Coefficient Giving is significantly accelerating its global health and wellbeing giving in 2026-27. Our recent commitment of $1 billion to GiveWell’s recommendations is the largest single shift in this direction so far – but we’re scaling ambitiously across our entire portfolio. We want to spend faster within our existing funds, encourage our grantees to make more ambitious plans, and find new areas that could absorb substantially more funding.
With potentially billions in new philanthropic capital becoming available in the coming years, we think a big question will be whether there are enough concrete, fundable plans (and leaders ready to execute them at scale) to put that money to work as cost-effectively as possible.
As one part of this, we’re introducing Launchpad Funds: a request for proposals to seed new funds or scale existing ones that tackle important, underfunded problems in global health and wellbeing, each led by a general manager accountable for making progress on the problem.
Scaling now to build capacity for the future
As we discussed in our $1 billion GiveWell announcement, our current increase in giving is a one-off surge from our partners at Good Ventures – the foundation of Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz. We want to spend more now in large part because we expect substantially more funding to become available for global health and wellbeing in the future.
That expectation pushes us to spend faster today for two reasons. First, we think impact is likely to be maximized by smoothing spending over time rather than saving up for a larger spike later. This means funders with more liquidity now, like Good Ventures, should pull their spending forward to account for funders who have less liquidity but will likely be spending more later.
Second, many of the best opportunities can’t scale overnight. Organizations need time to develop more ambitious plans, hire, expand to new regions, and build infrastructure for their work. By spending more today, we hope to help create outstanding new organizations and encourage existing ones to grow so that they can effectively absorb much higher levels of future giving.
Accounting for volatility and risk
This plan is not without risk. The amount of future funding we anticipate coming into the ecosystem is the product of three highly uncertain values: the monetary value of some extremely volatile assets, the share of those assets that will go to philanthropy in the near-term, and the share of that philanthropy that will support global health and wellbeing. Despite that uncertainty, we currently believe that the case for accelerating spending remains strong — and that future funding is as likely to be much larger than we anticipate as it is to be low or zero.
We think the right response is to take action today. Surveying the range of risks, we’d rather make the best decision we can with today’s information and course-correct later than let uncertainty about the future stop us from taking potentially high-upside action now.
Building a stronger ecosystem
Global health and wellbeing already has a deeper philanthropic ecosystem than many of the fields Coefficient Giving works in; the Gates Foundation, Wellcome, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and many others have been funding — and doing — important work at large scale for many years. But we think there’s still room for many more funds and organizations focused on specific problems with general managers accountable for solving those problems, working alongside the large institutions that anchor the field today.
Our broader goal is to help build that stronger ecosystem: more funds and organizations aimed at important problems, more general managers accountable for solving them, and more institutions able to spend large amounts of new philanthropic capital cost-effectively. Whether through the expansion of existing organizations or funds or the creation of new ones, we think that targeted investments are key to reaching the next level of scale and impact.
We ultimately want the field to become less dependent on any single funder, including us. A healthy funding landscape has many organizations with their own views and deep expertise supporting important work at scale. That makes the field more resilient if any one funder changes course, creates more room for independent judgment about how to approach major problems, and reduces the risk of groupthink.
Introducing Launchpad Funds
Launchpad Funds is a request for proposals to seed new and scale existing general-manager-led funds addressing high-impact and underfunded problems in global health and wellbeing. A general-manager-led fund organizes philanthropic capital around a clearly defined problem, with one person accountable for solving it — not just for making good grants in the area, but for delivering the outcome, with the authority and budget to pursue it however they think best. We’ve used versions of this model in our own work, including through the Lead Exposure Action Fund (led by Tom Hird) and the Strep A Vaccine Fund (led by Katharine Collins).
We’re soliciting expressions of interest in two tracks: (1) pre-seed funding of $200k-$10m over up to 24 months to develop the idea and strategy for a new fund, and (2) seed funding of $10m-$50m+ over up to 36 months for funds ready to begin operating at scale.
In both tracks, we will put weight on a fund’s potential to absorb $100m+ (and hopefully much more) from other funders over the next several years. We care about this potential for scale because the best funds will be targeting important problems that deserve significant funding and attention. For details on what we aim to fund, example areas where we think new funds could have an outsized impact, and the application process, see the full RFP.
What this means for you
If you could see yourself as a general manager: We encourage you to submit an expression of interest. We welcome proposals from both idea generators and prospective general managers, and from new or existing organizations – and the pre-seed track can give you time to develop an idea, find the right leader, or both.
If you’re an existing grantee: We’re scaling ambitiously across the existing programs that already support you, and expect to have more funding available in the years ahead. We want the people and organizations we support to be thinking about what more funding could make possible. What would you do with substantially more funding? Are there exciting opportunities you’ve previously ruled out because of budget constraints? If so, we’d love to hear about them in your conversations with our team.
If you’re a funder: We’d love to work alongside you. We think there are more exceptional funding opportunities in the global health and wellbeing space than we can pursue alone, and part of our goal is to make it easier for donors to find them. The funds seeded through this RFP are designed to be multi-donor. If you’re giving at a significant scale in these areas, we’d love to compare notes and look for opportunities to work together. Please reach out at partnerwithus@coefficientgiving.org.