Recent press about our work

  1. 12/20/2017 In the Media

    Nature: Facebook Billionaire Pours Funds Into High-Risk Research

    "Open Phil, based in San Francisco, California, acknowledges the high odds of failure of the basic research it funds and, for a private funder, publishes brutally honest assessments of its projects. These range from developing lab-made meat alternatives to a controversial genetic-engineering technology called gene drive. For its latest funding round, it asked scientists whose grant applications had been rejected by an NIH competition for risky research to dust off their proposals. Some 120 researchers resubmitted their requests, and the project awarded $10.8 million to four teams."

  2. 11/07/2017 In the Media

    The Economist: Locking Up More People Does Not Reduce Crime

    "David Roodman, an economist working for the Open Philanthropy Project, has recently carried out an exhaustive review, replication and analysis of papers and articles on the impact of locking people up in America. The five word summary of his work might be: America has a sentencing problem. … He concludes that "the best estimate of the impact of additional incarceration on crime in the United States today is zero"—there is at least as much evidence suggesting that decarceration reduces crime as increases it."

  3. 09/25/2017 In the Media

    Vox: A Massive Review of the Evidence Shows Letting People Out of Prison Doesn’t Increase Crime

    "When the Open Philanthropy Project began a grant program for criminal justice reform, it asked itself a tricky question: Are we doing the right thing? … In came David Roodman, who runs critical evidence reviews. Open Philanthropy got him to review the evidence on how decarceration efforts — which seek to reduce prison sentences and the number of people in prison — would impact crime. … The result is a really extensive, in-depth review of the research, spanning more than 140 pages."

  4. 07/28/2017 In the Media

    Forbes: Can Studying Germs In The Brain Lead To A Cure For Alzheimer’s?

    "Harvard researchers, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi and Robert D. Moir, PhD, are heading up a team, funded by the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund and the Good Ventures Foundation, that has taken on mapping the microbiome, the population of microorganisms, some helpful and some pathological, that exists inside the brain. The monumental task, dubbed The Brain Microbiome Project, will, they hope, tell them if amyloid beta plaques–known to initiate the pathological cascade of Alzheimer’s disease–are being made to protect the brain… And if amyloid-beta are accumulating simply to fight a persistent infection, this new theory could lead to groundbreaking new therapies for treating or even preventing Alzheimer’s."

  5. 01/26/2017 In the Media

    Inside Philanthropy: Philanthropy Awards, 2016

    "Through their Good Ventures Foundation and the Open Philanthropy Project, Moskovitz and Tuna have set a great example for other emerging donors by not only revealing grants in a timely fashion, but also explaining the thinking behind grantmaking in blog posts."

  6. 11/16/2016 In the Media

    The New York Times: Philanthropy in Silicon Valley — Big Bets on Big Ideas

    "The founders of Silicon Valley’s technology companies, many of whom have amassed huge fortunes at a young age, tend to look at their philanthropic giving much as they do their companies: They study a problem, explore a number of ways to attack it and eventually invest heavily to scale up the ideas they think will be winners… 'The thing we focus on is expected value,' said Ms. Tuna, a former journalist who runs their foundation while her husband focuses on running his current tech start-up, Asana. 'It’s all part of doing as much good as we can with the resources we have.'"