Our Story

When we founded Good Ventures in 2011, we knew we wanted to give away the vast majority of our wealth. We’d met two years earlier on a blind date. Dustin had recently left Facebook to start Asana, and Cari was working as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Early in our relationship, we realized we shared a commitment to using our resources to help others as much as we could. The question was how.

We came to this work with a deep sense of how fortunate we’d been. We were driven by radical empathy, recognizing the inherent worth of all people and animals. 

Cari took the lead at Good Ventures, approaching her learning like a reporting assignment. She studied the history of philanthropy and interviewed hundreds of people across health, science, education and more.

Most people advised us to focus on our passions. They meant well, but that advice didn’t get us very far. What we cared about most was learning how to leverage our giving to have the biggest impact we could, and we were open to any cause or way of working.

An early conversation with Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell was a turning point. He described how iodine deficiency, a leading cause of intellectual disability worldwide, is easily prevented by adding iodine to salt. Living in the United States, we’d always taken iodized salt for granted. But now we wondered: how many other problems like this were out there?

This question launched a project, now called Coefficient Giving, that’s dedicated to helping major donors find important, neglected and tractable giving opportunities. 

With support from the Coefficient team, Good Ventures has distributed more than $4 billion to address immediate challenges like malaria and lead poisoning, and to prepare for emerging threats like deadly pandemics and increasingly powerful AI systems — work we began years before COVID-19 and ChatGPT brought these issues into the spotlight.

Fourteen years in, we’re far from having all the answers. We’re constantly grappling with uncertainty, making difficult judgement calls, updating our thinking, and learning from our mistakes.

When we started Good Ventures, measures of health, wealth and education were rising around the world, and violence, poverty and child mortality were declining. We still believe there are many reasons to be optimistic. But we’re also seeing more clearly that progress isn’t automatic — in many cases it’s slowing or even being reversed. Lasting change requires intention, effort and collaboration.

We’re encouraged by the many people we’ve met who are devoting their lives to building a more prosperous and compassionate world. When we married, we made a vow “to serve others joyfully,” and these remarkable individuals and teams inspire us to honor that commitment every day. Whatever challenges lie ahead, we’ll keep showing up with the same intention — to take the fullest possible advantage of the opportunity we have to help others — until we’ve moved the last dollar out the door.

With gratitude and determination,

Cari & Dustin
Co-founders, Good Ventures