EA Funds That Exist (2024)

Groups to defer your donation choices to.

Effective altruism logo

[I would like to thank Taymon. Without Taymon’s encyclopedic knowledge of everything going on in effective altruism, this post would be much worse.]

This is a list of every effective altruism fund I’m aware of. 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 year¹ to help guide donation decisions.

Global Health and Development

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. GiveWell has been evaluated by Giving What We Can and found to provide high-quality recommendations and grants.

Some Random Grants: $11.1 million to New Incentives to expand their cash-incentives-for-vaccinations program to Nigeria. $23.6 million to the Malaria Consortium to provide malaria-preventing medicine in several African countries. $16.8 million to the Against Malaria Foundation.

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. In addition to giving to GiveWell’s top charities, the All Grants Fund gives to new charities and makes grants for research and policy change. The All Grants Fund’s money goes to riskier or more uncertain charities than the Top Charities Fund, but ones that are expected to have a larger effect.

Associated Organization: GiveWell.

Grantmaker: GiveWell as an entity. GiveWell has been evaluated by Giving What We Can and found to provide high-quality recommendations and grants.

Some Random Grants: $1.4 million for the Malaria Consortium to give vitamin A alongside its malaria-preventing medication. $787,500 to the Center for Effective Global Action, which researches global health and development programs. $7.77 million to the Clinton Health Access Initiative for a study of whether distributing oral rehydration solution and zinc to households reduces deaths from diarrhea.

Global Health and Development Fund

The Global Health and Development Fund aims to improve the lives of the world’s worst-off people, particularly through preventing deaths from disease. They also pursue systematic change that could help end global poverty for good.

Associated Organization: Founders’ Pledge.

Grantmaker: Two:

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

• Rosie Bettle, Applied Researcher at Founders’ Pledge and biopsychologist.

Some Random Grants: $125,000 to Pure Earth to understand what causes lead pollution; $50,000 to OneDaySooner to speed up the rollout of the malaria vaccine; $50,000 to Sightsavers for deworming.

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.² Donate to whichever one is most convenient.

Associated Organization: EA Funds.

Grantmaker: Elie Hassenfeld, cofounder and CEO of GiveWell. GiveWell has been evaluated by Giving What We Can and found to provide high-quality recommendations and grants.

Some Random Grants: $2.5 million to support vitamin A supplementation in Chad. $855,000 to GDI Solutions for “core funding and fellowships in the youth empowerment space.”

Global Health and Wellbeing Fund

The Global Health and Wellbeing Fund is Giving What We Can’s new fund focusing on global development.

Associated Organization: Giving What We Can.

Grantmaker: None listed.

Some Random Grants: While it hasn’t made grants yet, it intends to make grants in consultation with GiveWell that are similar to the All Grants Fund. (Did we really need another one of these? Okay.)

Maximize Your Impact Fund

The Maximize Your Impact Fund aims to address all aspects of multidimensional poverty: health (nutrition, child mortality); education; and living standards (sanitation, electricity, drinking water, cooking fuel, housing, and assets like cars or TVs). It believes that all aspects of multidimensional poverty reinforce each other, so the most effective way to help the global poor is to tackle all of them.

Associated Organization: The Life You Can Save.

Grantmaker: Two:

• Katie Stanford, Director of Research at The Life You Can Save.

• Matias Nestore, Senior Associate, Research and Evaluation at The Life You Can Save

Some Random Grants: 5% of donations to Breakthrough Trust, which runs anti-gender-based-violence programs in India. 8% of donations to GiveDirectly, which provides cash transfers to the global poor. 6% of donations to Teaching At The Right Level Africa, which campaigns for teachers to teach behind-grade-level children at their learning level and not their grade level.

Education Fund

The Education Fund works to improve both the number of children being educated and the quality of education in the developing world. Access to better education helps children earn more later in life and enrich their communities. The Education Fund particularly focuses on girls’ education, which can improve the position of women in patriarchal societies.

Associated Organization: The Life You Can Save.

Grantmaker: Two:

• Katie Stanford, Director of Research at The Life You Can Save.

• Matias Nestore, Senior Associate, Research and Evaluation at The Life You Can Save

Some Random Grants: 71% of donations to Educate Girls, which campaigns to get Indian girls in school and provide them remedial curriculum if necessary. 29% of donations to Teaching At The Right Level Africa, which campaigns for teachers to teach behind-grade-level children at their learning level and not their grade level.

Health Fund

The Health Fund focuses on preventing and treating diseases in the developing world, particularly malaria, pneunomia, HIV/AIDS, and diarrhea, as well as nutrition and maternal/child health. It provides grants related to nutrient fortification and supplementation, preventative health, healthcare access, health education, and vaccination.

Associated Organization: The Life You Can Save.

Grantmaker: Two:

• Katie Stanford, Director of Research at The Life You Can Save.

• Matias Nestore, Senior Associate, Research and Evaluation at The Life You Can Save

Some Random Grants: 3% of donations to New Incentives, which provides cash incentives for vaccinations. 15% of donations to Unlimit Health, which works on deworming programs. 13% of donations to the Against Malaria Foundation, which provides insecticide-treated bednets to people at risk of contracting malaria.

Quality of Life Fund

The Quality of Life Fund focuses on economic development in the developing world, especially through infrastructure improvements and supporting businesses. They primarily donate to charities which provide unconditional cash transfers; support for business owners, such as training and providing inputs like seeds or tools; and access to safe water and healthcare, which make people more able to be productive.

Associated Organization: The Life You Can Save.

Grantmaker: Two:

• Katie Stanford, Director of Research at The Life You Can Save.

• Matias Nestore, Senior Associate, Research and Evaluation at The Life You Can Save

Some Random Grants: 11% of donations to the One Acre Fund, which helps African farmers improve their yields through providing training, high-quality inputs, startup funding, and help selling their crops. 11% of donations to Village Enterprise, which helps Africans start businesses through providing training, mentoring, startup funding, and support groups. 17% of donations to Evidence Action, which runs water chlorination and deworming programs and incubates potential highly effective charities.

Women and Girls Fund

The Women and Girls Fund focuses on improving the position of women worldwide. Their key issues include gender-based violence, women’s education, family planning access, and treatment for childbirth-related injuries.

Associated Organization: The Life You Can Save.

Grantmaker: Four:

• Katie Stanford, Director of Research at The Life You Can Save.

• Matias Nestore, Senior Associate, Research and Evaluation at The Life You Can Save

• Ilona Arih, doctor

• Akhil Bansal, doctor who works in global health

Some Random Grants: 16% to Breakthrough Trust, which runs anti-gender-based-violence programs in India. 8% to Population Services International, which provides contraception, abortion, HIV treatment, and reproductive healthcare. 40% to Educate Girls, which campaigns to get Indian girls in school and provide them remedial curriculum if necessary.

Animal Advocacy

Recommended Charity Fund

The Recommended Charity Fund supports Animal Charity Evaluators’ Recommended 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. Giving What We Can tentatively doesn’t recommend the Recommended Charity Fund, because it believes that Animal Charity Evaluators’s models are inadequate to establish that charities are cost-effective.

Associated Organization: Animal Charity Evaluators.

Grantmaker: Animal Charity Evaluators as an entity.

Some Random Grants: $95,836 to Faunalytics, which researches animal advocacy. $169,085 to the Wild Animal Initiative, which builds the field of wild animal welfare science. $103,354 to Dansk Vegetarisk Forening, a Danish animal advocacy organization that particularly works on increasing access to plant-based food.

Movement Grants

Movement Grants supports organizations which Animal Charity Evaluators thinks are worthy of funding, but which don’t qualify for Recommended Charity status. Movement Grants “prioritize[s] supporting initiatives that use novel interventions, target large numbers of animals, and operate in regions that are underrepresented in animal advocacy.” Movement Grants tends to fund interventions which are speculative or early-stage or which take an approach uncommon in effective animal advocacy. They’re particularly likely to fund animal advocacy movement building in countries without an animal advocacy movement. Giving What We Can tentatively doesn’t recommend Movement Grants, because they aren’t very selective, often give to highly localized charities with less potential to scale, and seem to make worse grantmaking decisions than the Animal Welfare Fund.

Grantmaker: Animal Charity Evaluators as an entity.

Some Random Grants: $15,000 to Rethink Your Food Inc, which provides plant-based menu consulting to organizations in Florida and the Caribbean. $16,500 to Animal Advocates International, which works on animal law in Africa. $20,000 to Vegan Hacktivists, which provides data science and programming help to animal advocacy charities.

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. The Animal Welfare Fund makes grants for both interventions with a strong evidence base (such as corporate campaigns) and charities that work on underexplored causes (such as insect and fish welfare) and new geographical areas (Africa, South Asia). Giving What We Can tentatively recommends the Animal Welfare Fund as one of the best opportunities for donors in the animal welfare space.

Associated Organization: EA Funds.

Grantmakers: In addition to four advisors, the Animal Welfare Fund is managed by:

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

• Neil Dullaghan, senior researcher in Rethink Priorities’ farmed animal welfare team

• Zoe Sigle, Director of Programs at Farmed Animal Funders, which caters to people donating over $250,000/year to help animals

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

Some Random Grants: $50,000 to the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, a Tory lobbying group in the U.K., for reports about the economic benefits of animal welfare. $130,000 to the Shrimp Welfare Project to purchase stunners for producers that have promised to stun at least 100 million shrimps per year. $45,000 to Animal Equality UK to campaign for high-welfare fish slaughter and an end to the expansion of the salmon industry in the UK.

Effective Animal Advocacy Fund

The Effective Animal Advocacy Fund is Giving What We Can’s new fund focusing on farmed and wild animal welfare.

Associated Organization: Giving What We Can.

Grantmakers: None listed.

Some Random Grants: None yet. Giving What We Can intends to split grants 50/50 between the Animal Welfare Fund (above) and The Humane League’s work on corporate campaigns (which lobby corporations to promise to buy higher-welfare animal products).

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. Unlike other longtermist funds, the Long-Term Future Fund takes applications from anyone, instead of soliciting people. It’s particularly likely to fund grants about AI. It provides more small grants to individuals or new organizations than other funds. Giving What We Can recommends the Long-Term Future Fund to people interested in donating to charities that help with global catastrophic risks. The Long-Term Future Fund discusses hypothetical grants they’d fund here.

Associated Organization: EA Funds.

Grantmakers: Many people:

• 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

• Caleb Parikh, who formerly worked on epistemic community health at the Centre for Effective Altruism

• Lawrence Chan, researcher at METR, which works on figuring out how to measure whether cutting-edge AIs pose a threat to society

• Lauro Langosco, PhD student at University of Cambridge focusing on AI safety

• Clara Collier, Editor in Chief at Asterisk Magazine

• Thomas Larsen, Director of Strategy at Center for AI Policy, which (as you might expect) does AI policy research about AI

Some Random Grants: $121,575 to Robert Miles to make videos and podcasts about AI alignment. $41,000 to a researcher to work on mechanical interpretability research. $36,000 for “building a longtermist industrial conglomerate aligned via a reputation based economy.”

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 “war between great powers, natural and engineered pandemics, thermonuclear war, threats from advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and frontier 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: $146,000 to support U.S.-China diplomacy about AI. $10,000 to Vox Media to write articles about the Ninth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention. $200,000 to Global Shield, a new international advocacy organization about global catastrophic risks.

Emerging Challenges Fund

The Emerging Challenges 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, and on interventions that benefit from being funded by a lot of people instead of a single large donor. They avoid high-risk high-reward interventions or that rely heavily on gut feelings and hard-to-explain intuitions. They have a large network with many connections, including with people outside of longtermism and effective altruism. Giving What We Can recommends the Emerging Challenges Fund to people interested in donating to charities that help with global catastrophic risks.

Associated Organization: Longview Philanthropy.

Grantmakers: Three:

• Tyler John, grantmaker at Longview Philanthropy who specializes in emerging technology governance.

• Simran Dhaliwal, CEO of Longview Philanthropy.

• Carl Robichaud, leader of Longview Philanthropy’s nuclear weapons policy program.

Some Random Grants: $100,000 to Far AI to work on AI safety research. $50,000 to Blueprint Biosecurity for research on far-UVC light. $20,000 to Decision Research to study nuclear decision-making.

Risks and Resilience Fund

The Risks and Resilience Fund is Giving What We Can’s new fund focusing on global catastrophic risks.

Associated Organization: Giving What We Can.

Grantmakers: None listed.

Some Random Grants: None yet, but they intend to split donations 50/50 between the Long-Term Future Fund and the Emerging Challenges Fund.

Climate Change Fund

The Climate Change Fund tries to prevent and mitigate climate change. They’re particularly interested in “carbon removal, carbon capture and storage, and tools for industrial decarbonization”, as well as technologies that make it easier for people to emit less carbon. They also support bold and ambitious policy advocacy.

Associated Organization: Founders’ Pledge

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

Some Random Grants: $875,000 to DEPLOY/US, a U.S. organization which does climate lobbying on the right. $1,000,000 to Energy for Growth, to campaign for more transparency in the contracts between private electricity generators and the government. $2.45 million to Tsinghua Education Foundation North America to fund Tsinghua University’s program on Chinese climate policy and retrofitting coal power.

Giving Green Fund

The Giving Green Fund is associated with effective climate change charity evaluator Giving Green. The Giving Green Fund donates to Giving Green’s top charities, which support geothermal energy research, alternative protein research, nuclear power advocacy, aviation and maritime shipping decarbonization, heavy industry decarbonization, and clean air policy.

Associated Organization: Giving Green.

Grantmaker: Giving Green as an organization.

Some Random Grants: Not publicly available.

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, Director of Research at Giving What We Can (and author of several of the Giving What We Can reports about various charity evaluators).

• 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, Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy in the Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building program.

• 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: $2,000 for an analysis of the nuclear funding landscape now that one of the big funders stopped funding it. $2,000 to Longview Philanthropy’s Emerging Challenges Fund.

Nuclear Weapons Policy Fund

The Nuclear Weapons Policy Fund aims to reduce the risk of nuclear war. They work on understanding the nature of nuclear risk (through e.g. forecasting and historical research); figuring out good ways to reduce risk (such as building systems that reduce the risk of accidental launches and improving nuclear diplomacy); telling policymakers how to reduce risk; and building the capacity of the nuclear risk field.

Associated Organization: Longview Philanthropy.

Grantmakers: Carl Robichaud and Matthew Gentzel, coleaders of Longview Philanthropy’s nuclear weapons policy program.

Some Random Grants: I haven’t found a list of their actual grants, but they’ve supported the Council on Strategic Risks, which lobbies for policies that reduce risk of the most serious nuclear wars; the Nuclear Information Project, which figures out the state of countries’ nuclear weapons programs; and a program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to develop an expert consensus on the most likely ways that we’d escalate to 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: Three:

• 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: $10,000 to a researcher studying long-term wild animal suffering. $7,000 to a researcher studying the ethics of panspermia. $85,000 scholarship for a researcher to complete a computer science master’s.

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: Two people:

• Tom Barnes, AI Risk Analyst at the U.K. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

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

Some Random Grants: $10,000 for a one-day conference aimed at high schoolers who are interested in effective altruism. $12,000 to hire an editor for a book helping low-income students get scholarships to top universities. $50,000 to an organization that lets donors enter a cause area and then creates a portfolio of effective charities for them.³

Incubated Charities Fund

The Incubated Charities Fund makes donations to charities currently being 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: Recently incubated charities include Animal Policy International, which focuses on trade policy related to animal welfare; HealthLearn, which provides continuing education to health professionals in developing countries; and Concentric Policies, which works on policymaking about noncommunicable diseases (like heart disease).

1. Unfortunately, I failed at 2023.

2. I emailed GiveWell to check this in 2022 but I’m not going to bother them about this every year as long as the two funds continue to appear to be functionally identical.

3. Funds as a service!