Billionaire Cari Tuna on why the organization she started will offer free advice to other donors

Billionaire philanthropist Cari Tuna is expanding her mission to revolutionize charitable giving with a bold new initiative aimed at helping other wealthy donors maximize their impact. Starting this week, the organization she co-founded is rebranding as Coefficient Giving and will offer free advisory services to major donors seeking to optimize their philanthropy.

Tuna, 40, and her husband, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, 41, began their philanthropic journey in 2010 when Tuna left her career in journalism to focus on giving away most of their vast fortune. What she discovered in those early days was a philanthropic landscape lacking in strategic rigor.

“I was often advised to follow my passions and give to causes I felt connected to,” Tuna told The Associated Press. While she acknowledges this as a valid approach for some, she worried that if all major donors followed their personal interests exclusively, “philanthropy will be missing some of the biggest opportunities to help others, especially the most disadvantaged people.”

This realization led the couple to establish Open Philanthropy, a research organization that has guided their giving of more than $4 billion toward areas including global health, animal welfare, artificial intelligence safety, and the effective altruism movement.

Now rebranded as Coefficient Giving, the organization aims to formalize and expand its advisory work. Over the past two years, they’ve already helped direct more than $300 million from outside donors, primarily toward global health initiatives. The new name reflects their evolving mission to serve as a multiplier for philanthropic impact beyond their own giving.

“It’s always been a vision of mine to create a resource that could support not just Dustin and me, but many donors looking for advice on how to do as much good as they can with their giving,” Tuna explained.

CEO Alexander Berger emphasized that while there’s no strict minimum donation amount required to access their services, Coefficient Giving will primarily focus on advising major donors willing to invest in complex or less obvious areas.

“We’re trying to offer something that’s a little bit more opinionated about where there are high impact opportunities that a dollar can go especially far,” said Berger. This approach distinguishes them from conventional philanthropic consultants who might be less willing to recommend specific causes.

Anna McKelvey, who makes grants through The Alpha Epsilon Fund with her husband Jim McKelvey (co-founder of payment company Square), is among those who have already benefited from the organization’s guidance. She joined a Coefficient-championed initiative to reduce lead exposure in low- and middle-income countries.

“We don’t have to compete for that talent. We don’t have to reinvent any wheels. We don’t do double work,” McKelvey said, highlighting the efficiency of joining funding collaboratives rather than establishing independent philanthropic infrastructure.

While global health has received the largest share of Open Philanthropy’s funding, the organization has also been a significant supporter of effective altruism—a movement that applies evidence and reasoning to determine how to maximize philanthropic impact. This approach, influenced by utilitarian philosophers like Peter Singer, has gained traction in elite universities and Silicon Valley.

One of the organization’s key contributions has been developing a framework for cause selection based on identifying areas that are important, neglected, and where progress is possible. This methodology often leads to prioritizing interventions like malaria prevention over domestic initiatives like food banks in wealthy countries.

Tuna noted that most of their funding partners don’t identify as part of the effective altruism community. “There isn’t one right answer about how to do the most good,” she said. “And yet, I think it’s so important to grapple with the question of how can we have an outsized impact with our giving.”

Another significant focus for the organization has been AI safety. They’ve invested more than $580 million toward building a field of researchers studying potential catastrophic risks from advanced artificial intelligence. This includes an early $30 million grant to OpenAI in 2017, well before the company gained widespread recognition for developing ChatGPT.

As AI development accelerates, Coefficient Giving plans to continue concentrating on mitigating the most extreme risks, such as the possibility of autonomous systems creating new deadly pathogens. While acknowledging that issues like algorithmic bias and employment disruption deserve attention, Tuna believes their comparative advantage lies in ensuring AI systems develop safely and beneficially.

This strategic focus exemplifies the data-driven, high-impact approach to philanthropy that Coefficient Giving seeks to promote among other major donors—potentially transforming how billions of charitable dollars are allocated in the years ahead.