Open Philanthropy donations made to Eurogroup For Animals

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 Belgium
Facebook page eurogroupforanimals
Websitehttps://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/
Donate pagehttps://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/donate
Twitter usernameAct4AnimalsEU
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogroup_for_Animals
Open Philanthropy Project grant reviewhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-animals-fish-welfare
Launch date1980

Full donee page for donee Eurogroup For Animals

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 6 625,400 583,510 14,961 14,961 535,699 535,699 625,400 625,400 635,000 700,000 700,000 990,000 990,000
Animal welfare 6 625,400 583,510 14,961 14,961 535,699 535,699 625,400 625,400 635,000 700,000 700,000 990,000 990,000

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 2018 2017 2016
Animal welfare (filter this donor) 6 3,501,060.00 635,000.00 700,000.00 990,000.00 640,361.00 535,699.00
Total 6 3,501,060.00 635,000.00 700,000.00 990,000.00 640,361.00 535,699.00

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
Hi, I’m Luke Muehlhauser. AMA about Open Philanthropy’s new report on consciousness and moral patienthood2017-06-28Luke Muehlhauser Effective Altruism ForumOpen Philanthropy Dyrevernalliansen Albert Schweitzer Foundation for Our Contemporaries Eurogroup for Animals Reasoning supplementMoral patienthood/animal welfareLuke Muehlhauser hosts an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on the Effective Altruism Forum about his recently published report https://www.openphilanthropy.org/2017-report-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood (2017-06-06). The post gets 61 comments.
2017 Report on Consciousness and Moral Patienthood2017-06-06Luke Muehlhauser Open PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy Dyrevernalliansen Albert Schweitzer Foundation for Our Contemporaries Eurogroup for Animals Reasoning supplementMoral patienthood/animal welfareThe writeup announced at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/new-report-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood provides an overview of the findings of Luke Muehlhauser on moral patienthood -- a broad subject covering what creatures are the subject of moral concern. As described at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/radical-empathy Open Phil identifies with radical empathy, extending concern to beings considered of moral concern, even if they are not traditionally subjects of empathy and concern. See https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/1426329927423360/ for a discussion of the post on the Effective Altruism Facebook group, and see http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1c3/hi_im_luke_muehlhauser_ama_about_open/ for a related AMA. The writeup influenced the Open Philanthropy Project Farm Animal Welfare Officer Lewis Bollard to investigate and donate in the domain of fish welfare; see http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1c3/hi_im_luke_muehlhauser_ama_about_open/b8o for a comment clarifying this effect.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (6 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 6)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
635,000.0032020-05Animal welfare/factory farming/chicken/broiler chicken/layer chickenhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-animals-eu-chicken-welfare-advocacy-2020Amanda Hungerford Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support EU advocacy work for layer hen and broiler chicken welfare. This funding will enable Eurogroup for Animals to carry out EU welfare campaigns, provide regrants to cage-free advocacy groups, and research layer hen and broiler chicken welfare."

Other notes: Currency info: donation given as 586,000.00 EUR (conversion done via donor calculation); intended funding timeframe in months: 24; affected countries: European Union.
700,000.0022019-07Animal welfare/factory farming/legislative changehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-for-animals-european-union-trade-strategyAmanda Hungerford Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to work on inserting farm animal welfare language into European Union trade agreements. In the event that farm animal welfare language is included in any agreements, Eurogroup for Animals plans to work with in-country groups to help ensure any provisions in the language are implemented into national regulations or export practices."

Other notes: Currency info: donation given as 625,000.00 EUR (conversion done via donor calculation); intended funding timeframe in months: 24; affected countries: European Union.
990,000.0012018-09Animal welfare/factory farming/fishhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-animals-fish-welfare-2018Lewis Bollard Donation process: Grant by the Open Philanthropy Action Fund

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to continue and expand its fish welfare advocacy. This will allow Eurogroup for Animals to continue and expand its EU-level political advocacy, its support of its member groups’ advocacy in member states, and its support for corporate reforms and increased research funding on fish welfare."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "We consider building the field of fish welfare advocacy a priority because fish are likely the most numerous vertebrate farmed animals."

Other notes: Currency info: donation given as 853,415.00 EUR (conversion done via donor calculation); intended funding timeframe in months: 24; affected countries: European Union; announced: 2018-10-04.
625,400.0042017-09Animal welfare/factory farming/chickenhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-animals-eu-chicken-welfare-advocacyLewis Bollard Donation process: Grant by the Open Philanthropy Action Fund

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support EU advocacy work for chicken welfare. Eurogroup for Animals plans to use these funds on either broiler chicken or egg-laying hen welfare campaigns, depending upon which campaign appears most tractable."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says the grant "is one of several other recent grants made to strengthen the farm animal welfare movement in Europe."

Donor retrospective of the donation: The followup grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-animals-eu-chicken-welfare-advocacy-2020 suggests continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: Currency info: donation given as 530,000.00 EUR (conversion done via donor calculation); intended funding timeframe in months: 24; affected countries: European Union; announced: 2017-11-28.
14,961.0062017-05Animal welfare/factory farming/chicken/broiler chickenhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-animals-broiler-chicken-welfare-campaignLewis Bollard Donation process: Discretionary grant

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant "to support a two-day International Broiler Advocacy Meeting in Brussels in June 2017. During the meeting, participants—which included representatives from various European animal welfare advocacy groups—discussed issues and strategy related to broiler chicken welfare campaigns. Our funds covered associated organizing costs, including travel expenses for representatives of smaller advocacy groups."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "In preparation for the meeting, Eurogroup for Animals conducted an inventory of broiler welfare campaigns and an initial analysis of the relevant economic, legislative, and policy climate in Europe. Recent cage-free campaigns have been successful in Europe, and we hope a convening of this kind will facilitate collaboration and knowledge-sharing among various European groups as they consider launching new campaigns related to broiler chicken welfare."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is likely determined by the total of the expenses being covered. The donation was given as 13,242.00 EUR (conversion done via donor calculation).

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The timing (May 2017) is likely determined by the timing of the conference (June 2017).
Intended funding timeframe in months: 1

Other notes: Affected countries: European Union; announced: 2017-08-08.
535,699.0052016-12Animal welfare/factory farming/fishhttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/eurogroup-animals-fish-welfareLewis Bollard Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: The grant page says the grant is "to support its work to improve fish welfare."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "According to the best estimates we are aware of, fish account for about three quarters of all vertebrate farmed animals. Although conditions vary greatly by species and country, our understanding is that most fish are farmed for longer and in harsher conditions than those experienced by most other farm animals. Consequently, we find it plausible that fish farming could be the greatest cause of farm animal suffering globally. Despite this, we are not aware of any major animal welfare groups that have campaigns focused on fish welfare, and we therefore believe that it is important to start building this area of farm animal welfare advocacy."

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): This seems to be the time that Open Philanthropy decided to start focusing on fish, and Eurogroup for Animals appears to have been one of the few groups that was able to absorb fundsfoor fish welfare.

Donor retrospective of the donation: Several followup grants to the grantee, some for chicken and some for fish, suggest continued satisfaction with the grantee.

Other notes: This appears to be Open Philanthropy's first grant focused on fish welfare. Currency info: donation given as 498,928.00 EUR (conversion done via donor calculation); affected countries: European Union; announced: 2017-03-13.