Not to be confused with Open Philanthropy Project (Nonprofit)

The Open Philanthropy Project Fund (OPPF) is a donor-advised fund based in Silicon Valley that disburses most of the donations for the Open Philanthropy Project (OPP), a grantmaking foundation established along “effective altruism” principles which gives to many left-of-center nonprofits involved in criminal justice policy. The OPP began as a project of GiveWell, a group which seeks to improve philanthropy, and Good Ventures, the private grantmaking foundation of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna. Nearly all the OPP’s funding comes from Moskovitz and Tuna. ¹ The OPP also has a political arm, the Open Philanthropy Action Fund (OPAF). Combined, the three organizations have given almost $1.2 billion in grants since their founding. ²

Unlike the OPP and OPAF, the OPPF is not a non-profit but an LLC. Therefore, OPPF is not legally required to disclose its finances. However, OPP discloses all grants on its website.

Grants given by these organizations go to four focus areas: global health and development, scientific research, catastrophic risk, and US policy, which includes organizations that support left-of-center criminal justice and immigration policies. The OPPF handles the bulk of donations which primarily go to non-partisan organizations.

History

In 2007, GiveWell was founded to analyze and evaluate charitable work in the United States. ³ Elie Hassenfeld, Holden Karnofsky, and the other six co-founders are affiliated with the “effective altruism” movement. ⁴

In 2011, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna founded Good Ventures as a grantmaking foundation to give away their fortune throughout their lifetimes. Tuna became the organization’s president and met with many other charitable leaders for advice, including the founders of GiveWell. ⁵

In 2014, GiveWell and Good Ventures collaborated to form the Open Philanthropy Project to engage in a deliberative process of identifying areas of greatest impact for grantmaking. In 2017, the OPP, OPPF, and OPPAF spun off as independent nonprofit organizations. ⁶

Grants

As of September 2020, the Open Philanthropy Project, Open Philanthropy Project Fund, and Open Philanthropy Action Fund have given 998 grants worth $1,171,866,584. Most of these grants, which focus on scientific research, global health, and catastrophic risk, have been distributed through the OPPF. These recipients tend to be politically non-partisan. ⁷

Effective Altruism

The Open Philanthropy Project is part of the “effective altruism” movement established in the late 2000s and early 2010s by two organizations, 80,000 Hours and Giving What We Can. Effective altruism seeks to maximize the value and efficiency of charitable donations, particularly in preventing existential threats to humanity such as climate change and rogue artificial intelligence. The movement tends to encourage donations to non-Western purposes which have a higher impact, and to long-term problems rather than short term alleviation. ⁸

In 2019, the Open Philanthropy Project Fund gave $1 million to the Effective Altruism Foundation, a research organization dedicated to exploring effective altruism ideas. ⁹ In 2020, the OPP gave an additional $15,000. ¹⁰ GiveWell senior research analysts James Snowden and Marinella Capriati were formerly employed by the Effective Altruism Foundation. GiveWell board member Julia Wise is the organization’s liaison to the Foundation. ¹¹ 80,000 Hours, another effective altruism organization, has received almost $10 million from the OPPF since 2017. ¹²

As of October 2020, OPP is seeking a program associate to increase grantmaking related to effective altruism. ¹³

Leadership

Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna

Dustin Moskovitz is a co-founder of the Open Philanthropy Project and sits on the organization’s board of directors. ¹⁴ He is also the co-founder, secretary, and treasurer of Good Ventures. ¹⁵ Moskovitz was one of five co-founders of Facebook in 2004. Four years later he left the company but retained his ownership shares. He then co-founded Asana, a company that designs software to track workflow within organizations. In 2011, Moskovitz was added to the Forbes billionaire list as the youngest billionaire in the world with a net worth of $2.7 billion from his six percent ownership of Facebook. ¹⁶

As of October 2020, Moskovitz has a net worth of $15.7 billion. ¹⁷

Cari Tuna is the co-founder and president of OPP, the Open Philanthropy Project Fund, and the Open Philanthropy Action Fund, and the co-founder and president of Good Ventures. ¹⁸ She was previously a Wall Street Journal reporter. ¹⁹

Moskovitz and Tuna are notable supporters of Democratic candidates. Until the 2016 election, Moskovitz had only donated about $10,000 to Congressional candidate Sean Eldridge (D-NY), husband of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. ²⁰ In 2016, Moskovitz wrote an article for Medium condemning Donald Trump and endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. Moskovitz and Tuna then promised to donate $20 million to Democratic PACs, including $5 million each to the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund and Our Future PAC, and lesser sums to the Hillary Victory Fund, Moveon.org Political Action, Color of Change PAC, and several other organizations. ²¹ The donations made Moskovitz and Tuna the third largest donor in the 2016 election cycle. ²²

Since 2016, Moskovitz and Tuna have continued to contribute to Democratic PACs. In 2017, Tuna gave $200,000 to Color of Change and just over $650,000 to Real Justice PAC. In 2018, Moskovitz gave $3 million to Moveon.org Political Action, $2 million to the Senate Majority PAC, and $430,000 to Civic Innovation USA. In the same year, Tuna gave $1.2 million more to Real Justice PAC. ²³

In 2010, Moskovitz and Tuna became the youngest individuals to sign Warren Buffett’s “Giving Pledge” to give their fortunes to charity throughout their lifetimes. ²⁴

Chloe Cockburn

In 2015, Chloe Cockburn joined the Open Philanthropy Project as the criminal justice program officer. Since 2015, the Open Philanthropy Action Fund has made 322 grants worth $128,121,016 towards criminal justice reform organizations. ²⁵

On June 2, 2020, Cockburn wrote a Twitter thread with a list of organizations that she considered to be the most efficient recipients of donations for criminal justice reform. She later rewrote the list as a memo to potential donors, and Vox wrote an article on Cockburn entitled, “A criminal justice expert’s guide to donating effectively right now.” ²⁶ The list consisted of 25 left-of-center and far-left organizations, many of which are connected to Black Lives Matter. The listed organizations were:²⁷

• Black Lives Matter chapters of Chicago
• Black Lives Matter chapter of Los Angeles
• Black Lives Matter chapter of Louisville
• Movement for Black Lives
• Color of Change
• The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls
• Highlander Research and Education Center
• Floyd Journalism Fund for Black Newspapers
• Showing up for Racial Justice
• Real Justice PAC
• Citizen Action of New York
• Michigan Liberation
• Justice LA
• Bread and Roses Community Fund
• Voice of the Experienced
• Transformation Fund
• Life Comes from It
• Southsiders Organizing for Unity and Liberation
• Project Nia
• Essie Justice Group
• National Bail Fund Network
• Equity and Transformation
• Mutual Aid and Restorative Justice
• Texas Organizing Project
• Survived and Punished

As of October 2020, the OPP has donated to 11 of these organizations: Color of Change, The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, Real Justice PAC, Citizen Action of New York, Michigan Liberation, Justice LA, Voice of the Experienced, Southsiders Organizing for Unity and Liberation, Project Nia, Essie Justice Group, Equity and Transformation, and the Texas Organizing Project. ²⁸

Cockburn is also the director and a board member of the Bia-Echo Foundation, a left-of-center grantmaking foundation. The organization focuses on three areas: abortion advocacy, environmental protection, and criminal justice reform. ²⁹

Cockburn is the granddaughter of Claud Cockburn, a leading communist in the British government and possibly an agent for the Soviet Union. ³⁰ Her father, Andrew Cockburn, is a filmmaker, author, and the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine. ³¹ Chloe’s uncle, Alexander Cockburn, was a journalist who edited Newspunch and wrote for The Nation and The Week. He was an open Marxist and socialist, and later identified as an anarchist. ³² Another uncle, Patrick Cockburn, is also a journalist. He has worked for The Independent and the Financial Times and is best known for his reporting on the Iraq War. ³³ One of Chloe’s sister is actress and director Olivia Wilde. ³⁴

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