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We publish blog posts to explain our general philosophy on giving, reflect on our progress thus far, announce our plans for the future, and more.

Blogs

The Story Behind Our New Name

Naina Bajekal

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Naina Bajekal

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Announcements

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November 18, 2025

A coefficient multiplies the value of whatever it’s paired with, just as we aim to amplify impact through our research, grantmaking, and partnerships. We knew that any name would take some getting used to, but this one captured something essential about our work.
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Strategic Cause Selection

Reflections

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November 18, 2025

Philanthropists tend to choose causes based on personal experience, geographic proximity, or emotional appeal. This approach is understandable — personal connection is what motivates many people to give in the first place. But some causes offer far greater opportunities for impact than others: the same donation might save ten lives in one place but a thousand in another.
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Hits-Based Giving

Reflections

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November 18, 2025

One of our core values is our tolerance for philanthropic risk. We’ve seen that the biggest philanthropic wins often come from ideas that seem unlikely to succeed, so we’re open to funding a lot of work that could fail in order to find a few transformative successes.
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Cost-Effectiveness

Reflections

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November 18, 2025

Measuring cost-effectiveness helps us compare very different opportunities and direct funding to where it can do the most good.
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Worldview Diversification

Blog Posts

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November 18, 2025

When choosing which causes to support, we face difficult moral and empirical questions without clear "right" answers. To address this uncertainty, we divide resources across several broad approaches to doing good, each grounded in a different worldview.
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Guide to Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations for Global Health and Wellbeing

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Peter Hickman

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Blog Posts

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November 12, 2025

Editor’s note: This article was published under our former name, Open Philanthropy.   Open Philanthropy program staff often create back-of-the-envelope calculations (BOTECs) as they decide whether to make a grant. This is especially common for areas in our Global Health and Wellbeing (GHW) portfolio. We introduced BOTECs in a recent post:...
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AI Program Update: Navigating Transformative AI

Emily Oehlsen

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Emily Oehlsen

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Announcements

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October 15, 2025

Our Potential Risks from Advanced AI program is now called Navigating Transformative AI. While the vast majority of work we fund is still aimed at catastrophic risk mitigation, the new name better captures the full breadth of what we aim to support: work that helps humanity to successfully navigate the transition to transformative AI.
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