Hits-based Giving


One of our core values is our tolerance for philanthropic "risk." Our overarching goal is to do as much good as we can, and as part of that, we're open to supporting work that has a high risk of failing to accomplish its goals. We're even open to supporting work that is more than 90% likely to fail, as long as the overall expected value is high enough.

And we suspect that, in fact, much of the best philanthropy is likely to fail. We suspect that high-risk, high-reward philanthropy could be described as a "hits business," where a small number of enormous successes account for a large share of the total impact — and compensate for a large number of failed projects.

If this is true, I believe it calls for approaching our giving with some counterintuitive principles — principles that are very different from those underlying our work on GiveWell. In particular, if we pursue a "hits-based" approach, we will sometimes bet on ideas that contradict conventional wisdom, contradict some expert opinion, and have little in the way of clear evidential support. In supporting such work, we’d run the risk of appearing to some as having formed overconfident views based on insufficient investigation and reflection.


This post will:


The basic case for hits-based giving

Conceptually, we're focused on maximizing the expected value of how much good we accomplish. It's often not possible to arrive at a precise or even quantified estimate of expected value, but the concept is helpful for illustrating what we're trying to do. Hypothetically, and simplifying quite a bit, we would see the following opportunities as equally promising: (1) a $1 million grant that would certainly prevent exactly 500 premature deaths; (2) a $1 million grant that would have a 90% chance of accomplishing nothing and a 10% chance of preventing 5000 premature deaths. Both would have an expected value of preventing 500 premature deaths. As this example illustrates, an "expected value" focus means we do not have a fundamental preference for low-risk philanthropy or high-risk, potentially transformative philanthropy. We can opt for either, depending on the details. As a side note, most other funders we‘ve met have strong opinions on whether it's better to take big risks or fund what's reliable and proven; we may be unusually agnostic on this question.


1. History of philanthropy. We previously gave a high-level overview of some major claimed successes for philanthropy. Since then, we've investigated this topic further via our History of Philanthropy project, and we expect to publish an updated summary of what we’ve learned by the end of 2016. One of our takeaways is that there are at least a few cases in which a philanthropist took a major risk — funding something that there was no clear reason to expect to succeed — and ended up having enormous impact, enough to potentially make up for many failed projects. Here are some particularly vivid examples (note that these focus on magnitude of impact, rather than on whether the impact was positive):

If accurate, these stories would imply that philanthropy — and specifically, philanthropy supporting early-stage research and high-risk projects — played a major role in some of the more significant developments of the last century. There is some possibility of survivorship bias, and a question of how many failed projects there were for each of these successes. However, I note that the examples above aren’t drawn from a huge space of possibilities. (All of the philanthropists covered above would probably — prior to their gifts — have made fairly short lists of the most prominent philanthropists interested in their issues.) A philanthropic "portfolio" containing one of these projects, plus a large number of similar failed projects, would probably have a very strong overall performance, in terms of impact per dollar.



"Anti-principles" for hits-based giving

This section discusses principles that we think are sound for much decision-making, but not appropriate for hits-based giving. For clarity, these are phrased as "We don't _____" where _____ is the principle we see as a poor fit with this approach.


We don't: require a strong evidence base before funding something. Quality evidence is hard to come by, and usually requires a sustained and well-resourced effort. Requiring quality evidence would therefore be at odds with our interest in neglectedness. It would mean that we were generally backing ideas that others had already explored and funded thoroughly — which would seem to decrease the likelihood of "hit"-sized impact from our participation. And some activities, such as funding work aiming to influence policy or scientific research, are inherently hard to "test" in predictively valid ways. It seems to me that most past cases of philanthropic "hits" were not evidence-backed in the sense of having strong evidence directly predicting success, though evidence probably did enter into the work in less direct ways.


We don't: defer to expert opinion or conventional wisdom, though we do seek to be informed about them. Similar to the above point, following expert opinion and conventional wisdom is likely to cut against our goal of seeking neglected causes. If we funded early groundwork for changing expert opinion and/or conventional wisdom on an important topic, this would be a strong candidate for a "hit." We do think it would be a bad sign if no experts (using the term broadly to mean "people who have a great deal of experience engaging with a given issue") agreed with our take on a topic, but when there is disagreement between experts, we need to be willing to side with particular ones. In my view, it's often possible to do this productively by learning enough about the key issues to determine which arguments best fit our values and basic epistemology.

We don't: avoid controversial positions or adversarial situations. All else equal, we would rather not end up in such situations, but making great effort to avoid them seems incompatible with a hits-based approach. We're sympathetic to arguments of the form, "You should be less confident in your position when intelligent and well-meaning people take the opposite side" and "It's unfortunate when two groups of people spend resources opposing each other, resulting in no net change, when they instead could have directed all of their resources to something they agree on, such as directly helping those in need." We think these arguments give some reason to prefer GiveWell's top charities. But we feel they need to be set aside when aiming for "hits."

We feel many "hits" will involve getting a multiplier on our impact by changing social norms or changing key decision-makers' opinions. And our interest in neglectedness will often point us to issues where social norms, or well-organized groups, are strongly against us. None of the "hits" listed above were without controversy. Note that the combined oral contraceptive is an example of something that was highly controversial at the time (leading, in my view, to the necessary research being neglected by government and other funders) and is now accepted much more broadly; this, to me, is a key part of why it has been such a momentous development.

We don't: expect to be able to fully justify ourselves in writing. Explaining our opinions in writing is fundamental to the Open Philanthropy Project's DNA, but we need to be careful to stop this from distorting our decision-making. I fear that when considering a grant, our staff are likely to think ahead to how they'll justify the grant in our public writeup and shy away if it seems like too tall an order — in particular, when the case seems too complex and reliant on diffuse, hard-to-summarize information. This is a bias we don't want to have. If we focused on issues that were easy to explain to outsiders with little background knowledge, we'd be focusing on issues that likely have broad appeal, and we’d have more trouble focusing on neglected areas.


Process-wise, we've been trying to separate our decision-making process from our public writeup process. Typically, staffers recommend grants via internal writeups. Late in our process, after decision-makers have approved the basic ideas behind the grant, other staff take over and "translate" the internal writeups into writeups that are suitable to post publicly. One reason I've been eager to set up our process this way is that I believe it allows people to focus on making the best grants possible, without worrying at the same time about how the grants will be explained.

A core value of ours is to be open about our work. But "open" is distinct from "documenting everything exhaustively" or "arguing everything convincingly." More on this below.

We don't: put extremely high weight on avoiding conflicts of interest, intellectual "bubbles" or "echo chambers." There will be times when we see a given issue very differently from most people in the world, and when the people we find most helpful on the issue will be (not coincidentally) those who see the issue similarly. This can lead to a risk of putting ourselves in an intellectual "bubble" or "echo chamber," an intellectually insulated set of people who reinforce each others' views, without bringing needed alternative perspectives and counterarguments.

In some cases, this risk may be compounded by social connections. When hiring specialists in specific causes, we've explicitly sought people with deep experience and strong connections in a field. Sometimes, that means our program officers are friends with many of the people who are best suited to be our advisors and grantees.

Other staff, including myself, specialize in choosing between causes rather than in focusing on a specific cause. The mission of "choosing between causes to do the most good possible" is itself an intellectual space with a community around it. Specifically, many of our staff — including myself — are part of the effective altruism community, and have many social ties in that community.

As a result, it sometimes happens that it's difficult to disentangle the case for a grant from the relationships around it. For an example, see our extensive relationship disclosures around our 2015 grant to the Future of Life Institute.

When these situations occur, there's a greatly elevated risk that we aren't being objective, and aren't weighing the available evidence and arguments reasonably. If our goal were to find the giving opportunities most strongly supported by evidence, this would be a major problem. But the drawbacks for a "hits-based" approach are less clear, and the drawbacks of too strongly avoiding these situations would, in my view, be unacceptable.

To use myself as an example:




We don't: avoid the superficial appearance — accompanied by some real risk — of being overconfident and underinformed. When I picture the ideal philanthropic "hit," it takes the form of supporting some extremely important idea, where we see potential while most of the world does not. We would then provide support beyond what any other major funder could in order to pursue the idea and eventually find success and change minds.

In such situations, I'd expect the idea initially to be met with skepticism, perhaps even strong opposition, from most people who encounter it. I'd expect that it would not have strong, clear evidence behind it (or to the extent it did, this evidence would be extremely hard to explain and summarize), and betting on it therefore would be a low-probability play. Taking all of this into account, I'd expect outsiders looking at our work to often perceive us as making a poor decision, grounded primarily in speculation, thin evidence and self-reinforcing intellectual bubbles. I'd therefore expect us to appear to many as overconfident and underinformed. And in fact, by the nature of supporting an unpopular idea, we would be at risk of this being true, no matter how hard we tried (and we should try hard) to seek out and consider alternative perspectives.


Working principles for doing hits-based giving well

The previous section argues against many principles that are important in other contexts, and that GiveWell fans might have expected us to be following. It is reasonable to ask — if one is ready to make recommendations that aren't grounded in evidence, expert consensus, or conventional wisdom — is there any principled way to distinguish between good and bad giving? Or should we just be funding what we're intuitively excited about?

I think it's hard to say what sort of behavior is most likely to lead to "hits," which by their nature are rare and probably hard to predict. I don't know enough about the philanthropists who have been behind past "hits" to be able to say much with confidence. But I can outline some principles we're working with to try to do "hits-based" giving as well as possible.

Assess importance, neglectedness and tractability. These are the key criteria of the Open Philanthropy Project. I think each of them, all else equal, makes "hits" more likely, and each in isolation can often be assessed fairly straightforwardly. Much of the rest of this section pertains to how to assess these criteria in difficult situations (for example, when there is no expert consensus or clear evidence).


Goals can often be far more achievable than they appear early on (some examples here), so I believe it's often worth aiming for a worthy but near-impossible-seeming goal. If successes are rare, it matters a great deal whether we choose to aim for reasonably worthy goals or maximally impactful ones. Despite the uncertainty inherent in this sort of giving, I believe that the question, "How much good could come of the best case?" will have very different answers for different giving opportunities.









Understand the other funders in a space, and hesitate to fund things that seem like a fit for them. This is an aspect of "Aim for deep understanding ..." that seems worth calling out explicitly. When we fund something that is a conceptual fit for another funder, there's a good chance that we are either (a) moving only a little more quickly than the other funder, and thus having relatively little impact; or (b) funding something that another funder declined to fund for good reasons. Having a good understanding of the other funders in a space, and ideally having good relationships with them, seems quite important.

Be wary of giving opportunities that seem unlikely (from heuristics) to be neglected. This is largely an extension of the previous principle. When an idea seems to match quite well with conventional wisdom or expert consensus, or serves a particular well-resourced interest, this raises questions about why it hasn't already attracted support from other funders, and whether it will stay under-funded for long.

Bottom line. The ideal giving opportunity, from my perspective, looks something like: "A trusted staff member with deep knowledge of cause X is very excited to support — with few or no strings attached — the work of person Y, who has an unusual perspective and approach that few others appreciate. The staff member could easily imagine this approach having a massive impact, even if it doesn't seem likely to. When I first hear the idea, it sounds surprising, and perhaps strange, counterintuitive or unattractive, but when I question the staff member about possible failure modes, concerns, and apparent gaps in the case for the idea, it seems that they are already well-informed and thoughtful about the questions I ask." This basic setup seems to me to maximize odds of supporting important work that others won't, and having a chance down the line of changing minds and getting a "hit."

Reconciling a hits-based approach with being open about our work



However, we think there is room to achieve both goals — being open and having a "hits-based" approach — to a significant degree. For a given decision, we aim to share our thinking to the point where readers can understand:

A couple of examples:


In general, this discussion might help clarify why the Open Philanthropy Project is aimed primarily at major philanthropists — people who have the time to engage deeply with the question of where to give — rather than at individual donors. Individual donors do, of course, have the option to trust us and support us even when our views seem unusual and hard to justify. But for those who don't already trust us, our writeups (unlike, in my view, GiveWell's writeups) will not always provide sufficient reason to take us at our word.

"Hits-based mentality" vs. "arrogance"

As discussed above, I believe "hits-based giving" will often entail the superficial appearance — and a real risk of — having overconfident views based on insufficient investigation and reflection. I use "arrogance" as shorthand for the latter qualities.

However, I think there are important, and observable, differences between the two. I think a "hits-based mentality" can be a reasonable justification for some behaviors commonly associated with arrogance — in particular, putting significant resources into an idea that is controversial and unsupported by strong evidence or expert consensus — but not for other behaviors.

Some specific differences that seem important to me:


Trying hard to be well-informed. I associate arrogance with jumping to conclusions based on limited information. I believe a well-executed "hits-based mentality" involves putting significant work into achieving a solid understanding of the case both for and against one's ideas. We aspire to think seriously about questions and objections to our work, even though we won't be able to answer every one convincingly for all audiences.

Respecting those we interact with and avoiding deception, coercion, and other behavior that violates common-sense ethics. In my view, arrogance is at its most damaging when it involves "ends justify the means" thinking. I believe a great deal of harm has been done by people who were so convinced of their contrarian ideas that they were willing to violate common-sense ethics for them (in the worst cases, even using violence).

As stated above, I'd rather live in a world of individuals pursuing ideas that they're excited about, with the better ideas gaining traction as more work is done and value is demonstrated, than a world of individuals reaching consensus on which ideas to pursue. That's some justification for a hits-based approach. But with that said, I'd also rather live in a world where individuals pursue their own ideas while adhering to a baseline of good behavior and everyday ethics than a world of individuals lying to each other, coercing each other, and actively interfering with each other to the point where coordination, communication and exchange break down.

On this front, I think our commitment to being honest in our communications is important. It reflects that we don't think we have all the answers, and we aren't interested in being manipulative in pursuit of our views; instead, we want others to freely decide, on the merits, whether and how they want to help us in our pursuit of our mission. We aspire to simultaneously pursue bold ideas and remember how easy it would be for us to be wrong.