We believe it’s important for philanthropists to make deliberate, long-term commitments to causes (more). A “cause” is the field around a particular problem or opportunity — such as reforming the criminal justice system, preventing pandemics, or reducing the burden of Alzheimer’s disease — in which it’s necessary to develop expertise and networks to make good giving decisions. We refer to the causes we’re prioritizing most highly as focus areas. We’ve cast a wide net for potential focus areas, incorporating information on the history of philanthropy as well as what today’s foundations focus on. We’ve sought focus areas that are strong on some combination of the following criteria:
- Importance: How many individuals does this issue affect, and how deeply?
- Neglectedness: All else equal, we prefer causes that receive less attention from other actors, particularly other major philanthropists.
- Tractability: We look for clear ways in which a funder could contribute to progress.
So far, we’ve concentrated on selecting focus areas in four broad categories: U.S. policy, global catastrophic risks, scientific research, and global health & development. There’s a strong conceptual case that philanthropy could go particularly far in each of these categories, and they include most of the causes we’ve found compelling. Read more about our process here.
Global Health & Development
We believe that every life has equal value—and that philanthropic dollars can go particularly far by helping those who are living in poverty by global standards.
Most of our giving in this category is to organizations recommended by GiveWell, with whom we have a close relationship. We are excited to support evidence-backed, cost-effective interventions to save and improve lives in the developing world. An additional subset of our giving supports scientific research we believe can help address diseases that disproportionately afflict the global poor.
Thematic areas in Global Health & Development include:
U.S. Policy
Philanthropy can have an especially big impact by helping to improve policy.
Many compelling causes, such as Criminal Justice Reform and Immigration Policy, revolve around opportunities to improve government policy. Better policy could reduce both global and U.S. poverty, increase innovation, accelerate economic growth, and more. Our policy-oriented work focuses on the U.S. currently, for practical reasons.
Global Catastrophic Risks
Risks that could threaten humanity’s long-term future deserve special attention.
We believe that ongoing economic, social and technological progress will likely lead to an extraordinarily bright future. At the same time, as the world becomes more interconnected, the magnitude and implications of the worst-case scenarios may be rising. Governments and corporations aren’t necessarily incentivized to focus on preparing for potentially globally disruptive events, so we’re seeking opportunities to help civilization become more robust.
Scientific Research
We believe that scientific progress has been, and will continue to be, one of the biggest contributors to improvements in human well-being, and we hope to play a part in accelerating it.
We primarily support biomedical research but our interests are not limited to any particular field, disease, condition, or population. Instead, we seek to identify scientific research that has the potential for high impact and is under-supported by other funders. We are excited to support high-risk and unconventional science when the potential impact is sufficiently large.
