Open Philanthropy Project
Organization

The Open Philanthropy Project (OPP) is a limited-liability corporation operating similar to a 501(c)(3) that directs tens of millions of dollars to animal rights extremist groups to fund attack campaigns against restaurants and other food companies.

In total, OPP has guided a whopping $64 million to animal rights organizations since its launch in 2016. OPP steered $4 million to a Humane Society of the United States-sponsored ballot measure in California that would ban the sale of conventional pork and eggs in California. OPP has also directed $10 million to The Humane League, a vegan group that heckles food companies with harassing phone calls, emails, Tweets, and street protests.

OPP also funds “journalism” at the website of The Guardian, a major paper in the UK. Predictably, the articles are heavily slanted.

OPP is largely financed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal. OPP was originally incubated as a part of GiveWell, through a collaboration with Good Ventures, which was also set up by Moskovitz and Tuna with the plan to spend most or all of its money before the founders die.

One of the ideals behind OPP is in the name—open philanthropy. Open philanthropy is a principle that rather than perpetuating the ubiquitous dark money machine that flows through so many organizations around the world, philanthropy is announced and clearly communicated in an “open” manner.

This openness makes it easy to see what OPP’s intentions are.

On OPP’s website, one of the focus areas is defined as “Farm Animal Welfare,” where the organization’s grants are listed and OPP writes that, “we see relatively little attention on this issue from major animal welfare groups.”

The farm animal welfare initiative is overseen by Lewis Bollard, who previously served as a special assistant to Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle (who resigned in early 2018 following sexual harassment allegations).

Animal welfare is not the true ideal for Bollard and his allies, but rather animal liberation. A key part of this is stopping the use of animals for food.

OPP has also steered funding to a variety of other left-wing groups, including:

  • Color of Change PAC, which has advocated for credit card companies to cease processing for conservative organizations and claimed that donors to the Republican National Convention perpetuate white supremacy
  • The Urban Institute, a progressive organization advocating for lax criminal punishment, higher taxes, and a host of other left-wing causes
  • People’s Action / People’s Action Institute, a supporter of left-wing agitation tactics, including intimidation, protesting, and trespassing
  • Drug Policy Alliance, a George Soros-funded outfit that advocates decriminalizing the use of heroin and other hard drugs
  • ACLU, a group once known for its stalwart defense of civil rights for all people, but now is little more than a run-of-the-mill progressive organization with partisan leanings and a generous budget
  • ClimateWorks Foundation, a dark money group that funds radical environmentalist groups around the world
  • MoveOn.org, a liberal funding organization that credits itself with passing Obamacare and the rise to prominence of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election
  • $750,000 in support, through a lobbying group, to a ballot measure in Florida to give felons their voting rights back.
  • Meanwhile, FEC records reveal Moskovitz spent nearly $20 million supporting Democrats in the 2016 election, while his wife spent more than $7 million in support of the Democratic party that election cycle.

As Moskovtiz and Tuna said in announcing their intentions to finance the cause of the Democrat Party: “We have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections. That said, we believe in trying to do as much good as we can, which in this case means using the tools available to us.”

Much like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations—another well-documented funder of liberal causes—OPP is a gravy train for propping up radical activists who otherwise may have little popular support. This organization is very likely to be a long-term funding source for animal rights activism and something the wider public deserves to be aware of.