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The_Info_Web/70 - DISPATCHES/2026-10-08 Our Largest Funder.md

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title date status summary entities tags
Our Largest Funder 2026-10-08 published For almost five years an Open Philanthropy grantmaker sat on the board of the charity her foundation funded most, which in 2022 to 2023 also took FTX Foundation money.
Claire Zabel
Open Philanthropy
Effective Ventures
Centre for Effective Altruism
FTX Foundation
Nick Beckstead
Atlas Fellowship
Charity Commission
EffectiveAltruism
OpenPhilanthropy
FTX

Our Largest Funder

Claire Zabel joined Open Philanthropy as a research analyst in August 2015 and, from December 2019 to January 2022, was described on its team page as leading "our grantmaking on effective altruism."1 On July 18, 2019, Companies House records, she became a director of the English company of the Centre for Effective Altruism, later Effective Ventures Foundation (UK), and a person with significant control holding more than 25 percent of its votes. She remained a director until March 28, 2024.2

Open Philanthropy grant pages from 2018 to 2022 name her as investigator on twenty grants totalling about 12.6 million dollars, among them several to the Centre: 180,000 dollars in February 2020 for a longtermist project incubator, 500,000 dollars more for the incubator in September 2020, and 5,000,000 dollars to the Atlas Fellowship, via the Centre, in March 2022. Of the September 2020 incubator grant, 451,264 dollars was returned to Open Philanthropy in March 2023.3 The largest general-support grant to the Centre, 7,500,000 dollars in February 2021, names a committee as its investigator.4

The charity's accounts for the year to June 30, 2023 describe her in a note on related parties as a program director at "Open Philanthropy, our largest funder," and state that "Claire has significant influence over some of the funding decisions made by Open Philanthropy in relation to several of the charity's projects." That year the charity took 39,037,949 pounds in grants from Open Philanthropy and 2,766,546 pounds in donations from the FTX Foundation. The same note states that one of its trustees had been the chief executive of the FTX Foundation during the year. The trustee list for that year includes Nick Beckstead, who resigned in August 2023.5

The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into the charity in December 2022. Its report of May 2024 found that trustees were not required to disclose potential conflicts of interest on joining the board until October 2022, and found no evidence of unmanaged conflicts concerning funds from the FTX Foundation. It does not name the trustees or mention Open Philanthropy. The report is marked as withdrawn on May 27, 2026.6

  1. Open Philanthropy, "Claire Zabel," team biography, Wayback Machine captures of November 28, 2018, December 12, 2019 and January 19, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20191212003145/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/claire-zabel. ↩︎

  2. Companies House, Effective Ventures Foundation (UK), company number 07962181, officers and persons with significant control, viewed October 8, 2026, https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07962181/persons-with-significant-control. ↩︎

  3. Open Philanthropy grant pages "Centre for Effective Altruism: Support for Jade Leung" (February 2020), "Centre for Effective Altruism: Longtermist Project Incubator (September 2020)" (amount updated to 48,736 dollars after 451,264 dollars returned in March 2023) and "Atlas Fellowship: Scholarships and Summer Program for Students" (March 2022), Wayback Machine captures, https://web.archive.org/web/20251024104819/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/centre-for-effective-altruism-longtermist-incubator-september-2020/. ↩︎

  4. Open Philanthropy, "Centre for Effective Altruism: General Support (2021)," investigator "Committee for Effective Altruism Support," Wayback Machine capture of 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/?p=1179. ↩︎

  5. Effective Ventures Foundation (UK), Trustees' Report and Financial Statements for the year ended June 30, 2023, page 1 and note 27, page 48, filed at Companies House March 21, 2024, https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07962181/filing-history/MzQxNDkzNjQ2NGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf. ↩︎

  6. Charity Commission for England and Wales, "Charity Inquiry: Effective Ventures Foundation UK," May 22, 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-inquiry-effective-ventures-foundation-uk/charity-inquiry-effective-ventures-foundation-uk. ↩︎