The GiveWell Blog

Open Philanthropy Project update: U.S. policy

Last year, we set a “stretch goal” for the Open Philanthropy Project: There are two types of causes – global catastrophic risks and US policy issues – that we now feel generally familiar with (particularly with the methods of investigation). We also believe it is important for us to pick some causes for serious commitments…

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The path to biomedical progress

We’ve continued to look into scientific research funding for the purposes of the Open Philanthropy Project. This hasn’t been a high priority for the last year, and our investigation remains preliminary, but I plan to write several posts about what we’ve found so far. Our early focus has been on biomedical research specifically. Most useful new technologies…

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Thoughts on the Sandler Foundation

Note: Steve Daetz of the Sandler Foundation reviewed a draft of this post prior to publication. Previously, we wrote about the tradeoff between expertise and breadth in philanthropy. We noted the traditional “program officer” model of philanthropy, in which staff specialize in particular causes, and we contrasted it with some other possible models that sacrifice…

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Notes from November convening on our policy priorities

Last November, we held a day-long convening in Washington, D.C. to discuss possible priorities for Open Philanthropy Project work on U.S. policy. Our main goal was to present our picture of several policy issues, as well as to receive input to inform upcoming decisions about which issue(s) we should focus on. For each issue, we…

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Update on Open Philanthropy Project

Our last major public updates on the Open Philanthropy Project were our May and June posts on global catastrophic risks and U.S. policy. This post summarizes our progress since then and where we currently stand on our goal of committing to causes. Summary of currently ongoing activities Deep dives on priority causes for U.S. policy….

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Expert philanthropy vs. broad philanthropy

It seems to me that the most common model in philanthropy – seen at nearly every major staffed foundation – is to have staff who specialize in a particular cause (for example, specializing in criminal justice policy). Often, such staff have a very strong background in the cause before they come to the foundation, and they generally…

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