Last year, the year before, the year before that, the year before that, and the year before that, we published a set of suggestions for individual donors looking for organizations to support. This year, we are repeating the practice and publishing updated suggestions from Open Philanthropy program staff who chose to provide them.

Similar caveats to previous years apply:

  • These are reasonably strong options in causes of interest, and shouldn’t be taken as outright recommendations (i.e., it isn’t necessarily the case that the person making the suggestion thinks they’re the best option available across all causes).
  • The recommendations below fall within the cause areas Open Philanthropy has chosen to focus on. While this list does not expressly include GiveWell’s top charities, we believe those organizations to be the most cost-effective, evidence-backed giving opportunities available to donors today, and expect that some readers of this post might want to give to them.
  • Many of these recommendations appear here because they are particularly good fits for individual donors - due to being able to make use of fairly arbitrary amounts of donations from individuals, and in some cases because the recommender thought they’d be particularly likely to appeal to readers. This shouldn’t be seen as a list of our strongest grantees overall (although of course there may be overlap).
  • Our explanations for why these are strong giving opportunities are very brief and informal, and we don’t expect individuals to be persuaded by them unless they put a lot of weight on the judgment of the person making the suggestion.

In addition, we’d add that these recommendations are made by the individual program officers or teams cited, and do not necessarily represent my (Holden’s) personal or Open Phil’s institutional “all things considered” view.

Read the full article about suggestions for individuals donors by Holden Karnofsky at Open Philanthropy Project.