Open Philanthropy’s mission is to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us.
Read more about our history, our team, and our focus areas.
Press Kit
Table of Contents
1. The basics
2. Past coverage of Open Philanthropy and its grantees
- You’ll never guess the culprit in a global lead poisoning mystery (09/23/2024)
- We can protect millions of kids from a global killer — without billions of dollars (Washington Post 9/22/2024)
- Vanity Fair: Women Making Philanthropic Strides 09/11/2024
- Researchers have found a protein that seems to protect brain cells from Alzheimer’s (NPR, 7/24/2024)
- Emily Oehlsen on Open Philanthropy’s approach to choosing causes (VoxDevTalks, 7/3/2024)
- A Simple New Technique Could Make Your Eggs More Humane (New York Times, 3/28/2024)
- Survey: AI experts’ minds were blown by last year’s pace of AI development (Mashable, 1/6/2024)
- Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down (80,000 Hours, 11/1/2023)
- Amanda Hungerford on Open Philanthropy’s funding for farmed animal welfare (How I Learned to Love Shrimp, 8/10/2023)
- A Deep Dive Into Two of Open Philanthropy’s EA-Inspired Programs (Inside Philanthropy, 3/16/2023)
- Open Philanthropy launches programs for South Asia, global aid work (Devex, 1/6/2023)
- Former CEO Holden Karnofsky on the New York Times’s Ezra Klein Podcast (the New York Times’s The Ezra Klein Show, 10/5/2021)
- Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways (80,000 Hours, 7/12/2021)
- Giving in the Light of Reason (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 5/17/18)
- Wringing the Most Good Out of a Facebook Fortune (Chronicle of Philanthropy, 12/1/15) (non-paywalled pdf)
- You have $8 billion. You want to do as much good as possible. What do you do? (Vox, 4/24/15)
- Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy (Washington Post, 12/26/14)
See more media coverage about our work and that of our grantees here.
3. Frequently asked questions
3.1 What is Open Philanthropy?
Open Philanthropy is a philanthropic funder. Our mission is to do as much good as possible with the resources available to us. Meet our staff here.
3.2 What is the relationship between Open Philanthropy, Good Ventures, and GiveWell?
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 Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz. 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 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.
3.3 Where does the money for Open Philanthropy come from?
Our main funders are Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook and Asana, though we have partnered with other donors on a case-by-case basis. Over the long run, we aspire to work with many donors, and to inform more giving than our current primary funders can do on their own, in order to maximize our impact and do as much good as possible.
3.4 Is Open Philanthropy related to Facebook?
Open Philanthropy is not related to Facebook. Dustin Moskovitz co-founded Facebook in 2004 and left the company in 2008. He and Cari Tuna created Good Ventures in 2011. Good Ventures began working closely with GiveWell on Open Philanthropy later that year. In 2017, Open Philanthropy began operating independently.
3.5 What are Open Philanthropy’s current priorities? How were they chosen?
To date, we have identified two broad categories of grantmaking priorities: Global Health and Wellbeing and Global Catastrophic Risks. A list of our current focus areas is available here. More on our cause selection process is here.