CharitiesLongview Philanthropy
Longview Philanthropy
Charity

Longview Philanthropy

Effective Giving Research and Advocacy

Longview Philanthropy seeks to positively influence the long-term future by guiding philanthropists to highly impactful funding opportunities.

Reducing global catastrophic risks

What problem is Longview Philanthropy working on?

Longview Philanthropy’s core priority is emerging technology, with most of their grantmaking in the following focus areas:

  1. Beneficial AI. Cultivating expertise, refining policy, and scaling up technical safety efforts.
  2. Biosecurity. Strengthening defence-focused biotechnologies and global norms.
  3. Nuclear Weapons Policy. Opposing destabilising systems, arms races, and unintended escalation.

In addition to these core focus areas, Longview has made substantial grants in global health & development, global priorities research, and animal welfare.

What does Longview Philanthropy do?

Longview Philanthropy offers major donors a complete and bespoke end-to-end service for giving, including detailed explainers, expert learning series, residential retreats, prioritisation research, grant recommendations, processing, due diligence, and impact assessment. Their grant recommendations are sourced from our expert network of over 100 individuals across philanthropy, academia, and industry and investigated by our dedicated in-house team of expert grantmakers.

By independently vetting grant opportunities, they reduce the reliance of potential grantees on a few funders. By growing the circle of major funders, they increase the donor diversity in the funding ecosystem, creating opportunities to fund projects unable to accept existing sources of funding. Everything Longview Philanthropy offers is free, independent, often reviewed by external experts, and guided by Longview’s grantmaking principles:

  • Intellectual Honesty: We are transparent in our reasoning and communicate our assumptions, evidence, and uncertainties clearly. We never tell our donors simply what we think they want to hear.
  • A Scientific Mindset: We are informed by the latest research in the natural and social sciences. We work to quantify our impact insofar as wisdom allows, and act on the best available balance of evidence
  • Radical Impartiality: We believe that every individual counts equally — including members of future generations. We fund work that could benefit the most individuals, as much as possible.
  • Win-Win Scenarios: Many of the issues we aim to tackle, from pandemic preparedness to safe AI to nuclear war, pose serious threats today. Work to protect future generations often benefits the current generation as well.

Hits-Based Giving: Inspired by venture capital, we seek to uncover neglected opportunities with high-reward potential. Over the long run, if we can match even one of the biggest philanthropic successes of the 20th century, our efforts will have paid off.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of Longview Philanthropy?1.

We looked into Longview Philanthropy in its capacity as a grantmaker in the reducing catastrophic risks space as part of our evaluators research (and as such, we recommend its Longtermism Fund). However, we have not evaluated Longview Philanthropy in any other capacity.


Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.