[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.]

As noted previously, we’ve been working on improving our broad understanding of the role that philanthropy can play in influencing and informing policy. One of my goals has been to hear different perspectives on how one should (for maximum effectiveness) approach policy-oriented philanthropy: what sorts of issues one should look to get involved in vs. steer clear of, what sorts of organizations make the most sense to support, etc.

This post lays out:

Several different visions of policy-oriented philanthropy and what it does best, based on conversations that we’ve had.

Some preliminary impressions of which (mostly U.S. federal) policy issues might be promising areas for a new philanthropist.

Key questions we still have on this front, and plans for moving forward from here.

Different visions of policy-oriented philanthropy

An essay by Steven Teles and Mark Schmitt (also discussed in the previous post on this topic) lays out one vision of policy-oriented philanthropy: that of engaging in very long-time-horizon (a decade or more) efforts to build the capacity of relevant organizations, so that when the right political moment comes – which can happen at unpredictable times and in unpredictable ways – the stage is set for maximal positive change. This view was reinforced by our conversations with the two authors as well as with Frank Baumgartner

Under this view, it seems that one should not put too much weight on the apparent “political tractability” of the change one seeks. Political tractability can change quickly and unpredictably. Moreover, while a particular desired policy change might be unrealistic, there may be as-yet-unforeseen opportunities to improve dramatically on the status quo by advocating for subtle changes in legislation, stopping problematic new legislation, etc. Thus, rather than ask “Is the change I want feasible?” a philanthropist should ask “Can I strengthen the groups that share my general perspective?”

Broadly speaking, this vision seems to imply that a philanthropist should seek out constellations of interest groups that “should have more capacity than they do,” given the importance of the issues they work on. And since dramatic victories can be won even when the victors have far fewer resources than their adversaries (a point made by Prof. Baumgartner), one should not necessarily steer clear of issues with strong opposition; if anything, one should steer clear of areas in which the side one agrees with is already well-developed and well-resourced, leaving less room for further philanthropic impact.

One could apply this sort of thinking to choosing between issue areas (for example, tax policy vs. drug policy), or – as Prof. Teles encouraged us to do – one could focus more broadly on strengthening the infrastructure around one’s preferred general ideology. (Prof. Teles has written about the role of conservative foundations in strengthening the voice of conservatism in American policy in general.)

I think this viewpoint has much to recommend it: long-term building of interest groups’ capacity may be something that philanthropy is uniquely well-suited to do, and the case studies that have been cited make it clear how this approach might pay greater dividends than shorter-term attempts to influence debates whose interest groups and other parameters are already well-defined. With that said:

We haven’t vetted the case studies cited in support of this viewpoint.

We believe that very-long-term planning is inherently more difficult than shorter-term planning, and runs the risk that the change one achieves is not the change one hoped for. There are certainly cases in which I could imagine strengthening the capacity of interest groups that – today – agree with me on the desired direction of desired policy change, but will disagree with me by the time they have an impact.

A couple of possible alternative approaches:

One could seek out issues in which it looks like a change (from the status quo) is already imminent, and hope that these provide more latitude to influence exactly what sort of change takes place. One person I spoke with (notes forthcoming) advocated taking on issues such as drug policy, criminal justice policy, and policies relating to NSA surveillance: in all three of these cases (he argued), the status quo appears largely untenable and vulnerable to change, and some extra funding could cause a “tipping point” – or change the shape of the solution that is eventually settled on. (Good examples of the latter goal can be seen in our conversation with Mark Kleiman, who feels – on both drug policy and criminal justice policy – that there are multiple paths to change, some better than others.)

One could put very high weight on political tractability, seeking out issues – even if they aren’t the most important issues, in isolation – where one can expect concrete results on a relatively short time frame. One funder that may be following a strategy along these lines is Pew Charitable Trusts, whose document on evaluation presents a very different picture from the essay linked above from Teles and Schmitt – implying a general expectation of tangible results on ~5-year time frames.

The first approach in this section is the one we’ve seen most commonly and articulately advocated, though we continue to search for “policy generalists” who can engage with this question and provide more perspectives.

Preliminary impressions of several issues

As part of our initial explorations, we’ve asked around about issues that might represent particularly good opportunities for a philanthropist to accomplish good. Below, we give overall impressions on several issues (not all of which we consider promising) based mostly on conversations with Steven Teles Frank Baumgartner and Dylan Matthews (as well as informal impressions and observations). As with previous posts , “success” refers to impact on policy and not necessarily to positive social impact, and we don’t necessarily have confident views on the “right side” of the issues below; we report on issues that have been cited to us as opportunities for positive social impact, and focus on the change that advocates for working on these issues have supported.

Our plans going forward

So far, we haven’t found a large number of people who will engage broadly (and knowledgeably) with us about the role of philanthropy in influencing policy, and about the relative merits of different issues as laid out above. We plan to continue looking for such people, largely via referrals, and to continue publishing conversation notes from our discussions with them. We’ve also been given a significant amount of recommended reading that we plan to explore to further develop our basic feel for policymaking and philanthropy’s potential role in it.

In particular, we hope to gain more perspectives and information on a couple of key questions:

What’s the best time frame for a policy-oriented philanthropist to have in mind? Does the potentially magnified impact of very long-term capacity-building make up for the higher level of uncertainty?

To what extent it is important for us to seek out grantees that are highly aligned with our views, as opposed to roughly aligned (e.g., on the same side of the status quo?) We could imagine doing net harm to our goals by building the capacity of groups that are aligned with us in today’s environment, but not tomorrow’s. On the other hand, the higher degree of alignment we seek, the fewer options we can expect to have.

What information is available about the track record of policy-oriented philanthropy?

What issues are most promising for a new philanthropist to enter, and why?

In the meantime, however, we plan to move forward with investigations of specific issues that have been highlighted as promising in our investigations so far. We feel that we may learn more about the above questions via issue-specific investigations and conversations than via more general ones.