We are writing to share that while we generally plan to continue increasing our grantmaking in our existing focus areas via our partner Open Philanthropy, we have decided to exit a handful of sub-causes (amounting to less than 5% of our annual grantmaking), and we are no longer planning to expand into new causes in the near term by default. The sub-causes we are exiting represent less than 10% of any one focus area — we are not exiting any whole programs — and we have already notified the immediately affected grantees. This was a difficult decision, and we apologize for any negative impact it may have on those grantees. We want to be clear that this decision is not reflective of the value of their work.
We’ve expanded our grantmaking rapidly over the last couple of years, adding many new focus areas and strategies, as we work toward achieving a “spend-down” rate of giving. We think the work we’ve expanded to take on is unusually high-impact, and we’re proud to support it. But working across so many different focus areas and strategies has stretched us too thin. It takes our leadership significant time and energy to engage with each new cause and sub-cause, and we didn’t account for that adequately in our previous planning. In the near term, we want to concentrate our giving on a more manageable number of strategies on which our leaders feel more bought in and with which they have sufficient time and energy to engage.
This decision was made by Good Ventures and not by the staff of Open Philanthropy. We recognize that we very likely are leaving significant opportunities for impact on the table. Our hope is that other donors will be in a position to take on some of these opportunities and that, over the longer term, this will lead to healthier and more resilient ecosystems with more diversified bases of funding.