 2016
Migration policy (filter this donor) 2 600,000.00 600,000.00
Total 2 600,000.00 600,000.00

Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.

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

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (2 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 2)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
50,000.0022016-10Migration policy/labor mobility/seasonal migrationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-exit-grantAlexander Berger Donation process: This exit grant came out of the evaluation process for the previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti (2016-02) including a conversation https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Sarah_Williamson_09-09-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-09-09).

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant is an exit grant to "to close out [Open Philanthropy's] support of its program helping workers from Haiti to access seasonal work in the U.S." https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/october-2017-update-protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti more specifically says it was to "ensure a safe return to Haiti for the workers whose travel they had facilitated, and to continue pursuing funding from other sources."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/october-2017-update-protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti gives more background on the reasons for the original grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti (2016-02) and the grant outcomes. The original grant write-up already indicated plans to not renew if fewer than 75 workers participated in 2016, and only 58 participated, explaining the "exit" part. The reason the grant was made at all despite the reduced participation was due to unexpected costs incurred by the grantee running the program, and Open Phil's desire to help the grantee smoothly continue the 2016 program.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The relatively small amount was likely chosen to be enough to support the intended uses of funds to close out the program and seek additional funding.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant timing is near the end of 2016, by which time the performance of the original grant is known, and the need for additional funds to facilitate the safe return of workers is also known.

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

Donor retrospective of the donation: The October 2017 update https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/october-2017-update-protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti#Updates_since_deciding_not_to_renew mentions that two of the farms participating in the 2016 program ended up using 59 Haitian H-2As in 2017, suggesting a possibility that the work done in 2016 had already created a small sustainable flow, something that they had not expected when deciding to exit. Open Phil says: "We hope to monitor the flow of Haitian workers to U.S. farms in future years, and we acknowledge that we may turn out to have been mistaken in withdrawing funding at the point when we did."

Other notes: The program funded by the grant would be covered by The Economist in https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/01/26/visas-as-aid (January 2017). Unfortunately for the long-term prospects in terms of creating sustainable flows, Haiti was removed from the Eligible Countries List for H-2A visas by the United States government on 2018-01-18. See https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-01-18/pdf/2018-00812.pdf and https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/dhs-countries-eligible-h2-visas.aspx for more details. Affected countries: United States|Haiti; announced: 2017-10-20.
550,000.0012016-02Migration policy/labor mobility/seasonal migrationhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haitiAlexander Berger Donation process: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti#Process refers to a previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti#Case_for_this_grant (2014-07) to support seasonal migration from Haiti. The idea for the current grant arose from discussions with the current grantee, Protect the People, that had provideed support on the project funded by the previous grant. The grant page says: "We negotiated the grant structure described above to ensure that PTP would have adequate funds to attempt the project but to limit our downside in case PTP faces barriers and is unable to reach the desired number of participants." https://files.givewell.org/files/shallow/international-migration/grants/ptp_gv_qa.pdf has a Q&A with Protect the People about the program. $50,000 of the grant was made personally by Cari Tuna due to urgency.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti#Grant_structure says the grant is "to continue to try to facilitate Haitian access to the H-2A program for another year. [...] The grant is structured conditionally, such that if the project enables more than 75 Haitian workers to use H-2A visas to work in the U.S., we will provide PTP with additional funding to cover costs for the additional workers. This support will scale up proportionally with the number of workers participating in the project, up to a maximum grant total of $1,000,000 for 2016. PTP currently projects that around 150 Haitian workers will be able to participate in the program in 2016, though our best guess is that the total is likely to be lower (because we anticipate that some of the problems previously encountered in the visa process may recur)."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti#Case_for_the_grant says: "We estimate that each Haitian worker in the U.S. earns about $5,000 for about 3 months of work. Since agricultural workers in Haiti earn around $1,000 per year, this increase in income is substantial. Although the pilot project failed to enable many Haitians to work in the U.S., we think that this could have been due to bad luck more than fundamental problems in the program design." The section further details challenges with the earlier grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti (2014-07) and updates the potential upside estimate from $50 million to $25 million.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is about 1/3 the amount of the previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti (2014-07), with the reduction reflective of the desire to take a more cautious approach after the previous grant underperformed.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The grant happens after sufficient evaluation time has passed for the previous grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/usaim-seasonal-migration-haiti (2014-07), and after discussions between Open Philanthropy and Protect the People on the grant structure.
Intended funding timeframe in months: 12

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti#Plans_for_learning_and_follow-up says that further funding is unlikely if the grant enables fewer than 75 workers to participate. Future funding is uncertain if the grant enables between 75 and 150 workers. Future funding is highy likely if more than 150 workers participate, with a goal of transition to sustainability without philanthropic support.

Donor retrospective of the donation: Followup conversation with Sarah Williamson at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/Sarah_Williamson_09-09-16_%28public%29.pdf (2016-09-09). 58 workers would participate in the program in 2016, leading Open Philanthropy to provide a $50,000 exit grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/protect-people-exit-grant (2016-10). https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/immigration-policy/october-2017-update-protect-people-seasonal-migration-haiti has a detailed retrospective of the whole effort.

Other notes: The program funded by the grant would be covered by The Economist in https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/01/26/visas-as-aid (January 2017). Unfortunately for the long-term prospects in terms of creating sustainable flows, Haiti was removed from the Eligible Countries List for H-2A visas by the United States government on 2018-01-18. See https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-01-18/pdf/2018-00812.pdf and https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/dhs-countries-eligible-h2-visas.aspx for more details. Affected countries: United States|Haiti; announced: 2016-02-29.