Developing the roadmap for a sustainable, secure, and just global protein supply 🧫🌱

We work with scientists, investors, and entrepreneurs to make groundbreaking good food a reality. We focus on clean meat and plant-based alternatives to animal products—foods that are more delicious, safer to eat, and better for the planet than their outdated counterparts.

We provide marketing, design, legal, business, media, and other support to a select number of early-stage companies producing clean and plant-based products. For established companies, we help their products succeed in the marketplace by mobilizing millions of supportive consumers to encourage their sale in stores, restaurants, and foodservice outlets.

 To help launch the next generation of innovators, we connect students, scientists, and entrepreneurs with opportunities in the academic and for-profit sectors. We connect jobs, funding, and scientific positions with those who want to put their passion and skills to use to create a better food system.

We educate grant-making institutions, corporations, and governmental bodies about plant-based and clean meat R&D as a critical component of endeavors related to sustainability, climate change, and global health.

We work with restaurants, grocery stores, and foodservice companies to increase availability of the best plant-based options on menus, in grocery stores, and in cafeterias.


The Good Food Institute

Supporting highly-impactful, evidence-based solutions to the triple challenge of climate change, air pollution and energy poverty.

## The Founders Pledge Perspective

Climate change is one part of a triple challenge surrounding energy production. Not only does most current energy production lead to damaging carbon emissions, the effects of which are devastating ecosystems and changing our planet beyond recognition, it also pollutes the air and leaves many of the world’s poor without sufficient energy. This adds up to an environmental and humanitarian crisis.

Thus, we face a triple challenge: we not only need to drive down carbon emissions to near zero by mid-century, and drastically reduce air pollution, but we need to do so while supporting work to reduce global poverty that will often be accompanied, or even driven, by increased energy consumption.

We aim to take a holistic approach that recognizes the global nature of this challenge, as well as the fact that, despite its urgency, we are still in the early days of climate action. This means that the solutions that we focus on will not only reduce emissions now, but will do so in a way that avoids future emissions, while also creating opportunities for the world’s poor and eventually ending energy poverty entirely.

We aim to do this in three ways:

- **Audacious advocacy**: By focusing our grantmaking on organizations leveraging large amounts of money through policy advocacy. There are highly effective organizations with budgets in the millions of dollars which have influenced government innovation budgets, orders of magnitude larger than their costs. By looking for opportunities with leverage like this, we can have an outsize impact.
- **Accelerating low-carbon innovation**: By finding and funding advocacy opportunities that strengthen the energy innovation eco-system or promote particularly neglected technologies. As the success of solar has shown for electricity, the availability of cheap, low carbon alternatives to our current energy sources can make a very significant difference. Efficient, low-cost technology can spread around the world without inter-governmental cooperation or expensive policies to spread around the world, making it a more robust strategy in a world where climate action will often not be the first priority of policy makers and the public.
- **Focusing on blindspots and bottlenecks**: By focusing on areas neglected by other stakeholders, we can ensure that fund dollars make as much difference as possible. While some technologies, such as solar, enjoy widespread popularity and significant policy support, this is not similarly true for other approaches, resulting in a huge imbalance in resource allocation. By finding and funding advocates for overlooked solutions, such as carbon capture and storage technology, we can ensure we are making the most of every tool available to us in the fight against climate change.

Managed by two members of the Founders Pledge Research team, the Climate Change Fund identifies and supports sustainable, evidence-based solutions to the “triple challenge” of carbon emissions, air pollution, and energy poverty.

## Our Approach to Grantmaking

When evaluating potential grants, we consider several key points:

- **Counterfactual impact**. Our grants are designed to create a meaningful outcome that would not otherwise have happened. In particular, we aim to make grants that otherwise wouldn’t have been made, rather than those which just take the place of other philanthropists’ donations. This means that you can rely on the Funds to create meaningful, real change, rather than just maintaining the status quo.
- **Impact-driven philanthropy**. The goal of this fund is maximal positive impact, irrespective of this impact being “sexy” or visible. This means we will focus on opportunities that others focused on clear attribution of their work or shiny outcomes might neglect. For example, we are very comfortable funding organizations to increase their general capacity and strategy when we perceive this as their bottleneck to higher impact, rather than being tied to specific outcomes or deliverables.
- **The organization’s funding gap**. Not all organizations are set up to scale up their programming and many can’t productively absorb large amounts of unsolicited funding. We evaluate all potential grantees’ capacity for growth and consider how much money they could put to good use.
- **Organizational strength**. Particularly with unrestricted funding, it’s important to have trust in the leadership and capacity of the organizations we support. We look at their track record of success and their transparency about failures as well as successes, and we only support those organizations which are exceptionally well run.
- **Time-critical opportunities and funding certainty**. While Founders Pledge members give to our top climate charities regularly, sometimes there are time-critical opportunities which require fast decisions. Or there are needs for certainty of funding streams to allow new hires and start new campaigns and programs. We will use the Fund to make grants that enable such short-term opportunities and stability for high-impact funding opportunities thereby increasing the impact compared to individual giving to specific organizations.
- **Portfolio approach**. Because most climate damage comes from particular severe outcomes – with a world of 4 degrees of warming being much worse than twice as bad as a world with 2 degrees – and because every particular strategy – such as energy innovation – might underdeliver, we pursue a portfolio approach to maximize positive impact. This means we will diversify our bets in ways that, when one approach fails (such as energy innovation), the others we promote (such as carbon removal) can be expected to be particularly important and still available. This maximizes the expected impact of your donation in a world characterized by huge uncertainty about the success of different high-impact solutions.

## Frequently-Asked Questions

**Can charities apply for money from the Fund?**

The Funds do not generally accept applications from charities. If the Fund Managers choose to open up an application round, this will be publicized. Charities are requested not to send unsolicited applications for funding.

**How frequently will you make grants from the Fund?**

Fund Managers will review grant-making decisions on a quarterly basis. Decisions will be made based on the value of Funds and the available options for high-impact grant-making. We may sometimes delay grant-making if we believe that waiting for more promising opportunities will be more impactful. Conversely, we may disburse funds outside of our quarterly review dates if we become aware of a particularly promising and time-sensitive funding opportunity.

**How will my contribution be used?**

All funds are granted out. The Fund is not an investment vehicle. The Fund does not use any percentage of contributions to cover staff time or other overhead costs. Every dollar contributed to the Fund will be used to make grants directly to end-user organizations creating a real difference.

## More Questions?

To learn more about the Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund, please visit [founderspledge.com](https://founderspledge.com/funds/climate-change-fund) or email the Fund Managers at [funds@founderspledge.com](mailto:funds@founderspledge.com).

Climate Change Fund

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies supports psychedelic and cannabis research, education and policy reform.

Founded in 1986, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a visionary 501(c)(3) non-profit organization ushering the safe and ethical use of psychedelics as tools for healing and growth on individual, familial, societal, and planetary levels.

MAPS’ top priority is ethically introducing global access to MDMA-assisted therapy as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through regulatory approvals and training certification for therapy providers, as well as public education, policy reform, and building community support networks.

How Your Donation Will Help

While the MDMA drug development program is the main priority of MAPS, the organization's programs include research into other psychedelic compounds and provide critical resources for researchers around the world interested in studying psychedelics. These resources include assistance with protocol development and regulatory guidance, in addition to providing study drug and training for investigators. As part of its commitment to open science and open praxis, MAPS publishes its research protocols, treatment manual for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, published articles, and investigator's brochure on its website for free download, and actively collaborates with third-party researchers and institutions. Researchers and institutions around the world are building on the body of research that MAPS has produced.

MAPS operates a global network of intersectional education and research programs focused on the careful study of the risks and benefits of psychedelics. The education programs include: harm reduction and peer support through the Zendo Project; policy and advocacy efforts focused on community organizing and reducing barriers to research; a conflict resolution initiative for peace-building; and an active fiscal sponsorship program for fledgling mission-aligned organizations. MAPS also produces myriad educational materials, training workshops, and conferences, both physical and virtual. MAPS builds its global community of support through: outreach at events worldwide; a robust social media presence; and interviews and publications in various global media outlets. All of this work is supported by MAPS’ general operating fund. 

MAPS aims to transcend geopolitical and social boundaries and intentionally cultivates interactions with thought leaders in a broad range of interest areas and outlets that demonstrate the broad applications of the healing potential of psychedelics, and to proactively build trust and common ground with those most likely to have resistance to psychedelics.  

A Tipping Point for Psychedelic Medicine

MDMA-assisted therapy is poised to be a true breakthrough for psychedelic medicine and is the first psychedelic therapy to enter a Phase 3 clinical trial. This trial recently cleared a critical interim evaluation, with analysis confirming a 90% or greater likelihood that the final results will show significant effectiveness in treating PTSD. Achieving FDA approval for this treatment could be the tipping point to shifting psychedelics into the medical mainstream. This shift has the potential to unlock previously unavailable resources for the investigation of psychedelic-assisted treatments applied to our most critical mental health challenges: trauma, depression, addiction, anxiety, and more.

When administered in a clinical setting with trained therapy providers, MDMA has proven to be a powerful adjunct to therapy, which assists individuals in processing traumatic experiences in a deep and profound manner, leading to the alleviation of suffering. Clinical research indicates that MDMA may catalyze therapeutic processing by allowing participants to stay emotionally engaged when revisiting traumatic experiences, without feeling overwhelmed by anxiety or other painful emotions.

FDA approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD could help millions of people who are suffering from trauma. A long-term follow-up study published in June 2020 demonstrated that 67% of the study volunteers (N=91) who had PTSD for an average duration of 17.8 years were still in remission and no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis at least 12-months following the completion of their treatment. 

While MAPS is the engine that powers this research, passionate supporters are the fuel that feeds our fire. We are inspired to press on towards the finish line of this 35-year marathon.

If you have any questions, please email us at giving@maps.org.

MAPS

Research and data to make progress against the world's largest problems

Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality: The world faces many great and terrifying problems. Our World in Data focuses on communicating the best research and data that helps us understand and find solutions to the world’s largest problems.

Our World in Data publishes an open-access publication where users can understand the state of the world today, where we are making progress and where we are falling behind. Through interactive data visualizations we can see how the world has changed; by summarizing the scientific literature we can understand why. We cover everything from global poverty to natural disasters, education and health, democracy; we have over 3500 charts across 300 topics.

Our World in Data is free, open-source and provided as a public good. It has millions of users every month, and is cited in research and media across the world every day. This allows millions of people to understand the large problems the world is facing, and how we can solve them. 

Our World in Data

ChildFund International is a nonprofit organization working toward a world where every child is free to live at their fullest potential, no matter where they’re from or what challenges they face.



Worldwide, 570 million children live in extreme poverty, vulnerable to many factors that threaten their well-being. Children need protection, support and care at each stage of childhood to stay safe, healthy, learning and on track to achieve their potential. ChildFund works with local partner organizations, governments, corporations and individuals to help create the safe environments children need to thrive.

None of us chooses where we are born.

None of us chooses to be born in extreme poverty — including the nearly 400 million of the world’s children who live in the world’s poorest places, where they’re deprived of their basic rights and necessities, excluded from opportunity and vulnerable to harm.

400 million is an awfully big number, too big to tackle. No one person can save that many.

But what if you could help one child?

What if you could help one child save herself?

Through child sponsorship, you can.

ChildFund International

We are Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples. We’re fighting for their survival around the world.

We are Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples. We’re fighting for their survival around the world.  More than one hundred and fifty million men, women and children in over sixty countries live in tribal societies. They’re mostly self-sufficient and depend on their land for their health and wellbeing. To tribal peoples, land is life.

Tribal peoples are our contemporaries. They’re not primitive. They have technology, laws, education, religions, and social, political and economic structures. They developed many of the medicines now used by industrialized societies, and created some of the principal staple foods like maize and potatoes that now feed millions. Tribal peoples shaped the environment and help make the world a better place.  Tribal societies are extraordinarily diverse and there’s a lot to learn from them. They understand the natural world and are expert conservationists.

Many tribal peoples have enlightened social values. They’re not brutal savages as is sometimes claimed. They put the community before the individual, share and exchange possessions rather than amass personal wealth, and embrace gender equality.  Tribal peoples are at the mercy of racism, land theft, forced development and genocidal violence. Their human rights are being violated. Their lands and resources are stolen for profit, even though land theft is a crime under international law. Tribal lands give them food, housing, medicines, clothing and a sense of identity and belonging. Land theft causes destitution, disease and death, and it’s wiping out uncontacted tribes.   The world needs tribal peoples. Our work is preventing their annihilation. We work in partnership with tribes and give them a platform to speak to the world. We need your support to bring about a radical change in public opinion to make sure they have a future. Help us fight one of the most urgent and horrific humanitarian crises of our time. Tribal peoples need you. Let’s fight for their survival, together.

Survival International

Sierra Club Foundation promotes efforts to educate and empower people to protect and improve the natural and human environment.

We work with individual and institutional donors to maximize financial support for strategic campaigns, provide flexible funding for innovation, help build capacity in the environmental movement, and create partnerships with a broad spectrum of allied organizations that further our shared environmental goals.

The Sierra Club Foundation is the fiscal sponsor of the charitable programs of the Sierra Club, social welfare organization. 

We provide charitable grants to it and other nonprofit organizations to support scientific, educational, literary, organizing, advocacy, and legal programs that further our goals. 

Sierra Club Foundation

Trains and mentors black male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship, and leadership skills.

The Hidden Genius Project trains and mentors black male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship, and leadership skills to transform their lives and communities.

The Hidden Genius Project

We do foundational mathematical research to ensure smarter-than-human artificial intelligence has a positive impact.

The Machine Intelligence Research Institute is a research nonprofit studying the mathematical underpinnings of intelligent behavior. Our mission is to develop formal tools for the clean design and analysis of general-purpose AI systems, with the intent of making such systems safer and more reliable when they are developed.

The field of AI has a reputation for overselling its progress. In the “AI winters” of the late 1970s and 1980s, researchers’ failures to make good on ambitious promises led to a collapse of funding and interest in AI. Although the field is now undergoing a renaissance, overconfidence is still a major fear; discussion of the possibility of human-equivalent general intelligence is still largely relegated to the science fiction shelf.

At the same time, researchers largely agree that AI is likely to begin outperforming humans on most cognitive tasks in this century. Given how disruptive domain-general AI could be, we think it is prudent to begin a conversation about this now, and to investigate whether there are limited areas in which we can predict and shape this technology’s societal impact.

Researchers at MIRI tend to be relatively agnostic about how the state of the art in AI will change over the coming decades, and how many years off smarter-than human AI systems are. 

Machine Intelligence Research Institute

My "Donations" tab has 60+ orgs that the effective altruism community supports. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZhDbbTQs5EAdCGzxt/

I donated to MIRI to support MIRI's work on the important project of ensuring smarter-than-human artificial intelligence has a positive impact.