​Good Ventures and GiveWell have created a new name to describe our collaboration to identify and fund outstanding giving opportunities: the Open Philanthropy Project.
This rebranding represents a better way to communicate about our work, rather than a change in our process.
The mission of the Open Philanthropy Project is to learn how to give as effectively as we can and share our findings openly so that anyone can build on them. Our approach to philanthropy is “open” in two ways:
- We’re open to many possibilities. Rather than starting out with pre-defined focus areas, we’re considering many possibilities and attempting to choose based on where we think additional philanthropy could go especially far in terms of improving lives.
- We’re open about our work. We’re attempting to share as much as we can about what we’re doing and learning — including our shortcomings — so that others can build on our work.
We also created a simple website to describe our approach and common values and created Facebook and Twitter profiles where people can follow our progress. (Good Ventures and GiveWell will continue posting updates on our respective blogs and social media pages; the Open Philanthropy Project’s Facebook and Twitter feeds simply will mirror those updates.)
The Open Philanthropy Project replaces “GiveWell Labs” as the name Good Ventures and GiveWell are using to describe our work together. We took this step because:
- Good Ventures and GiveWell work as partners on the Open Philanthropy Project, and we wanted a name that would not be exclusively associated with one organization or the other.
- GiveWell wanted to begin separating the GiveWell brand from the Open Philanthropy Project brand, since the latter is evolving into something quite different from GiveWell's work identifying evidence-backed charities serving the global poor. (Read more about this topic at GiveWell's blog post on the rebranding and our overview of plans for 2014 published earlier this year.)
The Open Philanthropy Project is currently only a brand — a name, logo and website — rather than an organization, and the staff members who work on the Project continue to be formally affiliated with either Good Ventures or GiveWell.
We plan to replace references to GiveWell Labs on the Good Ventures site with the new name over the next few days.