Note: the Open Philanthropy Project was previously known as GiveWell Labs.
Historically, GiveWell has sought evidence-backed, thoroughly vetted, underfunded charities for individual donors to support. We've looked for unusually straightforward, evidence-backed value propositions such as "$X delivers Y bednets, which saves Z lives."
More recently, we have been broadening our work via the Open Philanthropy Project (formerly GiveWell Labs), which we work on in partnership with Good Ventures. This project looks for the best ways to accomplish good with philanthropy - no matter what form and what sector. Through this project, we are open - among other things - to funding political advocacy, scientific research, startup organizations with no track record, projects with no precedent, and projects with extremely long time horizons.
Criteria
The Open Philanthropy Project does not use the same criteria we've used for our traditional work. It remains committed to making the best use we can of our limited resources (time, staff capacity) to find the best giving opportunities possible, and continuing to practice extreme transparency in the process. Our goal is not to apply the "evidence-backed/thoroughly-vetted/underfunded" framework to causes where it may be out of place, but rather to improve the level of transparency and public dialogue around how to make the most of one's giving (even if, for many causes, such dialogue revolves around heavily intangible and intuition-laden ideas).
More Information
- Open Philanthropy Project website
- Blog posts on the Open Philanthropy Project (reverse chronological order)
- Our list of investigations of philanthropic causes
- Our list of conversation notes
- Our History of Philanthropy project, which seeks to find and produce better information on what philanthropy has historically succeeded and failed at