About
Harnessing the power of philanthropy to protect our future.
Expert-led and research-driven, we devise bespoke strategies that maximise the impact of your giving.
How We Work
We work with donors in every stage of their giving journey, from brand new philanthropists to seasoned leaders of effective giving. Depending on your particular needs, we can introduce you to experts on the world’s largest and most neglected issues, bring you into our curated learning sessions on the principles of effective giving, or simply meet you in the trenches and share our current grant opportunities and the reasoning behind them. Everything we do is always completely free of charge or commission.
A sample donor experience:
- We introduce you to the principles of effective giving through an individual seminar that explores how giving today can have an outsized effect on the decades, centuries, and millennia to come. We tailor each session to your needs, but frequently cover: the role of philanthropy in moral progress, why we should be optimistic about our ability to make an enormous difference, our radically impartial and reason-driven approach to giving, how we prioritise between different causes, what solutions to global problems might look like, and how best to take action given the current philanthropic landscape.
- We introduce you to world-class experts in key cause areas who can answer any questions you have about their field. We are committed to clarity and transparency about our reasoning and research. While some of our philanthropists prefer to be more hands-off, you will be given the opportunity to know as much as we do about why we believe our grants are high-impact, and how that impact is achieved.
- At the conclusion of this learning process, which can last anywhere from days to months, we will create a bespoke portfolio of grant recommendations. See our grantmaking page for more details on our process and focus areas. If this portfolio is approved, we do everything necessary to facilitate the transfer of the grant, including due diligence and processing.
For established donors who are already on board with our approach:
- If you prefer to cut to the chase, we can immediately begin investigating grants that suit your needs. We share our recommendations and reasoning as soon as possible in written reports.
- We also invite donors to contribute directly to the Longview Philanthropy Fund, which allows us to make timely grants to the very best opportunities as they arise. All contributors to the Longview Philanthropy Fund are provided with reports every six months. These reports detail the grants we made during that period, our reasoning for those grants, and major updates to our grantmaking programmes.
Today, anyone can order DNA from private companies, and it will only become faster and cheaper to do so in the coming years. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a safe and efficient way to screen for DNA that could be used to manufacture a bioweapon. Current methods involve comparing potentially-dangerous sequences to a database of harmful sequences — effectively creating a public recipe book for bioweapons. SecureDNA aims to avert this danger. Scientists from MIT and Tsinghua University are creating technology that can quickly, automatically, and securely screen incoming DNA synthesis requests for potential threats. If successful, this project could make it far more difficult for malicious actors to create and release bioweapons, and could avert future pandemics.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a leading forum for international coordination on expert policy advice and best governance practices. Their work supports 38 member countries — including the US and the EU — and non-member partners, including China. Their data analysis underpins work by the UN and the G20. The OECD is especially consequential for multilateral cooperation on artificial intelligence. They host the dominant international institution for AI governance, the AI Policy Observatory. We have an ongoing partnership with the OECD to support their work on existential risk policy across several directorates, including the Strategic Foresight Unit, the High-Level Risk Forum, the AI Policy Observatory, and the Secretariat on Bio-, Nano-, and Converging Technologies.
The Council on Strategic Risks is a nonprofit prioritising efforts to reduce the most extreme risks from nuclear weapons. They specialise in developing highly pragmatic policies consistent with national security requirements. One of the Council’s efforts aims to limit particularly destabilising weapons, such as missiles that have short time of flight and ambiguous (nuclear or conventional) payloads. Through its work, the Council seeks to preserve decision time and reduce the risk of inadvertent nuclear escalation.
Supporters
Our operational costs are fully funded by the below group of philanthropists. We are deeply grateful for their support – it is what allows us to provide all of our funding recommendations, research and work free-of-charge. While our funders share our mission, they have no influence over any aspect of our work, including our grant recommendations.
Current funders include Open Philanthropy, Martin Crowley, Tom Crowley, Likith Govindaiah, Justin Rockefeller, Rafael Albert and several private philanthropists and foundations. Historical funders include Ben Delo.