The Nonlinear Library EA - Open Philanthropy: Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024 by Alexander Berger
Mar 27, 2024
Alexander Berger discusses Open Philanthropy's significant growth in team size and annual giving, its impact on important developments in healthcare, and future initiatives in leadership and priorities.
04:17
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Open Philanthropy: Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024, published by Alexander Berger on March 27, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Like many organizations, Open Philanthropy has had multiple founding moments. Depending on
how
you
count, we will be either seven, ten, or thirteen years old this year. Regardless of when you start the clock, it's possible that we've changed more in the last two years than over our full prior history. We've more than doubled the size of our team (to ~110), nearly doubled our annual giving (to >$750M), and
added
five
new
program
areas.
As our track record and volume of giving have grown, we are seeing more of our impact in the world. Across our focus areas, our funding played a (sometimes modest) role in some of 2023's most important developments:
We were among the supporters of the
clinical trials that led to the World Health Organization (WHO)
officially recommending the R21 malaria vaccine. This is the second malaria vaccine recommended by WHO, which expects it to enable "sufficient vaccine supply to benefit all children living in areas where malaria is a public health risk." Although the late-stage clinical trial funding was Open Philanthropy's first involvement with R21 research, that isn't the case for our new global health R&D program officer,
Katharine Collins, who invented R21 as a grad student.
Our early commitment to AI safety has contributed to increased awareness of the associated risks and to early steps to reduce them. The Center for AI Safety,
one of our AI grantees, made
headlines
across the
globe with its
statement calling for AI extinction risk to be a "global priority alongside other societal-scale risks," signed by many of the world's leading AI researchers and experts. Other grantees contributed to many of the year's other big AI policy events, including the UK's
AI Safety Summit, the US
executive order on AI, and the first
International Dialogue on AI Safety, which brought together scientists from the US and China to lay the foundations for future cooperation on AI risk (à la the
Pugwash Conferences in support of nuclear disarmament).
The US Supreme Court upheld California's Proposition 12, the nation's strongest farm animal welfare law. We were
major supporters of the original initiative and
helped
fund its successful
legal defense.
Our grantees in the YIMBY ("yes in my backyard") movement - which works to increase the supply of housing in order to lower prices and rents - helped drive major
middle housing reforms in Washington state and California's
legislation streamlining the production of affordable and mixed-income housing. We've been the largest national funder of the YIMBY movement since 2015.
We've also encountered some notable challenges over the last couple of years. Our available assets fell by half and then recovered half their losses. The FTX Future Fund, a large funder in several of our focus areas, including pandemic prevention and AI risks, collapsed suddenly and left a sizable funding gap in those areas. And Holden Karnofsky - my friend, co-founder, and our former CEO
stepped down to work full-time on AI safety.
Throughout these changes, we've remained devoted to our mission of helping others as much as we can with the resources available to us. But it's a good time to step back and reflect.
The rest of this post covers:
Brief updates on grantmaking from each of our 12 programs.
Our leadership changes over the past year.
Our chaotic macro environment over the last couple of years.
How that led us to revise our priorities, and specifically to expand our work to reduce global catastrophic risks.
Other lessons we learned over the past year.
Our plans for the rest of 2024.
Because it feels like we have more to share this year, this post is longer and aims to share more than I have the last
two...
Like many organizations, Open Philanthropy has had multiple founding moments. Depending on
how
you
count, we will be either seven, ten, or thirteen years old this year. Regardless of when you start the clock, it's possible that we've changed more in the last two years than over our full prior history. We've more than doubled the size of our team (to ~110), nearly doubled our annual giving (to >$750M), and
added
five
new
program
areas.
As our track record and volume of giving have grown, we are seeing more of our impact in the world. Across our focus areas, our funding played a (sometimes modest) role in some of 2023's most important developments:
We were among the supporters of the
clinical trials that led to the World Health Organization (WHO)
officially recommending the R21 malaria vaccine. This is the second malaria vaccine recommended by WHO, which expects it to enable "sufficient vaccine supply to benefit all children living in areas where malaria is a public health risk." Although the late-stage clinical trial funding was Open Philanthropy's first involvement with R21 research, that isn't the case for our new global health R&D program officer,
Katharine Collins, who invented R21 as a grad student.
Our early commitment to AI safety has contributed to increased awareness of the associated risks and to early steps to reduce them. The Center for AI Safety,
one of our AI grantees, made
headlines
across the
globe with its
statement calling for AI extinction risk to be a "global priority alongside other societal-scale risks," signed by many of the world's leading AI researchers and experts. Other grantees contributed to many of the year's other big AI policy events, including the UK's
AI Safety Summit, the US
executive order on AI, and the first
International Dialogue on AI Safety, which brought together scientists from the US and China to lay the foundations for future cooperation on AI risk (à la the
Pugwash Conferences in support of nuclear disarmament).
The US Supreme Court upheld California's Proposition 12, the nation's strongest farm animal welfare law. We were
major supporters of the original initiative and
helped
fund its successful
legal defense.
Our grantees in the YIMBY ("yes in my backyard") movement - which works to increase the supply of housing in order to lower prices and rents - helped drive major
middle housing reforms in Washington state and California's
legislation streamlining the production of affordable and mixed-income housing. We've been the largest national funder of the YIMBY movement since 2015.
We've also encountered some notable challenges over the last couple of years. Our available assets fell by half and then recovered half their losses. The FTX Future Fund, a large funder in several of our focus areas, including pandemic prevention and AI risks, collapsed suddenly and left a sizable funding gap in those areas. And Holden Karnofsky - my friend, co-founder, and our former CEO
stepped down to work full-time on AI safety.
Throughout these changes, we've remained devoted to our mission of helping others as much as we can with the resources available to us. But it's a good time to step back and reflect.
The rest of this post covers:
Brief updates on grantmaking from each of our 12 programs.
Our leadership changes over the past year.
Our chaotic macro environment over the last couple of years.
How that led us to revise our priorities, and specifically to expand our work to reduce global catastrophic risks.
Other lessons we learned over the past year.
Our plans for the rest of 2024.
Because it feels like we have more to share this year, this post is longer and aims to share more than I have the last
two...