Recent press about our work

  1. 03/23/2025 Press Release

    Open Philanthropy launches $120 million fund to promote abundance

    Support for the fund includes a $60 million investment from Moskovitz and Tuna’s Good Ventures foundation, with matching support from Stripe founder Patrick Collison and other donors. Good Ventures activities are closely associated with the effective altruism movement, which advocates for a cost-benefit approach to philanthropy in order to produce the greatest good. Open Philanthropy—which supports the Yes In My Backyard housing development movement—identifies governmental regulation and “institutional sclerosis” as the key drivers of scarcity, rising costs, slow economic growth, and stifled innovation.

  2. 03/11/2025 In the Media

    Bloomberg: Open Philanthropy Launches $120 Million Fund To Support YIMBY Reforms

    “With support from the philanthropic foundation Good Ventures, Stripe CEO and founder Patrick Collison and other donors, this new Abundance and Growth Fund will drive advocacy, research and policies to reduce burdensome regulatory barriers to infrastructure and housing construction, among other subjects. The foundation is hiring a new program lead to direct the fund.”

     

     

  3. 02/28/2025 In the Media

    Cracking the Code: One man’s quest to fix the way we build

    […] Smith, advised by a three-person board and funded by a grant from Open Philanthropy, now works under the Center for Building in North America. It is an effort to improve the way the country builds by dissecting what Smith estimates is over 100,000 pages of technical specifications, and determining which parts might be doing more harm than good.

     

    Pressure is mounting on U.S. building codes from all sides. Advocates for flagging downtowns would like to change the rules to make it easier to convert office buildings into apartments. California is grappling with how stringent codes might be impeding the recovery from the Los Angeles wildfires (and how lax rules might have caused the disaster in the first place). Conservatives are furious over energy-efficiency updates, and some red states have sued the federal government over their enforcement. Modular construction companies are grappling with the country’s fragmented code landscape, in which rules can vary between states and cities.

  4. 02/27/2025 In the Media

    Cracking the code on what’s poisoning millions of children

    Some of the biggest players in global health have teamed up to tackle lead — a poison that kills nearly 1 million people every year, but has been largely overlooked in global health priorities.

     

    The Partnership for a Lead-Free Future — which was launched in 2024 by the U.S. Agency for International Development and UNICEF, with financial backing from philanthropic donors such as Open Philanthropy and the Gates Foundation — aims to raise global attention, leadership, and resources to support low- and middle-income countries to end childhood lead poisoning by 2040. It currently involves 30 governments and 36 civil society organizations, foundations, multilateral and private organizations. Their plan: support country-led initiatives to phase out lead in consumer products, promote safe industrial practices, and protect communities vulnerable to lead poisoning through knowledge sharing, evidence gathering, and policy change.

  5. 11/01/2024 In the Media

    Inside Philanthropy: Open Philanthropy Tackles the “Low-Hanging Fruit” in Public Health

    “[Dr. Olufemi] Adewole’s research team is just one of the recipients of a global health and wellbeing grant in 2023 from Open Philanthropy, a foundation established according to the principles of effective altruism — that is, tackling important neglected problems with evidence-based solutions that can save a high number of lives.”

     

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    “Other grantees in the foundation’s global health and wellness portfolio, which totaled roughly $358 million in 2023, include what Open Philanthropy CEO and cofounder Alexander Berger describes as “low-hanging fruit.” “If you look at where deaths from preventable causes, especially easily preventable causes, happen around the world, they’re happening very disproportionately in low- and middle-income countries, especially to young kids,” said Berger.”

  6. 09/11/2024 In the Media

    Vanity Fair: Women Making Philanthropic Strides

    “In Cari Tuna’s assessment, the issues governments and companies aren’t paying enough attention to are an opening for impact. “Philanthropy, at its best, identifies society’s blind spots,” Tuna says. Originally a San Francisco–based Wall Street Journal reporter, she left the paper in 2011 to start Good Ventures, approaching her first year much like a reporter would: “I talked to hundreds of people across philanthropy, nonprofits, government, science, academia, trying to learn about the landscape.”

    “You can really see how her experience as a journalist has informed her approach,” French Gates says of Tuna. “She’s rigorous about looking at the data and figuring out how to be as effective as possible.” Once connected with GiveWell, she launched Open Philanthropy, a grant-making and philanthropic advisory organization.”