Choosing causes is the most important decision a philanthropist makes.
We believe it’s important for philanthropists to make deliberate commitments to causes. We refer to the causes we’re prioritizing most highly as focus areas.
Focus Areas
We’ve cast a wide net for potential focus areas, incorporating information on the history of philanthropy as well as what today’s foundations focus on. We’ve sought focus areas that are strong on some combination of the following criteria:
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Importance
How many individuals does this issue affect, and how deeply?
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Neglectedness
All else equal, is this cause receiving less attention from other actors, particularly other major philanthropists?
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Tractability
Are there clear ways in which a funder could contribute to progress in this area?
So far, we’ve concentrated on selecting focus areas in two broad categories: Global Health & Wellbeing and Longtermism. We occasionally also provide support to other grantmaking areas that fall outside of our current priorities.
Current Focus Areas
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Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
We believe natural pandemics represent one of the biggest current risks to global welfare and stability, and the risks from engineered pandemics — whether via accidents or misuse — may grow in the future.
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Effective Altruism Community Growth (Global Health and Wellbeing)
We want to increase the number of people who work to improve health and wellbeing by as much as possible, and enable them to achieve their goals.
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Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism)
We want to increase the number of people who aim to help the future go as well as possible, and help them to achieve their goals.
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Farm Animal Welfare
We’ve seen that advocacy, including reforms to phase out the worst farming practices and work to promote alternatives, can improve the lives of billions of animals confined in cruel conditions on factory farms globally.
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Global Aid Policy
We hope to contribute to a future where wealthy countries’ foreign aid improves the well-being of more people.
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Global Health & Development
We believe that every life has equal value — and that philanthropic dollars can go particularly far by helping those who are, by global standards, living in poverty.
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Global Health R&D
We seek to improve diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the most neglected diseases, which could save and improve the lives of millions of people.
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Potential Risks from Advanced AI
We’re interested in supporting technical research that could reduce the risk of accidents from artificial intelligence (AI), as well as strategic and policy work that has the potential to improve society’s preparedness for major advances in AI.
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Scientific Research
We believe scientific progress has been, and will continue to be, one of the biggest contributors to improvements in human wellbeing, and we hope to play a part in this.
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South Asian Air Quality
We believe helping governments reduce pollution and improve air quality could improve health outcomes for many millions of people on the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
