According to wikipedia, Open Philanthropy was founded in 2017. I would've thought that suddenly becoming billionaire-backed would lead to a big jump in the amount of funding being deployed, but when I look at plots of funding over time I don't see any.

Why?

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Firstly, from the plot that you link (at least the one on the right) there actually seems to be a clear jump (total in 2017 is 300M from 150M the year before).

Secondly, I think the main reason is that Open Philanthropy didn't just come into existence out of nothing, they started a partnership with GiveWell in 2014 (as the Wikipedia article says as well) and Good Ventures have already been giving through that, so it's not that suddenly a new funder was there in 2017, it's that a  funder has been easing in over a long time and the founding of Open Philanthropy as an organisation was just one step in this process.

Cool, yep. This checks out.

Thanks!

2 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 11:52 AM

Wasn't it just called GiveWell labs before 2017?

PS, I'm asking because I'm working on a "history of EA" video. The idea is that this is a nice narrative-driven way to explain the EA memeplex.