Good Ventures Foundation

Good Ventures Foundation is one of the most distinctive — and most misunderstood — major funders in American philanthropy. Founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna, it operates with $7.94 billion in assets and awarded $423 million in grants in its most recent reported year. Despite this scale, it has zero full-time program staff in the traditional sense. All grantmaking is routed through two partner organizations: Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy, handling most focus areas) and GiveWell (handling global health recommendations). This structure has profound implications for grant seekers.

Good Ventures chooses causes through a rigorous three-part framework: importance (how much does the problem matter?), neglectedness (is it underfunded relative to its scale?), and tractability (can marginal dollars actually move the needle?). Organizations that speak this language fluently — and can quantify their cost per outcome — align naturally with how Coefficient Giving staff evaluate proposals.

The foundation strongly prefers organizations with established track records and measurable outcomes. Its top grantees — Malaria Consortium ($118.5M over 8 grants for LLIN campaigns), Johns Hopkins University ($19.9M for health security programs), and MIT ($17.6M for AI and research) — illustrate a preference for institutions with peer-reviewed credibility. That said, Good Ventures has also funded early-stage organizations and individual research fellowships at amounts as low as $5,500.

First-time applicants should understand that the relationship almost never begins with a direct proposal to Good Ventures. Instead, entry points include: being recommended by GiveWell for global health work, submitting to an open Coefficient Giving RFP, attending EA Global or related convenings where Coefficient staff are present, or being sourced by a Coefficient program officer doing proactive research. The foundation has historically funded entire ecosystems (effective altruism infrastructure, AI safety research clusters, biosecurity coworking spaces) rather than isolated organizations, so alignment with a broader community of practice matters.

Geographically, 476 of 887 recorded grants went to California-based organizations, followed by DC (63) and Massachusetts (37) — a reflection of the university and think-tank concentration in those areas, not a stated geographic preference. International recipients (UK, Nigeria, Mozambique, Pakistan) receive some of the largest individual grants.

Good Ventures' grantmaking has grown at a remarkable pace over the past decade: from $90,490 in 2012 to $423.4 million by 2022-2023 (the foundation's 990 filings show $423.4M reported across both years, with $369.4M in grants paid in 2022 and $396M in 2021). In 2024, the foundation reportedly funded $593 million in total grants (including pass-through recommendations via Coefficient Giving), making it one of the top 20 largest US foundations by annual giving.

Grant size varies dramatically by recipient type. The foundation's own data shows: median grant $247,924 | average $1.39 million | minimum $5,500 | maximum $33.9 million (across 108 transactions in the enriched dataset). Across the full 887-grant grantee database totaling $812.7 million, the average per-grant figure is approximately $917,000 — but this mean is heavily skewed by a handful of very large, multi-year commitments.

The top 10 grantees alone received approximately $308 million of the $812.7 million tracked total — meaning roughly 38% of dollars flowed to 1% of grantees. Malaria Consortium alone received $118.5 million across 8 grants. RAND Corporation received $26.7 million in 4 grants averaging $6.7 million each. This top-heavy pattern suggests two funding tiers: large, trusted implementation partners receiving multi-million-dollar unrestricted support, and a long tail of research institutions, fellowships, and pilot projects receiving $100K–$500K.

By program area: Global Health & Development represents the largest single category, with malaria (LLIN campaigns, seasonal chemoprevention), malnutrition, TB, and vaccine development accounting for well over $200 million of tracked grants. AI safety and biosecurity combined represent the second-largest bucket, with Georgetown ($54.5M), Johns Hopkins ($19.9M), Stanford ($19.4M), MIT ($17.6M), and Berkeley ($11.9M) as the institutional anchors. Farm Animal Welfare has grown significantly, with grants to Compassion in World Farming International ($7M), The Good Food Institute ($10.1M combined), and the Accountability Board ($10.3M).

Granting cycles are not fixed — Good Ventures awards grants year-round with no single annual deadline. Multi-year general operating support is common for trusted grantees; project-specific grants at universities and think tanks are typically 1-3 years.

Good Ventures occupies an unusual position in the major-funder landscape: comparable in assets to institutions like the Packard Foundation but radically different in structure (no program staff, EA philosophy, evidence-first selection). The table below compares it to four peer foundations in the same asset tier:

The most important distinction: Good Ventures gives roughly 3-5x more per year than comparably-sized peer foundations, reflecting Moskovitz and Tuna's explicit philosophy of giving aggressively rather than preserving capital. For global health implementers and biosecurity researchers, Good Ventures is the single largest non-governmental funder in its specific niches. Packard is a better fit for environmental conservation and early childhood. CZI for biomedical research platforms. Hilton for homelessness and water access in developing countries. Organizations working in AI safety or existential risk have essentially no comparable alternative to Good Ventures at this scale.

Good Ventures has been unusually active and publicly communicative in 2024-2025. The most significant external validation of its investment thesis came in October 2024 when David Baker — a recurring Good Ventures grantee for AI protein design and computational biology — won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, demonstrating the foundation's capacity to identify and fund breakthrough science before mainstream recognition.

On the policy side, Good Ventures' support for California YIMBY (housing affordability advocacy) paid off in 2025 when California SB 79 was signed into law, unlocking zoning for an estimated 16 million new housing units — a concrete, measurable outcome that the foundation highlighted as a model for Abundance & Growth grantmaking.

In June 2025, the foundation made a single grant of $25,649,888 for Global Catastrophic Risks alongside multiple grants totaling more than $14 million for AI safety, including Potential Risks from Advanced AI grants of $8.3 million and $3.4 million. This pattern of large, concentrated bets in AI and biosecurity is accelerating.

Leadership activity included President Cari Tuna speaking at the Gates Foundation's 25th anniversary event in May 2025 and a March 2025 Stanford panel on cause selection. Dustin Moskovitz published an essay in February 2024 reflecting on 15 years of philanthropic learning. The foundation confirmed it hired a new program officer dedicated to the Abundance & Growth area with a $30M+ deployment mandate over three years — a rare public signal of where incremental dollars are flowing.

Good Ventures does not accept direct grant applications, and emailing info@goodventures.org with a proposal will go unanswered. The entire application relationship runs through Coefficient Giving (for most areas) and GiveWell (for global health).

For Science & Global Health R&D (fastest open path): Email science@coefficientgiving.org with a 1-2 page concept note that includes a budget and timeline. Be blunt about the success rate: approximately 1-2% of unsolicited proposals are funded. Your note should lead with the specific gap in the scientific landscape you are filling, quantify the expected cost per outcome, and explain why existing funders are not addressing this problem. Avoid broad framing — a proposal titled 'we study Alzheimer's' will fail; a proposal titled 'we are testing suvorexant's effect on amyloid-beta deposition in a 6-month RCT with n=240 participants, targeting a $4.1M total budget' signals the specificity Coefficient staff expect.

For Farm Animal Welfare: The Humane Fish Slaughter RFP has a hard deadline of July 1, 2026. This is the most concrete open deadline available. Proposals should focus on technologies or prototypes that measurably reduce suffering at capture or slaughter — not advocacy or corporate campaigns.

For AI Governance & Safety: Coefficient Giving maintains an open RFP for technical governance, policy development, law, and strategic analysis. Career Development grants support graduate study and professional training in AI risk mitigation. Neither has a stated deadline.

For Abundance & Growth: The open program accepts living literature reviews on policymaking topics. Organizations with policy research capacity — think tanks, university centers — are the natural fit here.

Language that resonates: Coefficient Giving staff respond to 'importance, neglectedness, tractability.' Frame your work using these three words explicitly. Quantify the problem in DALYs, lives saved, people affected, or economic impact. Reference comparable interventions with known cost-effectiveness figures. Avoid vague language about 'raising awareness' or 'building capacity' without tying it to measurable downstream outcomes.

Relationship building: Attending EA Global, Effective Altruism conferences, or connecting through academic networks where Coefficient program officers are active is the most reliable path to an invitation-based grant outside the formal RFP channels.