Support impactful organizations solving the world’s biggest challenges with cutting edge research and policy.

## The Founders Pledge Perspective

Science and technology have created amazing advances in human civilization, from agriculture to industry and beyond. Yet they have also created new challenges, both foreseen and unforeseen: the threat of engineered pandemics more deadly than any naturally occuring virus, the risk of artificial intelligence unaligned with conventional human values, the mental health implications of lives lived online, and others we may not yet recognize.

To address these challenges, improve the lives of people today, and protect future generations from natural and man-made risks, Founders Pledge has identified a short-list of charities working at the cutting edge of global risk response and human wellbeing. These organizations convene stakeholders, conduct research, and advocate for better national and global policies based on the best available evidence.

By giving to the Founders Pledge Science and Technology Index, you can spread your donation across several highly-impactful and neglected organisations working to answer big questions and create solutions to problems that affect us all. By pooling your donations, this Index fund allows you to make larger grants and thereby maximize your impact.

## 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.
- **The grant’s potential outcomes**. We focus on outcomes (e.g. how many lives were saved), rather than outputs (e.g. how many products were delivered). We review all the available evidence and take into account cost-effectiveness to assess whether the grant money could produce more good if donated elsewhere.
- **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. We also look for organizations that demonstrate a strong commitment to measuring outcomes and evaluating the impact of their programs.

Science & Technology Index

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Science & Technology Index