Part of the rationale for the Regranting Challenge was that it might be possible to identify funders who already have the infrastructure to deploy funding effectively at scale, rather than creating duplicative philanthropic infrastructure. In 2021, Open Philanthropy recommended ~$400M of grants with an average staff number of ~40 (so ~$10M / FTE). To compare, the Gates Foundation granted $6.7B with a staff of 1,736 (so <$4M per staff person); Wellcome Trust moved £1.23B with a staff of ~800 (so <$2M per staff person).* Now Open Philanthropy is scaling up internally (see jobs page!), and we pay others to do research on our behalf, but these things take time so we wanted to experiment with this approach of working through other funders.
Scale / existing infrastructure isn’t the only benefit though—sometimes other funders have advantages that we don’t.
I think a good example of this is the award we made to the Eleanor Crook Foundation. Transparently, they know more about malnutrition than Open Philanthropy does, and they have relationships with researchers and decision makers that would take a long time for us to develop internally. They can make grants here that we would struggle to make as effectively, even though we have existing grantmaking in both development research and aid policy. As Alexander tweeted, every funder that cares about X having its own program X can’t be the best approach.
On the specific DIV example, we describe some of the rationale for this on the minisite:
DIV makes four types of grants:
Stage 1 (Pilot) grants support initial small-scale implementation of new ideas in low- and middle-income countries to test user demand, feasibility, impact, and financial viability (up to $200,000).
Stage 2 (Test and Position for Scale) grants support rigorous testing to determine impact or market viability (up to $1,500,000).
Stage 3 (Transition to Scale) grants transition proven approaches to widespread scale in new contexts or new geographies (up to $15,000,000).
Finally, DIV makes Evidence Generation grants to support research and evaluation of widely-used development approaches that are not necessarily innovative, but lack sufficient evidence of impact and cost-effectiveness (up to $1,500,000).
With $45,000,000 in Regranting Challenge funding, DIV will expand their grantmaking through Stages 1, 2, and 3 grants and launch a new “Stage 4” initiative. Stage 4 grants will help some of the most promising programs in DIV’s portfolio scale up through partnerships with Missions and Bureaus across USAID. They will provide partial match funding for other USAID spending, with the aim of expanding the use of innovations that have been rigorously demonstrated to cost-effectively improve development outcomes.
A key reason for working through DIV rather than trying to do this work directly is that they sit within a much larger pool of resources than we do, much of which is spent without the same focus on impact and evidence that Open Philanthropy, effective altruists, and DIV themselves bring to the table. To be clear—this might not work! But often you have to try things out to see.
*These figures are rough; I’ve not tried to adjust for e.g. part-time of definitional differences. I’d note additionally that Open Philanthropy makes a lot of very time intensive small grants (e.g. to individuals) mostly within the longtermism portfolio.
Thanks for that fantastc reply appreciate it—makes a lot of sense. A brief look at DIV indeed surprised me by the quality of organisation that they are funding. I just usually rile at USAID because I have seen their multi million dollar projects achieve nothing (or negative value) again and again here in Northern Uganda. But if they are regranting like that to great orgs than indeed it solves that problem.
Hi Nick, thanks for engaging.
Part of the rationale for the Regranting Challenge was that it might be possible to identify funders who already have the infrastructure to deploy funding effectively at scale, rather than creating duplicative philanthropic infrastructure. In 2021, Open Philanthropy recommended ~$400M of grants with an average staff number of ~40 (so ~$10M / FTE). To compare, the Gates Foundation granted $6.7B with a staff of 1,736 (so <$4M per staff person); Wellcome Trust moved £1.23B with a staff of ~800 (so <$2M per staff person).* Now Open Philanthropy is scaling up internally (see jobs page!), and we pay others to do research on our behalf, but these things take time so we wanted to experiment with this approach of working through other funders.
Scale / existing infrastructure isn’t the only benefit though—sometimes other funders have advantages that we don’t.
I think a good example of this is the award we made to the Eleanor Crook Foundation. Transparently, they know more about malnutrition than Open Philanthropy does, and they have relationships with researchers and decision makers that would take a long time for us to develop internally. They can make grants here that we would struggle to make as effectively, even though we have existing grantmaking in both development research and aid policy. As Alexander tweeted, every funder that cares about X having its own program X can’t be the best approach.
On the specific DIV example, we describe some of the rationale for this on the minisite:
A key reason for working through DIV rather than trying to do this work directly is that they sit within a much larger pool of resources than we do, much of which is spent without the same focus on impact and evidence that Open Philanthropy, effective altruists, and DIV themselves bring to the table. To be clear—this might not work! But often you have to try things out to see.
*These figures are rough; I’ve not tried to adjust for e.g. part-time of definitional differences. I’d note additionally that Open Philanthropy makes a lot of very time intensive small grants (e.g. to individuals) mostly within the longtermism portfolio.
Thanks for that fantastc reply appreciate it—makes a lot of sense. A brief look at DIV indeed surprised me by the quality of organisation that they are funding. I just usually rile at USAID because I have seen their multi million dollar projects achieve nothing (or negative value) again and again here in Northern Uganda. But if they are regranting like that to great orgs than indeed it solves that problem.