More than a decade ago, when Cari Tuna and her husband, billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, began planning how they would give away the bulk of their fortune (now about $20 billion) over the course of their lives, they took a view of effective altruism. Instead of donating to the causes they were most passionate about, they decided to donate to those most likely to make a significant impact for every dollar invested. To do this, they co-founded Open Philanthropy and funded various initiatives, from the Malaria Consortium to the Center for AI Safety, although they largely did it themselves. And that was never the original idea.
Today, Open Philanthropy is rebranded as Coefficient Giving and emphasizes to the public what Tuna and Moskovitz always wanted: a multi-donor initiative that seeks to use and advise on charitable giving for maximum impact. The vision was always for this to be not just for Dustin and I, but for other donors as well, Tuna says. And with Coefficient, that’s in the name. “Co” reflects its status as a multi-donor organization, “efficient” emphasizes its focus on profitability, and “coefficient” is a mathematical term that designates a number that multiplies the value of what it is combined with. To date, the Good Ventures Foundation—Tuna and Moskovitz’s private foundation with $10 billion in assets—has primarily funded Coefficient Giving. For this reason, people often perceive the latter as “a Dustin and Cari project,” according to Coefficient Giving executive director Alexander Berger. Now, that’s going to change.
“Our goal is to be a little more accessible to businesses,” Berger says. “It’s really the culmination of the vision we set out when we started Open Philanthropy with Cari, which was to create this resource that would be ready for the next group of donors.”
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With your donations they hope to increase the impact of Coefficient Giving
Coefficient Giving is already well on its way to that goal. More than $200 million in commitments for its initiatives this year have come from other funders, up from about $100 million last year. Among the new billionaire funders are Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe; Lucy Southworth (wife of Larry Page, co-founder of Google); and Bill Gates. They have contributed to the creation of two thematic funds of more than $100 million: the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF), launched last year, and the Fund for Abundance and Growth, launched in March. LEAF has distributed $40 million to date, with its largest donation yet being $17 million to Pure Earth to help it identify spices, pottery and other causes of lead exposure in India and other countries.
Historically, billionaires have donated where other billionaires donate. So Coefficient Giving’s rebranding is part of a broader trend among the wealthy toward crowdfunding, especially for philanthropists looking to get donors to fund a broader range of causes beyond their immediate network (typically universities and medical centers). Lever for Change, which emerged from the MacArthur Foundation in 2019, bills itself as a turnkey platform that helps wealthy donors direct their money to grassroots (and hopefully more diverse) organizations. Investment firm and fund manager Iconiq Capital launched Iconiq Impact in 2019 to drive joint giving, called “collaborations,” and has helped its funders distribute more than $500 million. There is also the bipolar disorder research initiative of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, David Baszucki of Roblox and Kent Dauten of Keystone Capital, who contributed $50 million each.
Berger says Coefficient Giving is very similar to Blue Meridian, founded in 2016, which explicitly promotes its investment approach: Donations are called “investments” that are channeled through “funds” with specific national focus areas, such as social mobility and criminal justice reform. (Gates, Brin and MacKenzie Scott have partnered with Blue Meridian.) The main difference, according to Berger, lies in the organizations’ approach. “We believe that by taking a global perspective and looking beyond direct service to advocacy, research and policy, greater benefits can often be realized,” Berger concludes.
Tuna emphasizes that seeking funding from more donors does not mean that she and Moskovitz will slow down their donations. They plan to increase it, with the goal of reaching a point where they donate money faster than they earn it. With their donations and those of others, they hope to increase Coefficient Giving’s impact and, therefore, its influence. Ideally, this will translate into more children free of malaria, more people with access to clean water, and fewer people with lead poisoning. AI security will be more difficult because of the billions of dollars at stake. But Coefficient is not deterred; has already committed more than $100 million to AI safety initiatives so far this year.
This article was originally published in Forbes US
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