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.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions) | GiveWell Good Ventures |
| Best overview URL | https://causeprioritization.org/Open%20Philanthropy%20Project |
| Facebook username | openphilanthropy |
| Website | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/ |
| Donations URL | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants |
| Twitter username | open_phil |
| PredictionBook username | OpenPhilUnofficial |
| Page on philosophy informing donations | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/vision-and-values |
| Grant application process page | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/guide-for-grant-seekers |
| Regularity with which donor updates donations data | continuous updates |
| Regularity with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update) | continuous updates |
| Lag with which donor updates donations data | months |
| Lag with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update) | days |
| Data entry method on Donations List Website | Manual (no scripts used) |
| Org Watch page | https://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
We do not have any donee information for the donee The Degrees Initiative in our system.
Full donee page for donee The Degrees Initiative
| Item | Value |
|---|
| Cause area | Count | Median | Mean | Minimum | 10th percentile | 20th percentile | 30th percentile | 40th percentile | 50th percentile | 60th percentile | 70th percentile | 80th percentile | 90th percentile | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 3 | 2,000,000 | 2,500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 |
| Climate change | 3 | 2,000,000 | 2,500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 |
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 | 2021 | 2017 | 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Climate change (filter this donor) | 3 | 7,500,000.00 | 5,000,000.00 | 2,000,000.00 | 500,000.00 |
| Total | 3 | 7,500,000.00 | 5,000,000.00 | 2,000,000.00 | 500,000.00 |
Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)
Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)
There are no documents associated with this combination of donor and donee.
Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations
| Amount (current USD) | Amount rank (out of 3) | Donation date | Cause area | URL | Influencer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5,000,000.00 | 1 | Climate change/geoengineering/solar radiation management | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/degrees-initiative-general-support-2021 | Jacob Trefethen | Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: The grant page says: "This funding is intended to support research in lower- and middle-income countries on the potential physical and socio-political implications of solar radiation management (SRM)." Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "We see supporting researchers, especially those outside the Global North, as a promising step towards improving governance around SRM. And we continue to view SRM governance as a field that is largely neglected by philanthropists and governments." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): No explicit reason for timing is given; the grant is made about one year after the end of the three-year timeframe of the preceding grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support-2017 (2017-09). Intended funding timeframe in months: 36 Other notes: Grant made via Prism the Gift Fund. |
|
| 2,000,000.00 | 2 | Climate change/geoengineering/solar radiation management | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support-2017 | Claire Zabel | Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: The grant page says: "The funding is intended to help support SRMGI’s on-going governance work related to solar radiation management (SRM), and will additionally help support a new research fund for modeling the impacts of SRM across the developing world, called the Developing Country Impacts Modeling Analysis for SRM (DECIMALS)." Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "In short, our impression is that there is globally very little work focused on improving the governance of potential SRM implementation, and we therefore consider funding SRMGI as an opportunity to build a sparse field. Additionally, we are inclined to agree with SRMGI’s case that it is important to increase the engagement of experts in the developing world with SRM governance issues." It links to the previous grant page https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support for more details. Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/degrees-initiative-general-support-2021 suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: Grant via the Environmental Defense Fund. At the time, the grantee is called the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative. Intended funding timeframe in months: 36; announced: 2017-10-09. |
|
| 500,000.00 | 3 | Climate change/geoengineering/solar radiation management | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support | -- | Donation process: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support#Our_process says: "We came across SRMGI while investigating SRM governance as a cause, as part of our research into geoengineering more broadly. The Open Philanthropy Project spoke with Andy Parker several times, and with a number of other geoengineering scholars, both to learn about the cause as a whole, and to learn more about SRMGI as an organization." There are links to public notes of several followup conversations. Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support#Proposed_use_of_funds gives the breakdown: "$230,000: Support staff from the Environmental Defense Fund, TWAS, and/or the Royal Society, including consultants; $145,000: Hold seven meetings in six different regions of the world (the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, South East Asia, South America, South Asia (two meetings), and the Middle East and North Africa.); $90,000: Fund follow-ups to regional meetings, perhaps including the support of the Pan-African Working Group, and/or a Global Forum Meeting, and/or an annual alumni summer school; $35,000: Outreach, including at UN negotiations, publishing regular articles and reports, and a revamped website." Donor reason for selecting the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support#Case_for_the_grant says: "We consider this grant to be an opportunity to build up a sparse field. Our impression that SRMGI is well-connected in the field, has a neutral stance regarding what sorts of SRM research ought to be done, and acts as a facilitator of conversation, leads us to believe it is well-suited to helping us better understand SRM. We are inclined to agree with SRMGI’s case for increasing the engagement of experts in the developing world with SRM governance issues, based on the arguments that people in developing countries will be most affected by environmental change, that SRM governance must include the perspectives of people in developing countries, and that this inclusion must happen earlier rather than later in the research and governance process." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support#Proposed_use_of_funds gives the breakdown: "$230,000: Support staff from the Environmental Defense Fund, TWAS, and/or the Royal Society, including consultants; $145,000: Hold seven meetings in six different regions of the world (the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, South East Asia, South America, South Asia (two meetings), and the Middle East and North Africa.); $90,000: Fund follow-ups to regional meetings, perhaps including the support of the Pan-African Working Group, and/or a Global Forum Meeting, and/or an annual alumni summer school; $35,000: Outreach, including at UN negotiations, publishing regular articles and reports, and a revamped website." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The timing was likely determined by the time it took to vet the cause area and the grantee through a series of conversations. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support#Our_process gives dates for the conversations leading up to the grant starting May 22, 2012 and ending March 25, 2014. Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support#Follow_up_expectations says: "The extent to which we follow up on this grant will depend on how much capacity we have to devote to causes outside our top priorities within global catastrophic risks. In following this grant, we would hope to learn more about the field of SRM governance and about how developing world engagement affects governance." Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support-2017 (September 2017) suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee. Other notes: Grant via the Environmental Defense Fund. At the time, the grantee is called the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/miscellaneous/solar-radiation-management-governance-initiative-general-support#Risks_to_the_success_of_the_grant lists potential risks to the success of the grant. Followup conversation with grantee team at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/sites/default/files/SRMGI_09-02-16_%28public%29.pdf on 2016-09-02. Announced: 2016-02-10. |