funds.effectivealtruism.org

Effective Altruism Funds lets you donate into one of four pooled, expert-managed funds, each targeting a different cause area: Animal Welfare, Effective Altruism Infrastructure, Global Health and Development, and Transformative AI. There is no single "best" fund — the right choice depends on which problem you consider most important, solvable, and neglected. If you already know your priority cause, pick the matching fund; if you're unsure, the descriptions below let you compare them on the same dimensions.

The four funds at a glance

All four are managed by fund managers, and the site reports 52,000 donors, $100M+ in grants, and 1,544 grants awarded.

How to choose

Use these questions to narrow it down:

• Do you care most about reducing animal suffering? → Animal Welfare Fund. It funds organizations and projects aimed at alleviating the suffering of millions or billions of animals.
• Do you want to strengthen the effective altruism community itself? → Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund. It backs organizations or people working to grow or improve that community.
• Do you prioritize evidence-based health and economic development? → Global Health and Development Fund. It targets outstanding, evidence-based opportunities for better healthcare access and economic development.
• Do you see advanced AI as the key risk? → Transformative AI Fund. It makes early-stage grants to individuals, new organizations, and existing organizations with new projects, focused primarily on reducing global catastrophic risks from advanced AI systems.

How the funds decide where money goes

The grantmaking approach compares projects using several criteria, including expected value, marginal impact, counterfactual impact, track record, information value, and direct and indirect effects. Expected value is the clearest example of the logic: some projects are high-risk with big potential payoffs, while others are safer bets, so the fund weighs potential benefit multiplied by chance of success.

For example, a 1% chance of $100,000 and a 50% chance of $2,000 both have the same expected value of $1,000 — over time they would yield the same average return. This is why a fund may back a speculative project rather than an obviously safe one.

Practical notes before you donate

• Donation route depends on where you live. The site lists "Donate on every.org" as recommended for donors outside the UK or Netherlands, and "Donate on Giving What We Can" as recommended for donors in the UK or Netherlands.
• Applying for funding is separate from donating. If you want money for your own project rather than to give, grants range between $1,000–$500,000, applications take less than 1 hour, and funding goes to people, projects, non-profits, and institutions.
• You can review actual grants first. A grants database is available if you want to see past funding decisions before choosing a fund.

If your main goal is simply to give effectively without picking a cause, the pooled structure is the point: your donation is combined with others and directed by fund managers to projects they judge most effective within that cause area.

Effective Altruism Funds (EA Funds) decides which projects to fund by having expert fund managers evaluate each opportunity against a set of explicit criteria, then compare projects using expected value rather than raw upside or raw probability alone. The approach is designed to direct donations toward work that is important, solvable, and overlooked. This explainer covers the criteria EA Funds names, how they trade off risky versus safe bets, and who actually makes the calls.

The seven criteria EA Funds uses

EA Funds lists seven considerations in its grantmaking approach. They are not a rigid checklist; they are lenses for comparing very different projects.

The first three do most of the work in separating strong grants from weak ones. A project with a huge potential benefit but a tiny chance of success can rank alongside a modest project that is nearly certain to work — if their expected values are similar.

How expected value changes the decision

EA Funds explains expected value with a concrete comparison:

• A 1% chance of $100,000 has an expected value of $1,000.
• A 50% chance of $2,000 also has an expected value of $1,000.

Both yield the same average return over time, so neither is automatically better. This is why EA Funds does not simply fund the safest projects or the most ambitious ones. Some projects are high-risk with big potential payoffs; others are safer bets. Expected value lets the fund managers compare them on one scale.

Marginal and counterfactual impact then ask a second question: would this work happen anyway? A grant to an organization that already has full funding may look impressive but change little. A grant that unlocks work no one else would pay for has higher counterfactual impact.

Who makes the funding decisions

EA Funds is not a crowd vote. Each of its four funds has a fund manager who works in that area and makes grant decisions:

• Animal Welfare Fund — organizations and projects that alleviate the suffering of millions or billions of animals.
• Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund — organizations or people that grow or improve the effective altruism community.
• Global Health and Development Fund — evidence-based opportunities to improve access to healthcare and economic development.
• Transformative AI Fund — early-stage grants to individuals, new organizations, and existing organizations with new projects, focused on reducing global catastrophic risks from advanced AI systems.

Donors pool their money into a fund rather than picking individual grants, and the fund manager allocates it. That is the core trade: you give up direct control over which project receives your money in exchange for expert evaluation.

What the grant history suggests

The public grant examples show the range of what gets funded:

• The Center for Responsible Seafood — $117,000 (2024 Q4), research and a pilot program on humane chill-killing at Indian shrimp farms to inform global certification standards (Animal Welfare).
• Hear This Idea — $6,196.87 (2024 Q3), ongoing support for a podcast about ideas for solving important problems (EA Infrastructure).
• Malaria Consortium — $1,690,095.48 (2022 Q4), support of a seasonal malaria chemoprevention program (Global Health and Development).

The spread — from roughly $6,000 for a podcast to $1.7M for a malaria program — reflects the criteria in practice. Small grants can score well on information value or marginal impact; large grants usually need a strong track record and a large scope of benefit.

If you want to apply or donate

• Applying for funding: grants range between $1,000 and $500,000, and EA Funds states the application takes less than 1 hour. It funds people, projects, non-profits, and institutions.
• Donating: you can donate to a fund directly, or via Every.org (recommended for donors outside the UK or Netherlands) or Giving What We Can (recommended for donors in the UK or Netherlands).

EA Funds reports 52,000 donors, over $100M in grants, and 1,544 grants awarded. If your goal is to understand whether a given project would qualify, test it against the seven criteria above — especially expected value, marginal impact, and counterfactual impact — before assuming a strong-sounding cause is enough.

Effective Altruism Funds is a grantmaking platform that pools donations from individual donors into expert-managed funds, then directs that money to projects selected for their social impact. It is aimed at donors who want their giving allocated by people who research and compare causes, rather than choosing recipients themselves. According to the site, it has 52,000 donors and has awarded over $100M across 1,544 grants.

How the platform works

You donate to one of four themed funds. Fund managers — the site says they work at organizations in the effective altruism space — decide which grantees receive the money. The stated approach is to back "effective projects" and to direct each donation "where it helps most."

The site also accepts funding applications from people and organizations, so the platform runs in two directions: donors give in, and projects apply for grants.

The four funds

Each fund has its own focus, so the choice of fund is effectively the choice of cause area. If you already know which cause you want to support, you can pick the matching fund; if you don't, the platform's premise is that fund managers make that allocation for you.

How grants are evaluated

The site lists seven criteria in its grantmaking approach: expected value, marginal impact, counterfactual impact, track record, information value, and direct and indirect effects, plus scope and limitations.

The clearest illustration is expected value. The site's own example: a 1% chance of $100,000 and a 50% chance of $2,000 both have an expected value of $1,000, so over time they would yield the same average return. This is how the platform compares high-risk, high-payoff projects against safer bets — it multiplies potential benefit by the chance of success rather than judging projects on certainty alone.

The other criteria address questions like whether a grant changes what would have happened anyway (counterfactual impact) and whether the fund's money is the marginal dollar that unlocks the work.

Featured grants

The site highlights recent grants as examples of what the funds support:

• The Center for Responsible Seafood — $117,000, 2024 Q4, Animal Welfare. Research and a pilot program on humane chill-killing at Indian shrimp farms, intended to inform global certification standards.
• Hear This Idea — $6,196.87, 2024 Q3, EA Infrastructure. Ongoing support for a podcast about ideas for solving important problems.
• Malaria Consortium — $1,690,095.48, 2022 Q4, Global Health and Development. Support of a seasonal malaria chemoprevention program.

A grants database is available on the site for browsing the full record.

Applying for funding

If you are seeking money rather than giving it, the site states:

• Grants range between $1,000 and $500,000.
• Applications take less than 1 hour.
• It funds people, projects, non-profits, and institutions.

The application route is the same platform, so a project in one of the four cause areas can apply directly.

Donating

The site offers two donation routes and recommends them by location:

• Every.org — recommended for donors outside the UK or Netherlands.
• Giving What We Can — recommended for donors in the UK or Netherlands.

Both are linked from the main donation call to action. The site does not publish pricing or fee information in the material reviewed here, so check the donation platform itself for processing details before giving.

When this platform fits

Effective Altruism Funds suits you if you want to give to a cause area but would rather have allocation decisions made by dedicated fund managers applying explicit impact criteria. It is less suited if you want to choose individual recipients yourself or want to see a specific project funded by your own donation — in that case, giving directly to a charity is the more direct route. If you are applying for a grant, the relevant question is whether your project fits one of the four fund descriptions and falls within the $1,000–$500,000 range.

The site routes donors by location: if you are in the UK or the Netherlands, use Giving What We Can; if you are anywhere else, use every.org. Both are linked from the main "Donate to a fund" area on funds.effectivealtruism.org, and both let you give to the same four funds.

Which donation channel applies to you

The site does not state that either channel is required — it presents them as recommendations. If you have a reason to prefer the other platform (for example, an existing account or a specific payment method), nothing in the page evidence says you cannot use it.

Step by step

1. Go to funds.effectivealtruism.org.
2. Find the "Donate to a fund" section near the top of the page.
3. Pick the channel that matches your location:
   • UK or Netherlands → Giving What We Can.
   • Everywhere else → every.org.
4. Choose which fund your donation goes to. The four options are:
   • Animal Welfare Fund
   • Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund
   • Global Health and Development Fund
   • Transformative AI Fund
5. Complete the donation on the platform you were sent to.

The donation itself happens on every.org or Giving What We Can, not on the Effective Altruism Funds site. That means the payment methods, currency handling, and any tax-deduction options depend on the platform you land on, not on funds.effectivealtruism.org. The site does not list supported payment methods or currencies, so check those on the destination platform before you commit.

What you are actually giving to

Your donation is pooled with other donors' money and allocated by fund managers rather than earmarked by you to a specific grant. The site reports 52,000 donors and over $100M in grants across 1,544 grants awarded, which is the scale your contribution joins.

Each fund has a stated focus, so pick based on cause area rather than geography:

• Animal Welfare Fund — organizations and projects that alleviate suffering of millions or billions of animals.
• Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund — organizations or people growing or improving the effective altruism community.
• Global Health and Development Fund — evidence-based opportunities for better healthcare access and economic development.
• Transformative AI Fund — early-stage grants to individuals, new organizations, and existing organizations running new projects, focused on reducing global catastrophic risks from advanced AI.

Common snags

• You are in the UK or Netherlands but prefer every.org. The recommendation is location-based, not a hard rule stated on the page. If you use the "wrong" channel, the practical difference is which platform processes the payment and what tax treatment you get — check that platform's own rules.
• You want your money to go to one specific grant. The funds are pooled and manager-directed. If you want to fund a specific project, the site's separate "Apply for funding" path is for grant applicants, not donors.
• You are unsure which fund fits. The four funds cover distinct cause areas; the choice is about which problem you want to support, not about where you live.

If you are on the other side of the table

The same site handles grant applications: grants range from $1,000 to $500,000, applications are stated to take under an hour, and funding goes to people, projects, non-profits, and institutions. That is a separate process from donating and uses the "Apply for funding" entry point.

Effective Altruism Funds accepts applications from individuals, projects, non-profits, and institutions, with grants ranging from $1,000 to $500,000. The application itself takes less than an hour to complete. If your work fits one of the four focus areas below, you can start by going to the site and selecting "Apply for funding."

Who can apply

The site states it funds "people, projects, non-profits and institutions" — so you do not need to be a registered charity to apply. This matters because two of the four funds (Transformative AI and EA Infrastructure) explicitly make early-stage grants to individuals and new organizations, not just established nonprofits.

The four funds you can apply to

Each fund has its own remit, and your project needs to fit the one you apply to:

If your project spans more than one area, pick the fund whose stated scope most directly describes your work rather than trying to fit all of them.

What the application involves

The site gives three concrete parameters:

• Grant size: $1,000–$500,000
• Time to apply: under 1 hour
• Who reviews it: each fund has its own fund managers, who work in the relevant field

The application is designed to be short. Expect to describe your project, its expected impact, and why it fits the fund — not to produce a full grant proposal. The $1,000 floor means small, early-stage ideas are in scope; the $500,000 ceiling means this is not a route for large-scale institutional funding.

How your application will be judged

The site lists seven criteria its grantmaking approach uses:

1. Expected value
2. Marginal impact
3. Counterfactual impact
4. Track record
5. Information value
6. Direct and indirect effects
7. Scope and limitations

The expected-value logic is worth internalizing before you write. The site's own example: a 1% chance of $100,000 and a 50% chance of $2,000 both have an expected value of $1,000. So a high-risk project with a large potential payoff is not automatically disadvantaged against a safer, smaller one — but you need to make the probability and the size of the payoff explicit. "Marginal" and "counterfactual" impact mean reviewers will ask what happens because of your grant that would not happen otherwise, so frame your project against that baseline rather than against doing nothing at all.

Steps to apply

1. Go to funds.effectivealtruism.org.
2. Read the four fund descriptions and choose the one matching your work.
3. Select "Apply for funding" / "Apply."
4. Complete the application (under 1 hour) covering your project, its expected impact, and your track record where relevant.
5. Submit and wait for the fund managers to review it.

Common sticking points

• Applying to the wrong fund. The Transformative AI Fund is specifically for reducing global catastrophic risks from advanced AI; a general AI-for-good project belongs elsewhere or not here.
• Skipping the counterfactual. Reviewers weigh what your grant changes, not just what your project does. State what would happen without the funding.
• Vague probability claims. The expected-value framing rewards explicit estimates, even rough ones, over unquantified enthusiasm.
• Assuming you need nonprofit status. Individuals and new organizations are explicitly eligible for at least two of the funds.

If you are a donor rather than an applicant

The same site lets you donate into any of the four funds, pooling your money with other donors. It lists 52,000 donors and $100M+ in grants across 1,544 grants awarded. Donation routes differ by location: every.org is recommended for donors outside the UK or Netherlands, and Giving What We Can for donors in the UK or Netherlands.