EA Forum Bot Site
EA Forum

Hide table of contents
by Luke Moore 🔸, Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸
8 min read 9

75

Effective givingAnimal welfareBuilding effective altruismCause prioritizationGlobal health & developmentMeta Coordination ForumGiving What We CanOpinionOrganization updatesPhilanthropic coordinationResearch
Frontpage

Written by Lucas Moore (Partnerships Manager) and Sjir Hoeijmakers (CEO), Giving What We Can for the Meta Coordination Forum 2025.

This memo provides updates on and a high-level overview of the effective giving landscape as of mid-2025, adapted from an earlier memo for Effective Giving Summit in June 2025. It is based largely on information gathered through our 2025 EG ecosystem pulse survey and builds on the memos we wrote for the MCF last year: 1, 2, 3, 4. Please leave a comment if you’d like us to clarify anything further. All figures are in USD.

Background

The effective giving ecosystem features an interdependent network of over 60 organisations trying to direct philanthropic resources to where they can do the most good, inspired by effective altruism principles and concepts such as cost-effectiveness, cause prioritisation and counterfactuality. 

Within this ecosystem, there are organisations identifying high-impact philanthropic opportunities (evaluators) and organisations fundraising for them (fundraisers). Many organisations are both evaluators and fundraisers.

Key updates

Overview of the ecosystem

How much money is moved to high-impact destinations[2] 

Where money goes

  • Our current best guess estimate is that the money moved by the entire EG ecosystem went to the following cause areas:
    • ~50% to global health
    • ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction
    • ~10% to meta charities
    • ~7% to animal welfare
    • ~6% to climate change mitigation
    • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~7%)
  • Open Philanthropy and GiveWell dominate the effective giving space (~80% of money moved), and their cause area distribution may not reflect the (future) distribution of donors in the broad EG community as it grows
    • In 2024 Open Philanthropy moved ~40% to global health, ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction, ~20% to meta charities, ~10% to animal welfare (the rest is a bit harder to categorise)
    • In 2024 GiveWell moved 100% to global health
  • Our current best guess estimate (excluding Open Philanthropy):
    • ~60% to global health
    • ~20% to global catastrophic risk reduction
    • ~10% to climate change mitigation
    • ~2% to animal welfare
    • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~8%)
  • Our current best guess estimate (excluding Open Philanthropy and GiveWell):
    • ~40% to global health
    • ~30% to global catastrophic risk reduction
    • ~15% to climate change mitigation
    • ~4% to animal welfare
    • (the rest is unknown or a bit harder to categorise: ~11%)

Where operational funding comes from

  • Open Philanthropy is the largest single funder of meta charities with a budget of ~7M for effective giving organisations (e.g. fundraisers and charity evaluators), but has a strong preference for funding no more than 50% of an organisation’s budget and looks for a minimum counterfactual and grant quality adjusted ROI of >2x (but often more like >5x)
  • Meta Charity Funding Circle is a key funding entity for smaller / early-stage meta charities. These funders are most interested in applications not already substantially supported by the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund or Open Philanthropy. See this overview of what they look for in applications
  • Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund is primarily focused on funding projects which spread the idea of giving effectively and encouraging impartial consideration of where donations can do the most good and thus have a preference for projects raising money for multiple core effective altruism causes rather than those raising for only one cause area
  • Founders Pledge are open to requests from EG organisations with a counterfactual and grant quality adjusted multiplier of 2-3x. They typically make grants of 50–300k
  • Beyond these grantmaking institutions many meta charities in the effective giving ecosystem are supported by various (U)HNW donors in their networks, as well as smaller donors. Many platform-based organisations that raise money on behalf of high-impact nonprofits cover some portion of their operational expenses through some sort of tipping mechanism at donor check-out, as well as by collecting interest on donations they hold temporarily before disbursement
  1. ^

    This might also be about finding new markets. Some of the existing orgs seem to have saturated the niche they've focused on, but could perhaps still appeal to other audiences in their country.

  2. ^

    For the purposes of this overview, "money moved to high-impact destinations" refers to funds donated directly to an organisation's accounts by a donor, with a high-impact destination (i.e. one recommended or granted to by an impact-focused evaluator). Some organisations also move money to destinations not considered high-impact, but these funds are not included for our purposes e.g. in 2024 Founders Pledge moved a total of 222M, but only 140M is considered high-impact.

75

0
0
2
5

Reactions

0
0
2
5

More posts like this

Comments9
Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
Oscar Sykes7
1
0
1

Was there any reason for omitting Macroscopic Ventures? They give on the order of 30M/per year

Reply
Luke Moore 🔸2
0
0

None at all, I have tried to contact them previously for this information, but would appreciate an introduction if you (or anyone else) can put me in touch with someone from their team?

Reply
Oscar Sykes1
0
0

I don't know anyone there but the 30M figure came from their website https://macroscopic.org/grants

Reply
Vasco Grilo🔸2
0
0

Thanks for the great overview of the effective giving ecosytem, Luke and Sjir. Strongly upvoted.

Overall money moved is still largely dependent on Open Philanthropy (>600M) and GiveWell (>200M), but getting less so every year

Nitpick. I guess you have used >X to mean roughly X, but slightly above it. If so, I would simply say X or ~X to avoid ambiguity.

Reply
Luke Moore 🔸4
0
0

Fair point, however, for OP the figure I have is somewhere between 600-700M (depending how you measure it ). Likely close to 650M. In this case I think that >600M is more acurate than ~600M. Similarly for GW its 200-230M.

Curious if you disagree? 

Reply
Vasco Grilo🔸2
0
0

Thanks, Luke. I see. You are using > 600 M to mean 600 M to 700 M. > 600 M could also mean a value closer to 600 M. So I would use the best guess with more digits to provide more information (for example, 650 M$ for OP, and 220 M$ for GW).

Reply
PabloAMC 🔸6
2
0
1

To what extent would it make sense to consider the work by the Gates Foundation part of the effective giving ecosystem? I would argue that they are very effective, too, even if they have no association with effective altruism.

Reply
Luke Moore 🔸4
0
0
1

Agree that they are focused on effectiveness and ss an ecosystem, we are increasingly building connections with the Gates Foundation. However, currently do not have enough information to be able to make a good conclusion regarding how much of their grantmaking is high-impact. 

Hopefully at some point we can include info from the Gates Foundation's high-impact grants in this overview. 

Reply
SummaryBot2
0
0

Executive summary: The effective giving ecosystem grew to ~$1.2B in 2024, with Founders Pledge and the Navigation Fund driving diversification beyond Open Philanthropy and GiveWell, while new risks like USAID’s funding cuts and questions about national fundraising models shape the landscape.

Key points:

  1. Overall money moved grew from ~$1.1B to ~$1.2B; excluding Open Philanthropy the ecosystem grew ~20% (to ~$500M), and excluding both Open Phil and GiveWell it grew ~50% (to ~$300M).
  2. Founders Pledge and Navigation Fund emerged as major players: Founders Pledge scaled from $25M (2022) to $140M (2024), while Navigation Fund began moving $10–100M annually.
  3. All four main fundraising strategies (broad direct, broad pledge, ultra-high-net-worth (U)HNW direct, and (U)HNW pledge) now exceed $10M each, with GWWC, The Life You Can Save, Longview, and Founders Pledge as exemplars.
  4. National fundraising groups (e.g. Doneer Effectief, Ge Effektivt, Ayuda Efectiva) continue to grow, though saturation limits are emerging (Effektiv Spenden plateauing at ~$20–25M).
  5. Cause-area allocations (excluding Open Phil/GiveWell) lean more toward catastrophic risk reduction and climate mitigation, suggesting future donor diversification.
  6. USAID’s 2025 foreign-assistance freeze may reduce global health funding by ~35–50%, triggering rapid-response efforts (e.g. Founders Pledge’s Catalytic Impact Fund).
  7. Operational funding remains heavily reliant on Open Phil, Meta Charity Funding Circle, EA Infrastructure Fund, and Founders Pledge, with counterfactual ROI thresholds shaping grantmaking.
  8. GWWC deprioritized building an “earning to give” community to focus on its core strategy, though some grassroots EtG activity continues.

 

 

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

Reply
More from Luke Moore 🔸
View more
Curated and popular this week
Relevant opportunities
View more