The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a grant of $304,000 over two years ($137,000 in 2016 and $167,000 in 2017) to the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) to support its Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (SPARC). This is one of a small number of grants that Open Philanthropy expects to make in 2016 to support organizations within the effective altruism (EA) community, as it wrote in its plan for 2016.
CFAR is a nonprofit organization that conducts cognitive science research and teaches techniques for people to incorporate principles of rationality into their daily lives. Fiscally sponsored by CFAR, SPARC is a two-week summer program for high school students. Students selected to participate in the program typically show exceptional ability in mathematics, with many scoring highly among US participants in national or international math competitions.
The Open Philanthropy Project's decision to make this grant is based in large part on its positive opinions of several SPARC instructors, and on its positive impression of the program as a whole. It expects that this program will expand the horizons of some students with extremely high potential and, hopefully, increase their positive impact on the world.