Holden Karnofsky is an American nonprofit executive. He is a co-founder and co-chief executive officer of the research and grantmaking organization

Open Philanthropy Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current co-chief executive officers are Holden ...

. Karnofsky co-founded the charity evaluator

GiveWell GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentag ...

with Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 and is vice chair of its board of directors.

Biography

Education and early career

Karnofsky graduated from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

with a degree in social studies in 2003. At Harvard, he was a member of the

Harvard Lampoon ''The Harvard Lampoon'' is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Overview The ''Harvard Lampoon'' publication was founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates ...

. After graduating, he worked at

Bridgewater Associates Bridgewater Associates is an American investment management firm founded by Ray Dalio in 1975. The firm serves institutional clients including pension funds, endowments, foundations, foreign governments, and central banks. It utilizes a glob ...

, an investment management fund based in

Westport, Connecticut Westport is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, along the Long Island Sound within Connecticut's Gold Coast. It is northeast of New York City. The town had a population of 27,141 according to the 2020 U.S. Census. History ...

GiveWell

At Bridgewater, Karnofsky met his future GiveWell co-founder Elie Hassenfeld. In 2006, Karnofsky and Hassenfeld started a charity club where they and other Bridgewater employees pooled in money and investigated the best charities to donate the money to. In mid-2007, with donations from their colleagues, Karnofsky and Hassenfeld formed a fund called "The Clear Fund", and quit their jobs to work full time on

, whose goal was to allocate the money in the Clear Fund to the best charities. In December 2007, Karnofsky was discovered posting a question about the organization to

MetaFilter MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a general-interest community weblog, founded in 1999 and based in the United States, featuring links to content that users have discovered on the web. Since 2003, it has included the popular question-a ...

using another individual's name, and then posting an answer about GiveWell with his own name but without disclosing his affiliation with GiveWell. The negative publicity led Karnofsky to resign from the role of executive director, though he was later reinstated. The incident had negative repercussions on GiveWell's reputation. In June 2012, GiveWell announced a close partnership with

Good Ventures Good Ventures is a private foundation and philanthropic organization in San Francisco, and the fifth largest foundation in Silicon Valley. It was co-founded by Cari Tuna, a former '' Wall Street Journal'' reporter, and her husband Dustin Moskovi ...

, the philanthropic foundation tasked with giving away

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

co-founder

Dustin Moskovitz Dustin Aaron Moskovitz (; born May 22, 1984) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. (now known as Meta) with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found ...

's wealth. Good Ventures has been one of GiveWell's main funders since then as well as a major donor to GiveWell-recommended charities. Under Karnofsky's leadership, the annual money moved to GiveWell-recommended charities increased from $1.6 million in 2010 to $110 million in 2015. , he is vice chair of its board of directors.

Open Philanthropy

Karnofsky is co-chief executive officer of

, a research and grantmaking foundation whose main funders are

Cari Tuna Cari Tuna is an American nonprofit businessperson. Formerly a reporter for ''The Wall Street Journal'', she co-founded and works for the organizations Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures. Education and career Tuna was born in Minnesota. The e ...

and

. Open Philanthropy is an outgrowth of GiveWell Labs, a collaboration of GiveWell and Good Ventures for more speculative giving. As of August 2019, Open Philanthropy has made around 650 grants to over 370 unique organizations, disbursing a total of $857 million.

Views

Karnofsky identifies with the ideas of

effective altruism Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, ca ...

and has both represented and engaged with the effective altruist community. Earlier in his career, Karnofsky said he subscribed to a

consequentialist In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from ...

moral framework that hoped to "give people more power to live the life they want to live". In recent years, he has written about the importance of extending empathy to all beings deserving of moral consideration, even when it is unusual or seems strange to do so. He believes that it is important for GiveWell to increase the racial and gender diversity of its employees, towards which the organization has taken steps. He has debated other nonprofit leaders on the importance of field visits, which he believes are important but not sufficient in evaluating the effectiveness of charitable programs. In August 2014, after the

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, commonly known as the Hewlett Foundation, is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Redington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1966. The Hewlett Foundation awa ...

announced the end of its

Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative The Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative (NMI) was an initiative of the Effective Philanthropy Group of the Hewlett Foundation launched in 2006. Its closure was announced in the ''Chronicle of Philanthropy'' in April 2014. Origin The NMI was started ...

(one of GiveWell's major early funders), Karnofsky wrote a post on the GiveWell blog offering his thoughts on the program, informed by his experience as a recipient of its largesse. The Hewlett Foundation responded in a comment on the post, and Jacob Harold responded on the

GuideStar Candid is an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. nonprofit companies. In 2016, its database provided information on 2.5 million organizations.Wyland, Michael. "GuideStar Introduces Program Metrics Section for Nonprofit Profile ...

blog. Karnofsky has shared his thoughts on altruistic career choice and elaborated on Open Philanthropy's approach to cause prioritization in an interview with Robert Wiblin for the 80,000 Hours podcast as well as elsewhere.

References

External links

* Interviews on the 80,000 Hours podcast **
On building aptitudes and kicking ass
(2021) **
On the most important century
(2021) **
On how philanthropy can have maximum impact by taking big risks
(2018)
''Cold Takes''
- Karnofsky's blog {{DEFAULTSORT:Karnofsky, Holden Date of birth missing (living people) Living people American nonprofit businesspeople American nonprofit chief executives Consequentialists Harvard University alumni Organization founders People associated with effective altruism The Harvard Lampoon alumni