Gates, USAID among Open Philanthropy's $150M regrant contest winners

Open Philanthropy is providing $150 million to four fellow grant-makers, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to boost funding for what it views as high-impact programs in health care, climate change, and other areas of global development. The grant-making and research organization, which was founded by billionaire couple Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, normally gives directly to charities rather than fellow grant-makers. It launched its $150 million regranting challenge last year as part of an effort to fund existing philanthropic programs rather than trying to duplicate their work. The idea adheres to the organization’s effective altruism approach to philanthropy, which involves using data and evidence to amplify the impact of every dollar given. More than 100 funders responded to the open call for grantees. The winners, whom Devex is the first to report, were unveiled Thursday. Among the recipients is the Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest philanthropic organizations, which will receive $65 million to support a range of efforts to meet global demand for the oral cholera vaccine and support a clinical trial for a new tuberculosis vaccine candidate. Another $5 million will be directed to the Gates Foundation’s global education program to improve literacy and numeracy in low- and middle-income countries. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s received the second-largest grant, $45 million, for its Development Innovation Ventures, which invests in early-stage and potentially high-impact global health and development projects. The Eleanor Crook Foundation, a U.S.-based organization that focuses exclusively on global nutrition, was given $25 million to support its work, specifically what it calls the Power 4 malnutrition interventions — prenatal vitamins for pregnant women, breastfeeding support for mothers, vitamin A supplementation, and ready-to-use therapeutic food. Another $10 million will go to the Singapore-based Tara Climate Foundation, a regional organization that focuses on Asia’s clean energy transition. The foundation plays a “vital role” in developing nascent civil society organizations and growing the climate ecosystem across the region, Open Philanthropy spokesperson Mike Levine told Devex. A major aim of the challenge was to get more money in the hands of both emerging and under-resourced donors in the development space, but the selections also were based on the organization’s existing expertise, according to Cecilia Conrad, who advised Open Philanthropy on the design of the contest. Conrad is CEO of Lever for Change, an affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation that was created to capitalize on the success of the foundation’s 100&Change competition — which served as an inspiration for Open Philanthropy’s regranting challenge. 100&Change provides a $100 million grant for “a single proposal that promises real and measurable progress in solving a critical problem of our time.” In the case of Open Philanthropy’s challenge, the mix of awards to large nonprofits such as the Gates Foundation and smaller organizations like the Tara Climate Foundation reflects the kind of diversity that is key to collaborative funding models, Conrad said. “I think there is the recognition that in order to address some of the big problems that we face, we need scale,” she said. “And one way of achieving scale is to go in with others, collaborate, pool your funds in order to be able to give an organization a larger grant over multiple years than what you might do if you were each individually making grants.” Open Philanthropy’s regranting initiative, if applied broadly, “could enable the most impactful programs to grow, changing incentives in a philanthropic ecosystem where effective grantmakers don’t always end up with more funds to allocate,” spokesperson Mike Levine said. He added that the organization is still deciding whether to make the challenge an annual event. Update January 17, 2023: This story has been updated to clarify how the Gates Foundation’s grant will be used to support the oral cholera vaccine.