Organizational Case Studies

Good Ventures: The Power of Informed Decisions Case Study

 

The Good Ventures: The Power of Informed Decisions case study was written in partnership with the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB).

Educators may request teaching notes that accompany this case study. Contact connect@laaf.org.

In 2010, Cari Tuna committed to working full-time on developing a giving strategy for herself and her husband—Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. In May 2011, the couple created the philanthropic foundation Good Ventures. Tuna made transparency and knowledge sharing core components of the foundation, creating a blog to report on the foundation’s activities and learnings. Tuna was inspired by charity evaluator GiveWell and began to learn from, financially support, and eventually partner with the organization. To improve the grantmaking research process, Tuna and GiveWell created a rigorous “funnel” approach using shallow, medium, and deep investigations into potential issue areas to determine what areas had the greatest need, had proven solutions, and were relatively underfunded. This collaboration eventually became the Open Philanthropy Project, an effort to choose particularly promising focus areas for large-scale philanthropy, make grants, and discuss the process and results publicly to increase the quality of information available about how to give effectively.