About Us

Open Philanthropy is a philanthropic funder. Our mission is to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us. Our main funders are Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook and Asana. Meet our staff here.

Open Philanthropy was originally incubated as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures.

GiveWell was founded in 2007 by Elie Hassenfeld and Holden Karnofsky, who had been trying to donate as effectively as possible. They aimed to help people facing a similar situation to their own: interested in giving to charity, short on time for researching their options, and looking for highly evidence-backed charities to support.

Good Ventures was founded in 2011 by Cari and Dustin. They were looking to give their fortune away in their lifetimes, and as effectively as possible, in order to help humanity thrive. Cari took the role of President, and spent her first year speaking with a broad range of people in search of advice.

The two organizations found that they shared a great deal in terms of their vision and values, and came to collaborate closely. The partnership started as GiveWell Labs in 2011, adopted the Open Philanthropy Project name (which has since been shortened to Open Philanthropy) in 2014, and began operating independently in 2017. Read more about our governance here.

Each year, we compare our progress with the goals we set forth in previous years and lay out our plans for the future. You can read our annual self-reviews here: