Also see Good Ventures (Nonprofit)

The Good Ventures Foundation was created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna in 2012. It was originally set up as a fund for Good Ventures, a related public charity that closed at the end of 2018. The Good Ventures Foundation is funded by Good Ventures LLC, a for-profit affiliate, and carries out the grantmaking responsibilities of the brand following Good Ventures’ dissolution. ¹

History

The Good Ventures Foundation is a private foundation created in 2012. ² Rather than employing full-time staff to conduct research and generate grant recommendations,³ the Foundation partners with GiveWell, a nonprofit that analyzes and recommends charities to support,⁴ and Open Philanthropy, a left-leaning funding nonprofit. ⁵

The Foundation considers a variety of factors when deciding whether to support a cause including the number of lives affected, the ability to solve or eliminate a problem, and how crowded the philanthropic scene is for each issue area. The Foundation applies the philanthropic philosophy of “effective altruism” to its grantmaking, which places an emphasis on quantifiable evidence and reason over emotion when determining which causes to support. ⁶ The Foundation’s focus areas include left-of-center criminal justice reform, farm animal welfare, pandemic preparation, and scientific research. ⁷

Grants

The Foundation’s revenue has steadily increased since 2015 when it reported just over $261 million in total revenue, compared to almost $643 million in total revenue in 2018.

The Foundation has awarded millions of dollars in grants in recent years. The Foundation awarded more than $38 million in grants in 2017 including $1.2 million to the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-of-center organization endorsed by the left-progressive Democracy Alliance. ⁸ In 2018, the Foundation awarded over $105 million including $3 million to the Tides Center as well as $10 million to Sherlock Biosciences, a provider of diagnostic testing for infectious diseases and a partner of Sentinel, an early warning system for infectious disease outbreaks. ⁹

In 2016, the Foundation awarded more than $76 million in grants including $3 million to the left-of-center ClimateWorks Foundation, a “pass-through” funding entity; $4 million to the Tides Center, a left-of-center nonprofit; and $5 million to The END Fund, a private international health organization supported by other prominent left-of-center donors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. ¹⁰

In 2015, the Foundation awarded over $18 million including $200,000 to the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute as well as $350,000 to the Accountable Justice Project, a project of the Proteus Fund, a left-of-center donor advised fund. ¹¹

Leadership

Good Ventures Foundation was founded by Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna. Moskovitz is a co-founder of Facebook, a company that he started in 2004 with then-Harvard roommate Mark Zuckerberg. He co-founded software company Asana after leaving Facebook in 2008. ¹² Prior to co-founding Good Ventures, Tuna worked at the Wall Street Journal as a reporter. Tuna and Moskovitz sit on the board as the Foundation’s president and treasurer, respectively. ¹³

1. “Governance.” Good Ventures. Accessed April 23, 2021. https://www.goodventures.org/about-us/governance.
2. “Governance.” Good Ventures. Accessed April 23, 2021. https://www.goodventures.org/about-us/governance.
3. “Grantmaking Approach.” Good Ventures. Accessed May 4, 2021. https://www.goodventures.org/our-portfolio/grantmaking-approach.
4. “About GiveWell.” GiveWell. Accessed May 3, 2021. https://www.givewell.org/about.
5. Open Philanthropy. Accessed May 3, 2021. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/.
6. Eunjung Cha, Ariana. “Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley Billionaires Pioneer New Approach to Philanthropy.” The Washington Post. WP Company, December 26, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/billionaire-couple-give-plenty-to-charity-but-they-do-quite-a-bit-of-homework/2014/12/26/19fae34c-86d6-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html.
7. Good Ventures. “Grantmaking Approach.” Good Ventures. Accessed May 3, 2021. https://www.goodventures.org/our-portfolio/grantmaking-approach.
8. Good Ventures Foundation, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990), Part XV, 2017
9. Good Ventures Foundation, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990), Part XV, 2018
10. Good Ventures Foundation, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990), Part XV, 2016
11. Good Ventures Foundation, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990), Part XV, 2015
12. “Dustin Moskovitz.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Accessed April 23, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/profile/dustin-moskovitz/?sh=37e6c9901dd3.
13. “Governance.” Good Ventures. Accessed April 23, 2021. https://www.goodventures.org/about-us/governance.