Open Philanthropy Project (formerly GiveWell Labs)

Note: The Open Philanthropy Project was formerly known as GiveWell Labs. Before the launch of the Open Philanthropy Project Blog, this post appeared on the GiveWell Blog. Uses of “we” and “our” in the below post may refer to the Open Philanthropy Project or to GiveWell as an organization. Additional comments may be available at the original post.

GiveWell and Good Ventures have launched a new website for the Open Philanthropy Project. This is the new name and brand for the project formerly known as GiveWell Labs.

The mission of the Open Philanthropy Project is to learn how to give as effectively as we can and share our findings openly so that anyone can build on them. The word “open” refers both to being (a) open to many possibilities (considering many possible focus areas, and trying to select the ones that will lead to as much good accomplished as possible) and (b) open about our work (emphasizing transparency and information sharing).

We have launched a new brand to replace the “GiveWell Labs” brand, because:

• GiveWell and Good Ventures work as partners on the Open Philanthropy Project, and we wanted a name that would not be exclusively associated with one organization or the other.
• We feel it is important to start separating the GiveWell brand from the Open Philanthropy Project brand, since the latter is evolving into something extremely different from GiveWell’s work identifying evidence-backed charities serving the global poor. A separate brand is a step in the direction of possibly conducting the two projects under separate organizations, though we aren’t yet doing that (more on this topic at our overview of plans for 2014 published earlier this year).

For now, the Open Philanthropy Project website provides only a basic overview, and links to GiveWell and Good Ventures for more information in many cases. We will continue posting updates on the Open Philanthropy Project to GiveWell’s blog, Twitter and Facebook; the Open Philanthropy Project’s Twitter and Facebook feeds will simply mirror those updates. The Open Philanthropy Project is currently only a brand (name, logo, website) rather than an organization, and it continues to be the case that the staff members who work on the Open Philanthropy Project are formally affiliated with either GiveWell or Good Ventures.

We plan to edit much of the content on our website to reflect this update, though we will not necessarily remove all previous references to GiveWell Labs.