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For San Francisco-based billionaire Cary Tuna, one of the most important decisions a philanthropist can make is deciding which cause to support. Starting Tuesday, the organization he helped found will offer help to other major donors who choose the option.
Tuna, 40, and her husband, Dustin Moskowitz, 41, first started seriously dabbling in philanthropy in 2010, when Tuna quit her job as a journalist and agreed to donate most of her wealth, which Moskowitz had initially built up as a co-founder. FacebookBut when she talked to people in the philanthropic ecosystem, Tuna said she found few others who took a rigorous stance on the question that inspired her and her husband: How do you use your donations to do the most good for the most people?
Instead, she was often advised to follow her passion, to pursue causes she felt connected to. In an interview with the Associated Press, Tuna said she understood it as a legitimate approach, but that if all major donors adopted it, “philanthropy would miss some of its greatest opportunities to help others, especially the most disadvantaged.”
So, he started his own research organization, Open Philanthropy, which has since contributed more than $4 billion to support global health, animal rights, the safety of artificial intelligence, and the effective altruism community, among other areas.
Now, Open Philanthropy, under the new name Coefficient Giving, will offer free advice to anyone wishing to donate a significant amount of money. It’s a move that formalizes and expands the mentorship work begun over the past two years, in which external donors have contributed more than $300 million, mostly to global health causes recommended by Open Philanthropy. With Tuesday’s announcement, he hopes more donors can benefit from his research and expertise.
Tuna said, “I have always had a dream of creating a resource that could help not only Dustin and me, but also the many donors who are looking for advice on how to do as much good as possible with their donations.”
Quoting advice affects millions of people
Although there is no set minimum amount, Coefficient Charities will focus on mentoring major donors ceo Alexander Berger, especially those looking to invest in more complex or difficult to explain sectors.
Unlike other philanthropic advisors, Berger said, “We’re trying to offer something that’s a little more thoughtful about where there are high impact opportunities that a dollar can go particularly far.” Coefficient Giving is incorporated as a limited liability company with several affiliated tax-exempt non-profit groups.
“They tend to be individual philanthropists who have some big dreams about what they can do philanthropically, but they’re not necessarily looking to build an entire foundation or a big team,” said Liz Givens, director of partnerships, about the type of donors who partner with Coefficient Giving.
Anna McKelvey, who makes grants through the Alpha Epsilon Fund, was one of the funders who joined the effort to reduce leadership risk in low- and middle-income countries, supporting Open Philanthropy. She and her husband, Jim McKelvey, who co-founded the payments company Square, give primarily through funding partners because, she said, “We don’t have to compete for that talent. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel any more. We don’t do double duty.”
Supporting effective altruism
While Open Philanthropy has committed the most money to global health-related work, it has also been a major proponent of the effective philanthropy community and a determined approach to artificial intelligence technologies.
Effective altruism is a social and philanthropic movement of people who say they want to maximize the amount of good they can do in the world. It is inspired by the utilitarian ideas and ethical arguments of the Australian philosopher, Peter Singer, among others, and has found supporters in elite universities and Silicon Valley.
Beyond its funding of community events and organizations that support effective philanthropy, Open Philanthropy has contributed important ideas to the community, such as the framework it developed for selecting causes. Their approach is to identify areas that are important, neglected and where progress or progress is possible.
While there is much debate over priorities within the effective altruism community, overall it favors saving lives over other types of social change that donors often support. For example, many people would argue for giving money to malaria prevention in the US instead of giving it to a local food bank. For many years, the community has viewed efforts to combat climate change as a bad bet and most people do not see initiatives to push back against authoritarianism or racism as the best way to spend charitable dollars.
Tuna said most of his funding partners are not part of the effective philanthropy community.
“There is no single right answer about how to do this best,” he said. “And yet, I think it’s very important to grapple with the question of how we can make a broader impact with our donations.”
Helping guide the development of AI
Another idea within effective altruism comes from the premise that it is worth spending resources now to reduce people’s suffering in the future. On this basis, advocates argue for supporting things like pandemic preparedness, reducing the risk of nuclear war, and guiding the development of artificial intelligence to be safe for humans, or AI safety for short.
Open Philanthropy was an early supporter of AI safety and has given over $580 million to build a field of researchers studying the potentially destructive risks of AI. As part of this, in 2017, he gave $30 million OpenAIThen a little-known non-profit research laboratory.
In a 2024 blog post, Open Philanthropy CEO Berger celebrated the impact of their AI grant recipients in shaping the policy response to the rise of chatbots. chatgptWhich was developed by OpenAI. Without their efforts, he wrote, “I think fewer people with AI experience would have been deployed to help, and policymakers would have been slower to act.”
Coefficient Giving will continue to focus the bulk of its AI work on the biggest risks posed by these technologies, such as an autonomous system that could design a new deadly pathogen.
Tuna said issues like bias and job disruption deserve attention, but as a funder, “we believe our comparative advantage lies in helping ensure the safe and profitable development of increasingly capable AI systems.”
This is even though the impact of AI has gone from potential to very tangible in just a few years and before the technologies have reached a level that proponents hope will be superior to human intelligence.
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits is supported through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.