2025 Results, 2026 Plans and Funding Needs
We have just released our end-of-year 2025 Results, 2026 Plans, and Funding Needs document that demonstrates what a donation to RP can accomplish: from contributing to better allocation of millions of philanthropic dollars to accelerating critical infrastructure that addresses AI risk, and much more.
Our 2025 Outputs and Achievements
As well as citations by several leading meta-organizations, including BlueDot Impact, Probably Good, Animal Charity Evaluators, Giving What We Can, Open Philanthropy, Centre for Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, and Ambitious Impact.
Highlights
This year, grounded in our cross-cause approach, we:
a) Directly advised major philanthropic funders: Our research in global health and development supported some of the largest philanthropic donors, whose program budgets total hundreds of millions of dollars.
b) Helped funders address the US foreign aid cuts: Our donor guide on allocating funds amid US foreign aid cuts was cited by major media outlets, including the Associated Press, helping donors channel resources where they’re needed most.
c) Expanded our philanthropic tools to enable better resource allocation: We released updates to the Moral Parliament tool, enabling philanthropists and policymakers to compare trade-offs across healthcare resources, global health charities, animal species, and movement-building strategies.
d) Coordinated dozens of animal advocacy organizations on strategic priorities: We convened leading organizations to align on welfare strategies for the most neglected animals (including fish and invertebrates) and enabled major funders to more confidently deploy almost $10M in grants toward EU farmed animal welfare advocacy.
e) Created a framework to guide the emerging field of digital minds: New York University’s Center for Minds, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP) hosted a workshop on our behalf, with experts from major AI labs, academia, and research nonprofits, to inform our forthcoming Digital Consciousness Model.
f) Accelerated crucial infrastructure to address AI risks: Through our Special Projects program, we provided administrative and strategic support to nine early-stage, high-potential initiatives in the global catastrophic risk reduction space (such as Apollo Research, Truthful AI, the Institute for AI Policy & Strategy, and Consultants for Impact).
READ MORE ABOUT OUR 2025 ACHIEVEMENTS
Our plans and funding needs for 2026
This giving season, we especially value unrestricted support. While most of our funding is tied to specific projects or causes, flexible support allows us to pursue important, time-sensitive work that might not otherwise receive dedicated funding.
Several of our most influential lines of work began this way—for example, the Moral Weight Project, our early work on digital consciousness, and improvements to our digital tools for philanthropic decision-making.
DONATE TO OUR UNRESTRICTED FUND
For donors who prefer to support a particular field, general gifts to each department sustain core teams and fund top-priority projects. Please find overviews of each department’s 2026 priorities that depend on contributions from individual donors and can’t be covered by any existing grants we have received (great opportunity for marginal impact):
a) Worldview Investigations aims to advance AI risk attitude benchmarking, digital consciousness research, and cross-cause prioritization work, creating tools and insights that guide funders and key stakeholders. Our team has room for $2 million more funding in 2026.
b) The Global Health and Development department plans to balance independent research on neglected GHD topics, commissioned work for effective altruism (EA)-aligned actors, and partnerships with major funders to redirect large-scale funding to cost-effective interventions. The department has room for $1.785 million more funding in 2026.
c) The Animal Welfare department will pivot further toward being a convener and catalyst, building alignment via aquatic welfare forums, producing decision-oriented research, and selectively helping lead on neglected frontiers like invertebrates, wild animals, and AI’s impact on animals. It has room for $2.185 million more funding in 2026.
d) Surveys and Data Analysis has room for $305K more funding in 2026. Additional support would allow us to pursue projects, e.g., about framing and branding EA and global catastrophic risk reduction, and surveys for how to understand and communicate about digital minds
We are also advancing three new initiatives within the RP ecosystem:
1) A new AI Strategy team: The team will develop and disseminate actionable research on AI governance, policy, and strategy, to help funders, governments, and aligned institutions make informed decisions to reduce global catastrophic risk and steer transformative AI toward broadly beneficial outcomes.
2) AI Cognition Initiative: We will continue our successful research into digital minds and launch an ambitious technical research project investigating AI risk attitudes.
3) Interdisciplinary Research Hub: The hub will provide cross-domain research capacity through flexible, priority-driven work that spans RP’s cause areas. Initial focus areas include preparing RP to inform allocation decisions regarding new philanthropic funding entering the EA space, as well as contributing to cross-cutting efforts such as monitoring and evaluation.
READ MORE ABOUT OUR 2026 PLANS
To achieve these goals, we have estimated a core budget of 7.5 million for 2026. However, we believe that we can productively use at least $9.3 million in total to scale more high-leverage opportunities. The following table provides a snapshot of our financial position with respect to restricted assets, expenses, and room for more funding.
We also have several upcoming projects where $10K to $50K from an individual or group of donors can be decisive in whether we can pursue them. Learn more here!
Get in touch
a) Request a brief via email about our planned work in a specific area.
b) Schedule a free advisory call to explore how our research and insights can support your giving decisions.
c) Browse our tools to address more advanced questions about philanthropic decision-making.
d) Review frequently asked questions about donating to RP.
Support our work to advance global priorities today!
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to our development team for more tailored support:
Whitney Childs – Global Health and Development
Hannah Tookey – Animal Welfare
Janique Behman – Worldview Investigations, Surveys and Data Analysis
Kieran Greig – wider organizational strategy and plans
development@rethinkpriorities.org – for general inquiries, technical questions
Thank you for the ongoing support!
Rethink Priorities Team
