EA Funds That Exist (2022)

A complete list, as far as I know

This is a list of every effective altruism fund I’m aware of.¹ I’m using “fund” as a bit of a term of art here. A “fund” is when you donate to a specific grantmaker, and they donate the money as they see fit. Grantmakers specialize in charity evaluation, so they’re more likely to know about new exciting opportunities, to know which charities are unexpectedly poorly or skillfully run, and to be able to assess complex data about which interventions are best.

If you know about a fund I don’t know about, please drop a link in the comments. I also appreciate any additional information you have that might be relevant to donation decisions (especially red flags at any fund). I intend to keep this reasonably up-to-date and to rerun the post every year to help guide donation decisions.

If you’re a grantmaker, I encourage you to consider starting your own fund! More competition means more choices for donors and higher standards for grantmakers. I think it’d be particularly cool to see more funds with a unique mission, like the Patient Philanthropy Fund or the Incubated Charities Fund.

Last updated: February 2023.

Global Poverty And Health

Top Charities Fund

The Top Charities Fund grants money to GiveWell’s top charities: charities that do a lot of good in the world with a high degree of reliability. In general, GiveWell tends to focus on health charities that target the global poor and are backed by randomized controlled trials. At time of writing, GiveWell’s top charities include cash incentives for childhood vaccinations, nets to prevent malaria, medicine which prevents malaria, and Vitamin A supplements. The Top Charities Fund allows GiveWell to give the money to the top charity which currently has the most use for it.

Associated Organization: GiveWell.

Grantmaker: GiveWell as an entity.

Some Random Grants: $8.4 million as general support to the Malaria Consortium’s Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention program; $1.8 million as general support for Helen Keller International’s Vitamin A supplementation program; $21.4 million to help New Incentives expand to Nigeria.

All Grants Fund

The All Grants Fund gives to a variety of charities—almost all global health and development charities—that GiveWell thinks will have the highest impact. About three-quarters of donations to the All Grants Fund go to top charities. The remaining quarter goes to:

• Programs that might be future top charities when more data has been collected about them

• Cost-effective programs that can’t expand enough to be top charities

• Public health policy advocacy

• Studies that will inform GiveWell’s future work

• Organizations that raise funds for GiveWell or its top charities

Associated Organization: GiveWell.

Grantmaker: GiveWell as an entity.

Some Random Grants: $71,000 to IDInsight for research on how to figure out how many people a program reached; $10.4 million to the Clinton Health Access Initiative to develop a program which identifies new cost-effective interventions; $5.6 million to Evidence Action to expand access to technology which automatically dechlorinates water at water collection points

Global Health and Development Fund

The Global Health and Development Fund is intended to reduce inequality in “health, wealth, and opportunity.” They make grants to both interventions which directly improve the lives of the world’s poorest and interventions which might lead to long-term systemic change. They are particularly notable as the only organization in this section of the list that does not use GiveWell’s research.

Associated Organization: Founders’ Pledge.

Grantmaker: Two:

• Matt Lerner, Research Director at Founders’ Pledge and social scientist.

• Dominic Finelli, Senior Advisor at Founders’ Pledge and former advisor to wealthy philanthropists

Some Random Grants: $125,000 to the r.i.c.e. institute to support the Kangaroo Mother Care program in hospitals in India; $100,000 to PrEP4All to advocate for a mRNA covid-19 vaccine production plan; $100,000 to fill a time-sensitive gap in the Malaria Consortium’s malaria nets program in India.

Global Health and Development Fund, The Other One

The other Global Health and Development Fund is a bit of a hangover. The All Grants Fund was only rolled out in August 2022. Before then, the EA Funds’ Global Health and Development Fund was the best way to donate to research, policy advocacy, and effective organizations that can’t absorb enough funds to be top charities. Nowadays, they’re basically identical (I emailed GiveWell to check). Donate to whichever one is most convenient.

Associated Organization: EA Funds.

Grantmaker: Elie Hassenfeld, cofounder and CEO of GiveWell.

Some Random Grants: $5,140,000 to the Malaria Consortium for its Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention program; $300,000 to IRD Global to treat and prevent tuberculosis in Pakistan; $1,200,000 to the Center for Global Development to research the effects of lead exposure on children and lobby global policymakers to support lead-reduction programs in developing countries.

Animal Advocacy

Recommended Charity Fund

The Recommended Charity Fund supports Animal Charity Evaluators’ Top Charities and Standout Charities. Animal Charity Evaluators’ charities work to improve conditions for farmed animals and wild animals. They take a variety of approaches, including research, developing alternative meat products, convincing people to eat fewer animal products, and working with corporations to improve conditions for animals.

Associated Organization: Animal Charity Evaluators.

Grantmaker: Animal Charity Evaluators as an entity.

Some Random Grants:² $93,000 to the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations, which campaigns to improve conditions for farmed animals in India; $93,000 to Vegetarianos Hoy, which campaigns to change farmed-animal policy in Chile; $93,000 to New Harvest, which does fieldbuilding for alternative meat products.

Movement Grants

Movement Grants supports organizations which Animal Charity Evaluators thinks are worthy of funding, but which don’t qualify for a Top or Standout recommendation. (For example, they might be too small to absorb the large amount of donations which Top and Standout charities receive.) Movement Grants tends to fund interventions which are speculative or early-stage or which take an approach uncommon in effective animal advocacy. It’s particularly likely to fund animal advocacy movement building in countries without an animal advocacy movement.

Grantmaker: Animal Charity Evaluators as an entity.

Some Random Grants: $21,000 to Amis de l’Afrique Francophone to offer more plant-based food in and establish animal-rights clubs in Beninese schools; $30,000 to the Black Veg Society to educate American people of color about veganism; $25,000 to Gyvi Gali to expand their vegan advocacy in Lithuania.

Animal Welfare Fund

The Animal Welfare Fund funds a variety of interventions, mostly aimed to improve lives for farmed animals, although it also sometimes funds wild-animal welfare. Unlike the above two, the Animal Welfare Fund doesn’t rely on Animal Charity Evaluators’ research. It incorporates opinions from a wide variety of people throughout the animal advocacy movement.

Associated Organization: EA Funds.

Grantmakers: Many people:

• Kieran Grieg, Chief Strategy Analyst at generalist effective altruist research organization Rethink Priorities

• Alexandria Beck, Director of the Open Wing Alliance, which coordinates seventy organizations to work on cage-free egg and broiler chicken welfare campaigns

• Lewis Bollard, Program Officer for Farmed Animal Welfare at philanthropic foundation Open Philanthropy

• Marcus Davis, co-executive director and cofounder of generalist effective altruist research organization Rethink Priorities

• Mikaela Saccoccio, Executive Director of Farmed Animal Funders, which works with donors who donate $250,000 or more annually to programs which fight factory farming

• Karolina Sarek, co-founder and Director of Research at Charity Entrepreneurship, which incubates potentially effective charities

Some Random Grants: $7,500 to a researcher trying to figure out higher-welfare ways to control urban rat populations; $36,000 to the Tanzania Animal Welfare Society to assess welfare of farmed fish in Tanzanian farms; $67,000 to Animal Rights Organization EVA to campaign for enforcement of animal protection laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Food System Research Fund

The Food System Research Fund funds research into animal advocacy causes. We don’t know very much about the best and most cost-effective ways ways to reduce harm to animals, and the Food System Research Fund aims to fill that gap. They’re particularly interested in the economics of animal protein and plant-based alternatives; reducing growth in animal product consumption in low- and middle-income countries; understanding which currently used advocacy techniques work; and identifying new approaches for reducing animal consumption.

Associated Organization: Food System Innovations.

Grantmakers: Not obvious from their website, but their trustees are:

• Galina Hale, Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz, Director of Research at Food System Innovations, and many other jobs.

• Kieran Greig, Analyst for Farmed Animal Funders, which provides advice for large donors on donating to animal advocacy causes.

• David Meyer, CEO of Food System Innovations and adviser to many non-profits and for-profits.

Some Random Grants: A study of what causes Chinese consumers to try plant-based meat; a study about what causes farmed animal farmers to stop farming animals; a study that recommended interventions to reduce animal product consumption in South Africa.

Global Catastrophic Risks And Longtermism

Long-Term Future Fund

The Long-Term Future Fund aims to prevent global catastrophic risks, such as risks from pandemics or advanced artificial intelligence. It also funds advocacy for longtermist ideas (the idea that future people matter morally) and other programs it thinks will improve the long run future of humanity. This is a good all-round fund, if you’re less interested in the more specialized longtermism funds.

Associated Organization: EA Funds.

Grantmakers: Many people:

• Asya Bergal, Program Associate at philanthropic foundation Open Philanthropy, who focuses on effective altruist community growth

• Oliver Habryka, project lead for rationality website Less Wrong

• Linchuan Zhang, Research Manager at generalist effective altruist research organization Rethink Priorities, who focuses on longtermist interventions

Some Random Grants: $3,200 to pay participants to test a forecasting training program; $250,000 to the Berkeley Existential Risk Institute to pay a software developer to create a library to help program safer machine learning algorithms; $14,125 for a researcher to work on developing a tool for a particular speculative approach to machine-learning interpretability.

Climate Change Fund

The Climate Change Fund campaigns for humanity to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. They also want to make sure that everyone has access to enough energy to live the lifestyle of people in the developed world. This isn’t a degrowth fund—it focuses on new technologies and sensible policy lobbying to make sure everyone can both be rich and not die from horrible natural disasters.

Associated Organization: Founders’ Pledge

Grantmaker: Johannes Ackva, researcher at Founders’ Pledge and climate policy expert.

Some Random Grants: $400,000 to Carbon180 to advocate for the US to support negative emissions policies; $2,000,000 to the Clean Air Task Force to support its expansion in emerging economies; $670,000 to Future Cleantech Architects to support its research into cleaner technology.

Patient Philanthropy Fund

The Patient Philanthropy Fund doesn’t really make grants! The Patient Philanthropy Fund is for you if you think the best opportunities to improve the long-term future are in, well, the future. They intend to invest the money until a key point when the best opportunities to improve the long-term future arrive—whether that is years in the future or centuries. In the meantime, they intend to make small grants each year to stay in practice, to build connections, and to give people a sense of what kind of things they’d grant for.

Associated Organization: Founders’ Pledge

Grantmakers: Five people:

• Sjir Hoejimakers, Senior Researcher at Founders’ Pledge, who led efforts to create this fund.

• Luke Ding, an investor and philanthropist.

• Phillip Trammel, research associate at the Global Priorities Institute and inventor of the idea of patient philanthropy.

• Max Daniel, chief of staff at the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research, which researches what people should do if they care about the very long term future.

• Eva Vivalt, economics professor at the University of Toronto and senior research affiliate at the Global Priorities Institute, who researches why people don’t make evidence-based decisions

Some Random Grants: None yet.

Global Catastrophic Risks Fund

The Global Catastrophic Risks Fund aims to prevent severe catastrophes: those which could kill hundreds of millions or billions of people, or even drive the human race extinct. They focus on great-power war, nuclear war, advanced artificial intelligence, pandemics, and risks from new military technologies. They aim to fund programs that tackle all areas of global catastropic risks: preventing them, making it easier to recover from them when they happen, and predicting new global catastrophic risks that aren’t currently on our radar.

Associated Organization: Founders’ Pledge

Grantmakers: Christian Ruhl, applied researcher at Founders’ Pledge who specializes in global catastrophic risks.

Some Random Grants: None yet.

Longtermism Fund

The Longtermism Fund aims to prevent existential and global catastrophic risks and to spread and implement key longtermist ideas. They focus on interventions that have a clear case for how they’re beneficial that can be explained to donors. They avoid high-risk high-reward interventions or that rely heavily on gut feelings and hard-to-explain intuitions.

Associated Organization: Longview Philanthropy.

Grantmakers: Longview Philanthropy as an entity.

Some Random Grants: $60,000 to SecureBio, run by one of the leading synthetic biology researchers, to promote biosecurity; $30,000 to Rethink Priorities’ General Longtermism Team to do research about longtermism; $15,000 to the Council on Strategic Risks for policy work to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

The Center on Long-Term Risk Fund

The Center on Long-Term Risk Fund focuses on s-risks, that is, risks of extreme levels of suffering in the future. They mostly fund research related to their priority areas: reducing risks of conflict between future transformative artificial intelligence systems; ensuring safe governance of artifical intelligence systems; better understanding of decision theory and epistemology, in order to understand artificial intelligence better; understanding the psychology of evil people in positions of power so that their influence can be reduced; and cause prioritization related to s-risks.

Associated Organization: The Center for Long-Term Risk.

Grantmakers: Four:

• Linh Chi Nguyen, the Community & Grants Manager at the Center for Long-Term Risk.

• Tobias Baumann, cofounder of the Center for Reducing Suffering and graduate student in machine learning.

• Emery Cooper, Researcher at the Center for Long-Term Risk, who focuses on macrostrategy and on understanding conflict between transformative AI systems using game theory, machine learning, and statistics.

• Stefan Torges, Co-Executive Director at the Center for Long-Term Risk, who works on community building and researches AI governance.

Some Random Grants: $11,200 to a researcher studying simplicity in neural nets; $62,000 to a researcher working on multi-agent models of the mind and their relationship to human values, suffering, rationality, and cooperation; $7,000 to pay for a college consultant to help a young researcher transfer to a top university.

Miscellaneous

Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund

The Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund funds effective-altruist community-building work, broadly construed. They might fund organizations that raise money, run events, encourage people to become and stay effective altruists, improve the health of the community, or do research that helps figure out which causes are the most important.

Associated Organization: EA funds.

Grantmakers: Three people:

• Max Daniel, Chief of Staff at the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research, which researches what people should do if they care about the very long term future

• Michelle Hutchinson, Assistant Director of the One-on-one team at 80,000 Hours, which provides career advice for effective altruists

• Peter Wildeford, Co-Executive Director and co-founder of generalist effective altruist research organization Rethink Priorities

Some Random Grants: $7,000 for effective altruist groups in Cameroon; $7,000 for a researcher to inspect GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analyses and develop tools to better analyze cost-effectiveness analyses; $100,000 for a pilot program providing free tech development and support to effective altruist organizations.

Incubated Charities Fund

The Incubated Charities Fund makes donations to charities incubated by Charity Entrepeneurship, which helps people found new charities. Charity Entrepeneurship has incubated many promising charities, including the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, the Shrimp Welfare Project, Fortify Health (which campaigns for vitamin-fortified flour in India), and Suvita (which encourages people in India to vaccinate their children). The Incubated Charities Fund allows you to support promising early-stage charities which may have trouble raising money from other sources.

Associated Organization: Charity Entrepreneurship.

Grantmakers: Charity Entrepreneurship as an entity.

Some Random Grants: None yet.

1. Halfway through this post, I discovered that Giving What We Can had already done it, but as our audiences don’t necessarily overlap I’ve decided to duplicate the work.

2. Animal Charity Evaluators’ top charities typically do multiple things, so I’m summarizing the biggest achievements of the charity according to Animal Charity Evaluators’ grant page.