Coefficient Giving
American grantmaking foundation

Coefficient Giving
FormationSeptember 2011; 14 years ago (2011-09)
Founders
Location
Area served
Global
MethodsGrants, funding, research
Chief Executive Officer
Alexander Berger
Chair
Cari Tuna
Dustin Moskovitz, Cari Tuna, Divesh Makan, Holden Karnofsky, and Alexander Berger
Websitecoefficientgiving.org
Formerly called
Open Philanthropy Project
Open Philanthropy

Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) is an American philanthropic advising and funding organization. Its current CEO is Alexander Berger.[1]

As of June 2025, Coefficient Giving has directed more than $4 billion[1] in grants across a variety of focus areas, including global health, scientific research, pandemic preparedness, potential risks from advanced AI, and farm animal welfare. It chooses focus areas through a process of "strategic cause selection" — looking for problems that are large, tractable, and neglected relative to their size.[2]

History

While Coefficient Giving works with a range of donors, its founding and most significant ongoing partnership is with Good Ventures, the foundation of Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz.

Former logo of the organization, before it was renamed Coeffcient Giving in 2025.

Dustin Moskovitz co-founded Facebook and later Asana, becoming a billionaire in the process. He and Tuna, his wife, were inspired by Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save,[3] and became the youngest couple to sign Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge, promising to give away most of their money. Tuna left her journalist position at The Wall Street Journal to focus on philanthropy full-time, and the couple started the Good Ventures foundation in 2011. The organization partnered with GiveWell, a charity evaluator founded by Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld. The partnership named itself the "Open Philanthropy Project" in 2014, and began operating independently in 2017.

More recently, Open Philanthropy has launched collaborative funds in partnership with philanthropic donors, including the Lead Exposure Action Fund and the Abundance and Growth Fund.[1] In November 2025, Open Philanthropy was renamed Coefficient Giving, signaling an expansion toward operating multi-donor funds that other philanthropists can join.[1][4][5] Bill Gates has referred to the organization as “a fantastic partner on high-impact giving.”[6]

Grantmaking

In 2024, Coefficient Giving directed over $650 million in grants through recommendations to Good Ventures and other philanthropic partners.[7]

Cause selection

Coefficient Giving selects causes to work on using three criteria:[8]

  • Importance: How many individuals are affected by the problem, and how deeply.
  • Neglectedness: Whether the cause receives adequate attention and resources from others, especially other major philanthropists.
  • Tractability: The likelihood that a philanthropic funder can contribute to significant progress.

If a cause looks promising according to those criteria, Coefficient Giving researchers review literature and meet with experts to get a better understanding of the area, and then conduct an investigation to determine whether there are enough strong giving opportunities to justify the opening of a new program.[9]

Coefficient Giving Chair Cari Tuna speaking at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society's 2025 Philanthropy Innovation Summit

Across the portfolio as a whole, Coefficient Giving aims to equalize marginal returns across different interventions to maximize overall impact.[10]

Impact estimation

Coefficient Giving often uses a quantitative approach to estimate a grant's expected impact — for example, using back-of-the-envelope calculations based on scientific evidence to evaluate projects in areas like vaccine research, farm animal welfare, and the development of techniques for detecting environmental lead.[11]

Hits-based giving

In some cases, Coefficient Giving pursues "high-risk, high-reward" opportunities that don't necessarily have a strong evidence base or a high chance of success, but could potentially become philanthropic "hits" with enormous positive impact. It refers to this approach as "hits-based giving," comparing it to strategies used in venture capital investing.[12]

Examples of philanthropic hits cited by Coefficient Giving include the Green Revolution and the development of oral contraceptives. The organization has itself invested heavily in basic science and other areas with highly uncertain impact — for example, as an early supporter[13] of Nobel Laureate David Baker's work on computational methods for protein design.[14]

Funds

Coefficient Giving's work is split across 13 funds, each of which is focused on a particular area. Each fund pools money from multiple donors and directs it toward what Coefficient Giving believes to be the most promising opportunities in its areas.

Abundance and Growth

In 2025, the organization launched the Abundance and Growth Fund in partnership with Good Ventures, Patrick Collison, and other donors. The fund will dedicate $120 million over three years to accelerate economic growth and boost scientific and technological progress, building on Coefficient Giving's previous work in housing and innovation policy.[15]

Air Quality

Coefficient Giving's support for global public health policy includes work to mitigate lead exposure, reduce air pollution in India and other South Asian countries, which kills roughly 2 million people in the region each year..

Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness

Coefficient Giving's work on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness includes support for disease surveillance, restrictions on gain-of-function research, and the development of next-generation personal protective equipment.

Notable grantees include the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense,[16] the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security,[17] and the World Health Organization.[18]

Program staff at the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness Fund helped to convene a group of scientists to discuss potential risks from the creation of mirror bacteria.[19] This work was eventually published in Science.[20]

Some have claimed that by "flooding" money into biosecurity, Coefficient Giving is "absorbing much of the field's experienced research capacity, focusing the attention of experts on this narrow, extremely unlikely, aspect of biosecurity risk" (i.e., biological global catastrophic risks).[21]

Effective Giving and Careers

The Effective Giving and Careers Fund aims to "empower people to use their careers and donations to help others as much as possible." It supports organizations that encourage impact-focused career choices and charitable donations.

Notable grantees include Founders Pledge[22] and Giving What We Can.[23]

Farm Animal Welfare

The Farm Animal Welfare Fund supports to reform cruel practices on factory farms, develop technologies to reduce animal pain and suffering, and support the development and adoption of alternative proteins in hopes of reducing meat consumption.[24]

Coefficient Giving has been called "the world's biggest funder of farm animal welfare."[25]

Notable grantees include The Humane League,[26] Mercy for Animals,[27] and the Good Food Institute.[28]

Forecasting

Coefficient Giving's Forecasting program works to enable the creation of "high-quality forecasts on questions relevant to high-stakes decisions".[29]

Notable grantees include Philip Tetlock[30] and Metaculus.[31]

Global Aid Policy

Coefficient Giving's Global Aid Policy program supports efforts to increase aid spending and improve the cost-effectiveness of existing aid programs.

Notable grantees include the Joep Lange Institute,[32] the Center for Global Development,[33] and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.[34]

Global Catastrophic Risks Opportunities

This fund is dedicated to addressing global catastrophic risks (GCRs) — threats that have the potential to "cause severe or even irreversible harm to humans on a global scale".[35]

While other Coefficient funds focus specifically on risks from AI and biotechnology, this fund supports cross-cutting and foundational work to build capacity for addressing GCRs more generally (e.g. helping people find jobs where they can work full-time on GCR mitigation, or building up related academic fields).

Notable grantees include the Centre for Effective Altruism,[36] Kurzgesagt,[37] and several academics funded to develop courses on relevant topics.[38]

Global Growth

The Global Growth Fund supports work to “accelerate economic growth and reduce poverty in low- and middle-income countries [LMICs].” It explores strategies like increasing export-oriented manufacturing, developing trade links between advanced economies and LMICs, and supporting economics experts who live in LMICs to work as policy advisors.[39]

Global Health & Wellbeing Opportunities

This fund supports “evidence-backed interventions to improve health and wellbeing for people around the world,” including efforts to prevent malaria, promote routine vaccinations, and scale up water chlorination efforts to reduce the spread of waterborne diseases.[40]

Notable grantees include the Malaria Consortium,[41] New Incentives,[42] and Evidence Action.[43]

Lead Exposure Action Fund

In 2024, the organization launched the Lead Exposure Action Fund in collaboration with partners including Good Ventures and the Gates Foundation.[44] The fund has committed $100 million toward reducing lead exposure, approximately doubling the amount of global philanthropic spending on lead reduction.

Coefficient Giving is also a founding member of the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future, a public-private partnership aimed at ending childhood lead poisoning. Other founding members include UNICEF and USAID.[45]

The Navigating Transformative AI Fund is a leading supporter of research on AI alignment and other work aimed at reducing existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. The organization believes that artificial general intelligence could “soon outperform humans in nearly all cognitive domains,” which could have “benefit people enormously” or “pose serious risks from misuse, accidents, loss of control, and other problems.”[46] Ajeya Cotra, a researcher at Coefficient Giving, has said that "a lens that [she uses] to think about the A.I. revolution is that it will play out like the Industrial Revolution but around 10 times faster."[47]

Notable grantees include the Center for Security and Emerging Technology,[48] the Alignment Research Center,[49] and Mila,[50]

Science and Global Health R&D

Projects funded by Coefficient Giving's Scientific Research program include efforts to create new vaccines and antivirals, develop new scientific tools and techniques, and fund fellowship programs and conference travel for young scientists.

Notable grantees include David Baker,[51] Sherlock Biosciences,[52] and the International Vaccine Institute.[53]

Past focus areas

Past focus areas of Coefficient Giving (before its move from “focus areas” to “funds”) have included:

References

  1. ^ a b c d Walsh, Bryan (November 18, 2025). "One of the world's most influential philanthropies is changing its name. Here's why it matters". Vox. Retrieved November 19, 2025.
  2. ^ "Holiday giving, optimized: How to max out your donation dollars". The New York Times. December 7, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  3. ^ "Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy - The Washington Post". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 25, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  4. ^ Beaty, Thalia (November 18, 2025). "Billionaire Cari Tuna on why the organization she started will offer free advice to other donors". AP News. Retrieved November 25, 2025.
  5. ^ "Open Philanthropy Is Now Coefficient Giving". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved November 25, 2025.
  6. ^ Murphy, Helen (November 19, 2025). "New US health strategy positions African governments as customers". Devex. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  7. ^ "Operations Coordinator/Associate in San Francisco or Washington D.C." Open Philanthropy. Retrieved January 15, 2026.
  8. ^ "Cause Selection". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  9. ^ "Our process for finding and evaluating causes". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  10. ^ Oehlsen, Emily (May 1, 2024). "Philanthropic Cause Prioritization". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 38 (2): 63–82. doi:10.1257/jep.38.2.63. ISSN 0895-3309.
  11. ^ "How We Use Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations in Our Grantmaking". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  12. ^ "Hits-based Giving". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  13. ^ "How Neil King and David Baker are using AI to create more effective vaccines". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  14. ^ "Open Philanthropy Project Awards $11.3 Million to Institute for Protein Design at UW Medicine". Institute for Protein Design. April 2018. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  15. ^ "Open Philanthropy Launches Effective Altruism Fund to Speed Housing Construction". Bloomberg. March 11, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  16. ^ "Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense — General Support (2024)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on June 16, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  17. ^ "Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security — Biosecurity, Global Health Security, and Global Catastrophic Risks (2023)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on July 11, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  18. ^ "World Health Organization — Syphilis Treatment for Pregnant Women". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on June 10, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  19. ^ "Scientists Sound Alarm About 'Mirror Life' Microbes That Could Be Deadly to All Life on Earth". The New York Times. December 12, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  20. ^ "Confronting risks of mirror life". Science. 382 (6676) eads9158. doi:10.1126/science.ads9158. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  21. ^ "Will splashy philanthropy cause the biosecurity field to focus on the wrong risks?". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. April 25, 2019. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  22. ^ "Founders Pledge — General Support (2023)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on October 25, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  23. ^ "Giving What We Can — General Support (November 2024)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on June 10, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  24. ^ "Farm Animal Welfare". Coefficient Giving.
  25. ^ "How factory farming ended up being one of the world's most pressing problems". Vox. November 26, 2021. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  26. ^ "The Humane League — General Support (2024)". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  27. ^ "Mercy For Animals — Corporate Campaigns (2024)". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  28. ^ "The Good Food Institute — General Support (2024)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on October 7, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  29. ^ "Forecasting". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  30. ^ "University of Pennsylvania — Philip Tetlock on Forecasting". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on October 25, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  31. ^ "Metaculus — Platform Development (2024)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on November 13, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  32. ^ "Joep Lange Institute — Expanding the Donor Base for Global Health (2024)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on June 20, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  33. ^ "Center for Global Development — General Support (2025)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on June 10, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  34. ^ "Clinton Health Access Initiative — Effectiveness Improvements for Health Multilaterals". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on July 11, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  35. ^ "Global Catastrophic Risks Opportunities". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved December 21, 2025.
  36. ^ "Centre for Effective Altruism — General Support (EVF UK, May 2024)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on October 26, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  37. ^ "Kurzgesagt — Video Creation and Translation". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on October 25, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  38. ^ "Open Philanthropy Course Development Grants". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on November 16, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  39. ^ "Global Growth". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved December 21, 2025.
  40. ^ "Global Health & Wellbeing Opportunities". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved January 15, 2026.
  41. ^ "Malaria Consortium — Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention Programs (2023)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on November 13, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  42. ^ "New Incentives — Nigeria". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on August 8, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  43. ^ "Evidence Action — Scale-Up of In-Line Chlorination in India". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on August 10, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  44. ^ "The world's spending to fight global lead poisoning just doubled". Vox. October 2, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  45. ^ "A 'silent epidemic' of childhood lead poisoning haunts the world". The Washington Post. September 22, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  46. ^ "Navigating Transformative AI". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved January 15, 2026.
  47. ^ "What A.I. Might Look Like in 2030". The New York Times. December 19, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  48. ^ "Georgetown University — Center for Security and Emerging Technology". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on November 12, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  49. ^ "Alignment Research Center — General Support (November 2022)". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on October 5, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  50. ^ "Mila — AI Safety Research". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on August 27, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  51. ^ Budiman, Britney. "How Neil King and David Baker Are Using AI To Create More Effective Vaccines". Coefficient Giving. Retrieved January 16, 2026.
  52. ^ "Sherlock Biosciences — Research on Viral Diagnostics". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on November 1, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  53. ^ "International Vaccines Institute — Cholera Vaccine Phase II Trial". Open Philanthropy. Archived from the original on May 14, 2025. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
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