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
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Facebook page | ayni.institute |
| Website | http://www.ayni.institute |
| Donate page | https://www.eservicepayments.com/cgi-bin/Vanco_ver3.vps?appver3=Fi1giPL8kwX_Oe1AO50jRoo3RD3OWJuCJfAhCXOxXeNEOVZpPcIw91FrYieK2rA42EvVVAEjqawDomKT1pboubXjp_TwG8kyxMbMiK5GWvE=&ver=3 |
| Twitter username | AyniTeam |
| Open Philanthropy Project grant review | http://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-training |
| Launch date | 2013 |
Full donee page for donee Ayni Institute
| 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 | 4 | 110,000 | 166,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | 110,000 | 110,000 | 110,000 | 250,000 | 250,000 | 264,000 | 264,000 | 264,000 |
| Criminal justice reform | 4 | 110,000 | 166,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | 110,000 | 110,000 | 110,000 | 250,000 | 250,000 | 264,000 | 264,000 | 264,000 |
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 | 2019 | 2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Criminal justice reform (filter this donor) | 4 | 664,000.00 | 264,000.00 | 400,000.00 |
| Total | 4 | 664,000.00 | 264,000.00 | 400,000.00 |
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 4) | Donation date | Cause area | URL | Influencer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 264,000.00 | 1 | Criminal justice reform/movement growth | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-criminal-justice-reform-coaching | Chloe Cockburn Jesse Rothman | Donation process: Discretionary grant co-decided by Chloe Cockburn, the Program Officer for criminal justice reform Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support coaching and training on strategy, operational capacity, leadership, and scaling. The Ayni Institute plans to provide this support to other organizations working on criminal justice reform. Donor reason for selecting the donee: No explicit reason given, but it is likely for reasons similar to the original March 2016 grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-training and the December 2016 followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-and-metrics Other notes: Affected countries: United States; announced: 2019-05-18. |
|
| 250,000.00 | 2 | Criminal justice reform/movement growth | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-and-metrics | Chloe Cockburn | Donation process: Discretionary grant decided by Chloe Cockburn, the Program Officer for criminal justice reform Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support further research, communication and training on movement ecology and movement metrics. The Ayni Institute aims to identify metrics that can be used to determine both 1) the capacity of movements to create or capitalize on trigger events to shift public opinion, and 2) their capacity to absorb increased participation in high-profile moments. Donor reason for selecting the donee: The Open Phil grant writeup says: "We believe that the resulting analysis of how to strategically fund the movement ecosystem may help to inform the way that we and other funders think about supporting movement-building, both in criminal justice reform and in other areas. We believe that the creation of movement metrics, if successful, is likely to increase the effectiveness of funding for social movements and attract new funders who currently do not support social movements due to the lack of measurability." Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Although no explicit timing-related considerations are discussed, the timing is likely based on the approximate end of life of the earlier $110,000 grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-training made March 2016 Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-criminal-justice-reform-coaching in March 2019 suggests that this grant was considered successful, but there is no explicit retrospective of the grant Other notes: Affected countries: United States; announced: 2017-02-02. |
|
| 40,000.00 | 4 | Criminal justice reform/movement growth | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-momentum-training | Chloe Cockburn | Donation process: Discretionary grant decided by Chloe Cockburn, the Program Officer for criminal justice reform Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support a “Momentum” training session for black organizers, including from the Movement for Black Lives. This buids on a March 2016 grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-training Donor reason for selecting the donee: Likely same as for the March 2016 grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-training Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Likely based on the budget for running the training, but no explicit reason or budget details provided Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Given that this grant happens about four months after the first grant to develop movement ecology, this likely reflects the amount of time it took for the Ayni Institute to use the money from the first grant to make enough progress to be ready to run a workshop Donor retrospective of the donation: Further donations to the Ayni Institute, such as https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-and-metrics (December 2016), suggest that the grant was considered successful, but there is no explicit retrospective of the grant Other notes: Affected countries: United States; announced: 2016-08-01. |
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| 110,000.00 | 3 | Criminal justice reform/movement growth | https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-training | Chloe Cockburn | Donation process: Grant investigator Chloe Cockburn has participated in an Ayni Institute training, and has also spoken at some length with others who have participated in trainings, in all cases run by the same people who will be responsible for the training funded by this grant. Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant to support the Ayni Institute's work on movement ecology. Ayni plans to formulate this analysis into a training, and to recruit as participants for this training leaders from the criminal justice field, two other major social reform fields, and others. The goal is for the criminal justice participants to come away with a shared language that enables them to deeply collaborate and build more advanced strategies together. Including participants from other movements in the training is intended to provide outside perspectives and new ideas. The Ayni Institute intends to provide additional training and support beyond the initial convening with the aim of sustaining and deepening connections between the participants and continuing to improve the analysis developed at the workshop. Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator Chloe Cockburn, also the Open Phil Program Officer for Criminal Justice Reform, believes that "the lack of shared language and coordination between groups seeking criminal justice reform will limit the reach and impact of reforms." She is "impressed by Ayni’s rigorous training development process, sophisticated pedagogy, and rich analysis. She believes this training has a high probability of being very beneficial to at least some participants." Risks are reservations are also noted on the grant page, but not considered serious enough to prevent making the grant Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount seems to be determined based on a budget submitted by the Ayni Institute, available at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/files/Grants/Ayni_Institute/Ayni_proposal_outline.pdf Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grants https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-momentum-training to support Momentum training and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/ayni-institute-movement-ecology-and-metrics to continue developing movement ecology suggest that the Open Philanthropy Project considered the grant successful Other notes: Grant was made via Centre Presente, on the recommendation of program officer Chloe Cockburn. It was intended to sponsor the development and running of a training on the topic of movement ecology. Affected countries: United States; announced: 2016-04-19. |