Forethought Foundation
Global Priorities Research
The Forethought Foundation for global priorities research aims to promote and communicate academic and non-academic work that addresses the question of how to use our scarce resources to improve the world by as much as possible.
What problem is the Forethought Foundation working on?
Global priorities research is an academic discipline at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and the social sciences. It aims to determine how individuals and institutions should spend their limited resources in order to improve the world by as much as possible.
What does the Forethought Foundation do?
Forethought supports and promotes individuals and institutions working on global priorities research, furthers and develops effective altruism and longtermism as ideas, and promotes and presents the ideas of effective altruism and longtermism in social and traditional media, in person, and within academia.
Specifically, Forethought has recently worked on writing and promoting What We Owe The Future, a book by William MacAskill (Director of the Forethought Foundation) on the importance of our actions in the long run.
The Forethought Foundation is a project of Effective Ventures (as is Giving What We Can — see our transparency page)
What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of the Forethought Foundation?1.
We don't currently have further information about the cost-effectiveness of the Forethought Foundation beyond it doing work in a high-impact cause area and taking a reasonably promising approach.
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 cost-effectiveness of an organisation’s work — what the organisation is actually doing, whether their programs are making a big difference, and how far your dollar goes when you donate. See why a charity’s overhead costs aren't the full impact story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.