Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Staff – 2024

By Open Philanthropy @ 2024-12-03T04:17 (+115)

As we enter the holiday giving season, we’re continuing our tradition of sharing a list of giving opportunities suggested by Open Philanthropy program staff.

Notes on these suggestions:

• They fall within the cause areas Open Philanthropy has chosen to focus on.
• They should be seen as reasonably strong options in the relevant area. The person who made a suggestion isn’t necessarily arguing that their suggestion is the best option available across all areas, or better than every other opportunity within its area.
• Many of them were chosen because they are particularly good fits for individual donors. This shouldn’t be read as a list of our strongest grantees overall (though of course there may be overlap).
• The explanations we share are very brief and informal; we don’t expect readers to be persuaded unless they put a lot of weight on the judgment of the person making the suggestion.

Finally, these suggestions come from individual program staff^[1] or teams, and do not necessarily represent Open Philanthropy’s institutional “all things considered” view.

Global Health and Development

GiveWell’s Recommendations

Recommended by Alexander Berger

Note: I worked at GiveWell between 2011 and 2016, and Open Philanthropy was incubated there.

What is it? GiveWell recommends cost-effective, evidence-backed giving opportunities, primarily in global health.

Why I suggest it: GiveWell does unusually rigorous work to assess charitable opportunities and makes its recommendations and reasoning open and legible to the public (for instance, check out this writeup on a grant to New Incentives). GiveWell and its recommendations have been the largest beneficiary of my personal giving over the years.

While we currently expect GiveWell’s marginal opportunity to be slightly (0-30%) below Open Philanthropy’s cost-effectiveness bar for our global health and wellbeing giving in the coming years, I don’t think that should particularly deter you: those figures have huge error bars, much larger than the estimated differences in marginal cost-effectiveness. And in my view GiveWell offers an especially good “product” for individual donors — its exhaustive public writeups go a long way toward giving you confidence your funding will be well spent; it tracks and reports out on your donations; it has a real fundraising team to answer any additional questions should they arise, etc.

As Emily and I wrote last year: “When it comes to evidence-backed, scalable global health interventions, we don’t know of another resource for donors that is remotely comparable; GiveWell continues to set the gold standard in our eyes.”

Where to donate: You can donate here. I personally tend to give unrestricted or to the All Grants Fund.

Cures Within Reach

Recommended by Emily Oehlsen

What is it? Cures Within Reach (CWR), one of our recent Global Health R&D grantees, funds early-stage clinical trials to repurpose existing generic drugs to address new clinical indications.

Why I suggest it: Even when promising candidates exist, there are limited market incentives to investigate whether and how generic drugs can be re-applied to treat new diseases. Because these drugs are off-patent, no one firm has an incentive to fund expensive clinical trials testing the drug against a new indication, because many manufacturers can produce and sell the drug cheaply if the clinical trial proves successful. 

CWR helps fill this gap by conducting early-stage clinical trials with philanthropic funding, to explore whether existing drugs can provide new treatments for other indications/diseases – especially those that primarily affect people in low- and middle-income countries. CWR recently funded a study in Nigeria, which found that the generic drug atorvastatin, usually used for preventing heart disease, seems to reduce bacterial load in patients with tuberculosis when combined with standard antibiotics to treat TB. They believe this may increase completion rates for treatment of TB, which takes many months, and reduce onward TB transmission.

I recommend donating to CWR because their work can reach patients more quickly than “standard” drug development – these drugs are already available for sale, with known safety profiles from previous trials and ongoing use. What’s missing is evidence for new uses, that donors are well placed to fund.

Where to donate: You can donate here.

Center for Global Development

Recommended by Deena Mousa

What is it? The Center for Global Development (CGD) is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that conducts research on global poverty and promotes evidence-based policies that improve people’s lives in low- and middle-income countries.

Why I suggest it: We have supported CGD for many years, both in its general operations and its specific work on lead exposure, education, and global health. It has a strong track record, and its rigorous research continues to inform our work and the work of other philanthropic and global development actors. I recommend supporting CGD to anyone interested in helping to generate high-impact research in a wide range of development topics, including climate, education, financial inclusion, gender equality, global health policy, and migration.

Where to donate: You can donate here.

Waitlist Zero

Recommended by Deena Mousa

What is it? Waitlist Zero is a nonprofit dedicated to increasing kidney donations from living donors to address the organ shortage in the United States. They run awareness and education campaigns, and advocate for policies that support donors with follow-up care, wage reimbursements, and health insurance coverage.

Why I suggest it: Over 100,000 Americans are on the waitlist for a kidney transplant, but only around 20,000 will receive a transplant this year. Meanwhile, another 35,000 people will join the list, worsening a crisis that current policies fail to solve. This gap leads to tens of thousands of preventable deaths annually. Despite the rising prevalence of kidney failure, the number of living kidney donors declined in recent years.

In 2022, Waitlist Zero successfully advocated for the New York State Living Donors Support Act, which established a program to cover costs associated with living kidney donation for New York residents. By reducing financial barriers, this legislation has the potential to inspire more donations, driving down wait times and saving lives.

Waitlist Zero works to achieve systemic, evidence-based reform for a neglected yet tractable issue. Their work is a compelling example of how smaller organizations can create outsized impact by targeting high-leverage opportunities. 

Where to donate: You can donate here.

Effective Giving

Recommended by Melanie Basnak, who supports our Effective Altruism (Global Health and Wellbeing) program

“Effective giving” organizations, which raise funds for highly effective programs at other organizations, are a core focus of our program. Since I joined the program six months ago, I’ve been impressed with the collaboration and drive I’ve seen from the effective giving community as a whole. 

As James has written before, we think that these organizations are raising money for highly effective charities that would likely not have gone to such charities otherwise, and they generally do so at a high rate of return on donations. This year, I’ve chosen to highlight two effective giving organizations that I think have achieved exceptional results. While I’m not sure how they plan to use marginal funding, I have no reason to think they won’t spend it effectively. We think both organizations have room for more funding, because our program doesn’t fully fund them (to encourage them to develop a more diverse funding base).

Doneer Effectief

What is it? Doneer Effectief is a Dutch organization working to raise funds for highly effective charities. It shares information about effective giving, and provides an easy and tax-deductible way for people in the Netherlands and Belgium to donate to high-impact charities.

Why I suggest it: Despite having no paid staff until 2023, the organization has already moved ~$5M to effective charities for a much lower expenditure. I’ve been impressed by how quickly the org has scaled its fundraising, especially given that this was mostly the work of one full-time employee and 12 volunteers.

How to donate: You can contact Bram Schaper at bram@doneereffectief.nl.

Founders Pledge

What is it? Founders Pledge supports a global network of ~2000 entrepreneurs who have pledged to donate to the charitable sector. It seeks to maximize the impact of the pledged funding by providing donation recommendations based on its research and that of other impact-driven organizations. 

Why I suggest it: Last year alone, Founders Pledge moved >$80M to highly effective charities. Given its network, and its choice to focus on a promising niche, I believe that it can drive big donations in the coming years as well.

How to donate: You can donate here.

Farm Animal Welfare

EA Animal Welfare Fund

Recommended by the Farm Animal Welfare team

What is it? The EA Animal Welfare Fund seeks to fund the most promising neglected opportunities to reduce animal suffering. These are often newer groups in lower-income countries or work on overlooked issues. 

Why we suggest it: The Fund is a simple way to support a diverse portfolio of animal welfare groups, with a focus on tangible impact for animals. We consider the Fund’s six managers to be some of the most experienced and thoughtful researchers and advocates in the farm animal movement. The Fund’s open application provides individuals and new groups a funding opportunity, regardless of their existing networks. 

You can read about some of the Fund’s 2024 grants and the impact of earlier grants here. 

How to donate: You can donate here.

Forecasting

Sage Future

Recommended by Benjamin Tereick and Javier Prieto

What is it? Sage Future is a nonprofit that develops tools for quantitative reasoning and interactive explainers of AI capabilities and their effects. 

Why we suggest it: Sage built Fatebook for easily tracking personal predictions, as well as various tools for improving quantitative reasoning skills, when the organization was essentially a one-person team.  

Sage has since received support from our Forecasting program to make these tools more versatile, and to continue making its tools smoothly integrate with standard workflows, such as its integration with Chrome and Slack. (It’s also received support from our AI risk program for its work on the AI Digest.) We hope that these tools will make it easier for people and organizations involved in high-stakes decisions to track and improve their reasoning accuracy. Additional donations would enable Sage to hire contractors and roll out new features more quickly.

Aside from personal donations, we also strongly encourage you to try out Sage’s tools — for instance, predicting the success of your New Year’s resolutions.

How to donate: You can donate here.

Global Public Health Policy

Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention

Recommended by Chris Smith

What is it? The Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention (CPSP) is the only organization focused on preventing deaths by suicide from ingesting acutely toxic pesticides globally. It focuses on identifying pesticides commonly used in suicides and working with governments to de-register them.

Over 700,000 people each year die by suicide. Methods of suicide vary regionally depending on availability. In rural agricultural communities, deliberate ingestion of pesticides is among the most common methods, estimated to account for 110,000-168,000 deaths each year as of 2017. We believe there is compelling evidence from observational studies in multiple countries that selectively restricting access to the most acutely toxic pesticides can dramatically reduce the overall suicide rate.

Why I suggest it: CPSP has received funding from Open Philanthropy before. We think CPSP has had meaningful successes that should reduce deaths from suicide, although it will take time for reliable data to become available (because policy changes take time to implement, and subsequent health impacts take time to measure). One of these successes was in Nepal, where two pesticides were de-registered thanks to CPSP’s work collecting data on the pesticides most commonly used in suicide and then engaging with relevant officials.

I think CPSP is a good fit for individual donors because it is constrained by limited funding; I expect that further funding will be used cost-effectively. I also personally enjoy supporting smaller organizations as a donor; I find that this helps me “feel” the difference more than if I’d donated to a large organization. 

How to donate: You can donate here.

Innovation Policy

Speculative Technologies

Recommended by Matt Clancy and Jordan Dworkin

What is it? Speculative Technologies is a nonprofit industrial research lab that supports ambitious research and development programs, aiming to unlock “huge if true” technologies that are unlikely to be developed by academia or private industry.

Why we suggest it: In addition to its work on specific R&D programs, Spec Tech focuses on training the next generation of ambitious leaders of coordinated research programs through its BRAINS research accelerator program. As ARPA-like institutions spread throughout the scientific ecosystem (recent examples include ARIA, ARPA-H, NSF TIP, FROs, and more), their impact depends on finding managers who can effectively steward these unconventional, large-scale, collaborative efforts. And with the billions of dollars being spent through these programs each year, even small improvements to their efficiency can yield massive benefits to science and society. You can see the kinds of ambitious research projects BRAINS alums are working on here. We’ve been impressed with Spec Tech’s work thus far and believe that additional support could help them expand its reach and impact.

How to donate: You can donate here.

Land Use Reform

Center for Building in North America

Recommended by Sam Donald

What is it? The Center for Building in North America (CBNA) studies building codes and construction policy in the U.S. and proposes avenues for reform to reduce the cost of housing construction (thereby increasing the supply of housing, and reducing prices).

Why I suggest it: The majority of our grantees focus on state-level legislative reform, whereas CBNA is an example of a different approach: producing research that can influence policy at both the federal and state level. Its elevator report, which was featured in the New York Times and many other outlets, showed that it costs far more to install elevators in the U.S. than in other countries and made recommendations to reduce that discrepancy. It’s also helped make substantial progress on single-stair reform, another cost-reducing measure where the U.S. is out of step with international peers. 

Where to donate: You can donate here.

Potential Risks from Advanced AI

Americans for Responsible Innovation

Recommended by Nick Gabrieli

What is it? Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) is a recently founded advocacy organization that aims to advance policies that safeguard the public from harms caused by emerging technologies like AI while continuing to foster innovation. ARI works on many areas within AI policy, including current harms, national security, and emerging risks.

Why I suggest it: We place high importance on supporting advocacy for concrete policies to address risks from rapid advances in AI. Led by former Congressman and Under Secretary of Defense Brad Carson, ARI stands out for its highly experienced team, focus on important and tractable areas of policy, and commitment to maintaining independence (it doesn’t accept industry funding). It’s already seen early success in working across partisan lines to build broad coalitions — organizing an open letter signed by a range of industry leaders, academic institutions, and advocates urging Congress to authorize the AI Safety Institute.

How to donate: You can fill out ARI’s donor interest form here. Note that ARI is a 501(c)(4), not a 501(c)(3), so your donations are not tax-deductible.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

Recommended by Will Henshall

What is it? The Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) is a U.K.-based think tank that researches and advocates for policies that would make society more resilient to extreme risks. Its core focus areas are AI risk, biological risk, and government risk management.

Why I suggest it: Concerted government action will be required to address the risks that pandemics and emerging technologies pose. Such government action will depend in part on the actions of independent civil society organizations like CLTR. 

CLTR has a track record of rigorously developing policy ideas and thoughtfully sharing them with policymakers in the U.K. and internationally. More funding would allow them to do more such engagement, and to put more resources toward big-picture policy development and strategic research.

How to donate: You can donate here, or contact CLTR directly to learn more before donating. Open Philanthropy is currently matching donations to CLTR on a 1:1 basis. Note that while CLTR is a nonprofit, donations to the organization are not tax-deductible.

Horizon Institute for Public Service

Recommended by Nick Gabrieli

What is it? The Horizon Institute for Public Service offers a range of programs that help technical experts transition into government and policy careers focused on emerging technologies like AI, biotech, and space tech. 

Why I suggest it: We think the government’s ability to effectively navigate the development and societal impacts of emerging technologies depends significantly on its access to technical expertise. However, policymakers often struggle to attract and retain qualified experts. Horizon has helped technically knowledgeable fellows from a wide variety of backgrounds start careers in policy by securing positions in Republican and Democratic congressional offices, government agencies, and think tanks. In these positions, fellows work on key emerging technology policy issues; so far, they’ve received near-perfect host satisfaction ratings. Additionally, we think that Horizon is among our grantees that would most benefit from a more diverse funding base.

For donors who share our interest in global catastrophic risks, it’s worth noting that Horizon’s fellows and resources are focused on a wide range of policy issues, including many beyond that umbrella.

How to donate: You can reach out to Horizon to discuss donation opportunities here, or donate directly here.

Pooled funds

Recommended by Catherine Brewer

What are they? Pooled funds combine donations from multiple individual donors into a single funding vehicle managed by grantmakers.

Why I suggest them: Pooled funds have several advantages over individual donations. First, by combining resources from many donors, fund managers can make larger grants, which allows organizations to plan for multi-year programs and scale effectively. Second, fund managers often have more time or expertise than individual donors, and so are often better placed to evaluate donation opportunities. Third, fund managers frequently have access to unique funding opportunities that aren’t available to smaller donors. Finally, organizations often find it easier to process one large grant from a pooled fund than many smaller donations totaling the same amount.

For donors who are comfortable deferring to a fund’s decisions, pooled funds can be an excellent giving vehicle.

How to donate: Examples of pooled funds aimed at reducing GCRs include:

• The Emerging Challenges Fund (managed by Longview Philanthropy and hosted by Giving What We Can), which often funds opportunities with relatively clear paths to impact that would benefit from diverse funding sources. It’s a good fit for donors who prefer supporting more established organizations. For larger donors (>$1M), the Fund’s managers also provide customized grant recommendations and detailed outcome reporting. You can donate here.
• The Global Catastrophic Risks Fund (managed by Founders Pledge), which often funds time-sensitive opportunities. It’s a good fit for donors who want to see concrete outcomes within a relatively short timeframe. You can donate here.
• The Long-Term Future Fund (managed by Effective Altruism Funds), which often supports novel approaches that might be too risky for traditional grantmaking. It’s a good fit for donors who are comfortable backing early-stage, exploratory work. You can donate here.

1. ^{^}

   On that note: Jacob Trefethen, our Program Director who oversees global health R&D and innovation policy, recently published a personal blog post with a list of donation opportunities he recommends (across multiple areas). Scroll down to “Research and Development” for the list.