What Good Ventures does

Good Ventures is a 501(c)(3) private philanthropic foundation founded in 2011 by Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook co-founder and Asana chairman) and Cari Tuna (former Wall Street Journal reporter), headquartered in San Francisco, California. The foundation's stated mission is to help humanity thrive, and it selects causes using three criteria — importance, neglectedness, and tractability — across focus areas including Global Health & Development, Abundance & Growth, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness, Scientific Research & Global Health R&D, Navigating Transformative AI, Farm Animal Welfare, Forecasting, and Effective Giving & Careers.

Rather than building a large internal staff, Good Ventures operates a lean team of 11–50 employees and routes nearly all cause-selection, due-diligence, and grantmaking execution through two strategic partners: Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy, the foundation's primary philanthropic advisor) and GiveWell, which has guided over $1 billion of Good Ventures' global health and development giving since 2011. Cumulative grantmaking exceeds $5 billion over 15+ years, with more than $600 million deployed in fiscal 2025 alone, making Good Ventures one of the top-20 largest private foundations in the United States. The foundation's revenue model is not commercial — it is funded by founders Moskovitz and Tuna's personal wealth (an estimated $20 billion committed to be given away during their lifetimes via the Giving Pledge signed in 2014) and deployed as grants to vetted nonprofit organizations and, since 2025, through a pooled multi-donor vehicle that has attracted over $200 million in commitments from co-funders including Patrick Collison and Lucinda Southworth.

The foundation's core "products" are its eight focus-area programs, distributed through direct grantmaking to named grantees such as Malaria Consortium, Evidence Action, ALIMA, MiracleFeet, Helen Keller Intl, California YIMBY, Institute for Progress, FAR AI, BlueDot Impact, SecureBio, and Blueprint Biosecurity. There are no commercial products, APIs, SDKs, patents, or technology services. Visibility and donor/co-funder recruitment are driven by earned media (Forbes Iconoclast 50, TIME100 Philanthropy 2025, Financial Times, Stanford PACS), public essays on platforms such as Medium, and speaking engagements, rather than a traditional sales or marketing motion.

Name

Good Ventures

Legal name

Good Ventures Foundation

Website

https://goodventures.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2011

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Private Foundation / Philanthropic Grantmaking

NAICS

Grantmaking and Giving Services (81321)

akta.pro primary industry

Private Foundations (BPAGAKAA)

Keywords

• Philanthropic grantmaking
• Private foundation
• Effective altruism
• Impact philanthropy
• Charitable grants

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Operations, Personnel, Others

Revenue model

1. Philanthropic Distribution: Good Ventures distributes wealth from founders Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna as grants to nonprofits and charitable organizations. The foundation receives its capital from the founders' accumulated wealth from Facebook and Asana, and distributes it based on rigorous analysis of impact potential.

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Good Ventures is a 501(c)(3) private philanthropic foundation that distributes grants to nonprofit organizations working on urgent global challenges. It selects causes based on three criteria: importance, neglectedness, and tractability, and deploys philanthropic capital from founders Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz through programs spanning global health, AI safety, biosecurity, and economic growth.

Product overview

Good Ventures is a philanthropic foundation that operates as a grantmaking organization rather than a commercial product company. The foundation is associated with Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) as its primary philanthropic advisor, which helps select causes, make grants, and pool resources with other donors. The organization distributes funds across multiple focus areas including Global Health & Development, Abundance & Growth, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness, Scientific Research & Global Health R&D, Navigating Transformative AI, Farm Animal Welfare, Forecasting, and Effective Giving & Careers. Good Ventures does not offer commercial software products or technology services.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Good Ventures Foundation Grants
• Coefficient Giving Multi-Donor Pooled Philanthropy

Quantifiable outcome

• Saved over 100,000 lives through interventions like malaria prevention medicine, childhood vaccination, and vitamin A supplementation
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers19 records

Segments7 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered core and major.

• Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCoefficient Giving serves as Good Ventures' primary philanthropic advisor, helping choose causes, make grants, track results, and pool resources with other donors. Previously known as Open Philanthropy, the organization has directed more than $4 billion since 2014 across a wide portfolio from global health to housing to frontier science.
• GiveWellcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerGiveWell, a nonprofit dedicated to finding global health and development charities that save and improve the most lives per dollar, has guided over $1 billion of Good Ventures' giving since 2011. GiveWell's rigorous charity evaluation methodology helps identify high-impact giving opportunities.
• Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationmajorStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe Gates Foundation was selected as one of four grant-makers to receive $150 million from Open Philanthropy's regranting challenge to boost funding for high-impact programs in health care, climate change, and global development.
• Pure EarthcoreOthersPure Earth works on reducing lead exposure in low- and middle-income countries. It is highlighted as a key grantee working to eliminate lead poisoning which causes irreparable harm to 1 in 2 children in LMICs.
• Institute for ProgresscoreOthersInstitute for Progress (IFP) publishes research and advocates for policy reforms to increase the pace of scientific, technological, and industrial progress in the United States, funded through Good Ventures' Abundance & Growth focus area.
• California YIMBYcoreOthersCalifornia YIMBY is an advocacy organization that helped advance SB 79, a landmark housing reform signed into law in 2025 that created an estimated 16 million new units of zoned capacity.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: The largest private foundation in the world and a named regranting partner of Open Philanthropy. Directly comparable as a large-scale, science-driven philanthropy with major global health, development, and pandemic preparedness portfolios.
• Emerson Collective: Founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, Emerson is a tech-billionaire-led impact organization that mixes philanthropy, advocacy, and mission-aligned investing across education, immigration, and the environment — closely analogous to Good Ventures' integrated model.
• Schmidt Futures: Founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy, Schmidt Futures supports talent-driven bets in AI, science, and public systems — highly comparable as a tech-billionaire foundation focused on early-stage, high-leverage scientific and AI investments.
• Patrick J. McGovern Foundation: Founded by the late IDG founder Patrick McGovern, the foundation focuses on AI for good, neuroscience, and journalism. Comparable as a tech-billionaire private foundation with a substantial AI safety and data-driven giving portfolio.
• Chan Zuckerberg Initiative: Founded by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, CZI is the closest direct peer to Good Ventures — a tech-billionaire-founded philanthropy focused on science, education, and justice, using a similarly analytical, high-impact approach.

Broad incumbents

• Rockefeller Foundation: Long-standing $6B+ foundation with focus areas including pandemic preparedness, climate, and food systems. Explicitly cited as a same-scale peer to Good Ventures in the data, and comparable in global-health and policy-oriented grantmaking.
• Open Society Foundations: George Soros's $25B+ foundation supports rights, justice, education, and public health globally. Comparable in scale and as a large private foundation taking public-policy positions on contentious issues.
• Ford Foundation: One of the largest US foundations ($16B endowment), focused on inequality, democracy, and global development. Comparable as a top-tier private foundation with global grantmaking reach and major international development footprint.
• Bloomberg Philanthropies: Mike Bloomberg's philanthropy operates across climate, public health, education, and the arts at multi-billion-dollar scale. Comparable as a tech-and-finance billionaire-led foundation with rigorous programmatic focus.
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: Mid-large US private foundation funding science, economics, and education research. Comparable as a science-R&D-focused foundation that, like Good Ventures, supports breakthrough research with measurable-impact criteria.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/GoodVentures
• Facebookfacebook.com/goodventures
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/good-ventures

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments20 records

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Frequently asked questions about Good Ventures