Open Philanthropy

Open Philanthropy is the doctrine which holds that the programming, operations, governance, effectiveness, and efficiency of nonprofit organizations should be open and visible by the public, donors, and especially, stakeholders in those nonprofits.

Among recent developments is the theory of open source governance which advocates the application of the philosophies of the free software movement to democratic principles to enable interested citizens to get more directly involved in the legislative process.

The Effective altruism movement is a prominent proponent of analyzing, in a rubric with other criteria, the transparency of nonprofit organizations. The Open Philanthropy Project - a joint collaboration between GiveWell, a charity navigator, and Good Ventures, co-founded by a Facebook co-founder - "envision a world in which philanthropists increasingly document and share their research, reasoning, results and mistakes to help each other learn more quickly and serve the world more effectively."

Since 2007 a variety of bloggers and writers, including Mark Surman, have proposed the concept of "Open Philanthropy". Few of these early efforts seemed to get much traction with stakeholders or nonprofit leaders. Then early in 2010, Lucy Bernholz again surfaced the concept for how nonprofits should follow the conventions of Open Source and Open Government initiatives.

The guiding principles of compliant organizations include:

The plans, budgets, expenses, and programming of an organization shall be designed to ensure organizational focus on the mission of the organization. The majority of funds spent are in support of programs and services. Administrative and fundraising costs are kept within reasonable limits with a goal of more than 75 percent of funds allocated to program and outreach expenses.

Organizations shall have a documented methodology to measure and accurately report programmatic achievements, and where appropriate, the actual cost per beneficiary for program services. Additionally, these efforts shall account, and if necessary discount, for program achievements that are accomplished through and with other organizations. Program costs shall be managed to be as reasonable as possible, without sacrificing services, quality, and long-term sustainability of services.

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