Open Prompt
What new cause area should Open Philanthropy consider funding?
We’re hoping to see more answers to this prompt than any other. If you aren’t sure what to write about, we strongly suggest choosing it.
We believe it’s important for philanthropists to make deliberate, long-term commitments to causes. A “cause” is the field around a particular problem or opportunity in which it is necessary to develop expertise and networks to make good grantmaking decisions. Examples include reducing the harm associated with poor air quality in South Asia, preventing pandemics and improving biosecurity, or increasing the total size and effectiveness of global aid.
As part of our Cause Exploration Prizes, we have suggested a number of causes to investigate that could potentially become program areas at Open Philanthropy. We’ve also asked cross-cutting research questions which could substantially inform which cause areas we expect to work on. We sometimes refer to work on these questions as “worldview investigations”.
However, we are also interested in hearing what problems you think we should be working on, and how you think money can be spent to address them cost-effectively.
The Global Health and Wellbeing team at Open Philanthropy thinks about the good we can do in terms of improvements in economic outcomes (increases in incomes or consumption) and health outcomes (longer, healthier lives, which we estimate using disability-adjusted life years averted.)
You should make an estimate of the size of your chosen problem and the cost-effectiveness of your proposed strategy to address it. We aim for 1,000x social return on investment with our grantmaking. We are open to suggestions for new problems to work on, and new ways to address problems we are already working on. (If you are interested in helping to expand the outcomes we evaluate, consider our prompt on measuring non-health, non-pecuniary benefits.)
If you are interested in this prompt, we suggest that you:
Look at some of our existing cause area reports to get a sense for how we evaluate causes (e.g. civil conflict resolution, South Asian air quality).
Use the Importance, Tractability, and Neglectedness framework to explain why you think this problem is promising enough to be worth evaluating.
Importance: How many individuals are affected by this problem, and by how much?
Tractability: How can a philanthropic funder help to make progress on this problem? Can you estimate what impact per dollar you would expect for different types of interventions?
Neglectedness: Who else is working on this problem? Why are other funders not pursuing the strategies you think are most promising?
Discuss a couple of example grants that could be made to address this problem. These could involve real or hypothetical grantees. For example, “I’d fund grantee X to do Y” or “I’d want to fund Y if I could find a grantee to carry it out.”
Provide a list of questions that you think need to be investigated, but which you haven’t had the time or space to discuss in your submission.
Suggested reading
We understand that investigating a cause area in depth is very time-consuming. If, after reflection and research, you think that an area you’ve investigated does not reach our bar or present a good opportunity for a new program area, please still submit your work — it is valuable and will still be eligible for our prizes.
This prompt is meant to help you get started, but we are very open to different approaches to answering this question.