SFF versus SAF: SFF facilitates grants to existing charities; for smaller grants and service contracts for long-termist projects that don't yet have an institutional home, visit SAF.
SFF-2021-H1 grant round
SFF is pleased to announce a new grant round, with applications due in March and funds to be distributed in June 2021. For more information please see the announcement below:
SFF-2021-H1 S-process Grant Round Announcement
SFF-2020-H2 grant round
SFF has finalized its grant recommendations for 2020-H2:
SFF-2020-H2 S-process Recommendations Announcement
The total funding will be around $3.9MM. We are considering another round in the first half of 2021 (March-June), but this decision has not been finalized yet.
SFF-2020-H1 grant round
SFF’s had finalized its grant decisions for 2020-H1:
SFF-2020-H1 S-process Recommendations Announcement
The total funding distributed will be around $1.8MM, above the high end of our expected $0.8MM-1.5MM estimate. We are considering running another similar grant round in 2020-H2 (July-Dec), but a final decision on this has not been made.
SFF-2019-Q4 grant round
SFF had finalized most of its grant decisions for 2019-Q4:
SFF-2019-Q4 S-process Recommendations Announcement
The total funding distributed will be around $2MM, at the high end of our expected $1MM-$2MM estimate. We are considering running another similar grant round in Q2, Q3, or Q4 of 2020, but this decision has not been finalized.
About Us
Survivalandflourishing.fund is a “virtual fund”: we organize applications submission and evaluation processes to help donors decide where to make donations. Our goal is to bring financial support to organizations working to improve humanity’s long-term prospects for survival and flourishing. We use this website to host announcements about our plans to investigate grant-making opportunities.
SFF was initially funded in 2019 by a grant of approximately $2 million from the Organizational Grants Program of the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI), which in turn was funded by donations from philanthropist Jaan Tallinn. We previously maintained a DAF at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation under the same name (SFF), but that DAF is not currently in active use for our grant-making process.
SFF works closely with Survival and Flourishing (SAF), a Sponsored Project of Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs with a similar mission and overlapping leadership. While there is no formal relationship between SAF and SFF, we have complementary functions:
- SFF as a general rule does not facilitate grants to individuals, while SAF does.
- SAF as a general rule does not facilitate grants to 501(c)(3) public charities, while SFF does.
Survival and Flourishing Fund Advisors


Past Grant Recommendations
Below is a complete list of grants we have thus far recommended to be made from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, accurate up to the final date listed in the table. Recommendations after that final date might not be listed yet.
Date of Recommendation |
Grantee Organization | Amount | Purpose |
---|---|---|---|
2019-08 | 80,000 Hours | 280000 | General Support |
2019-08 | Center For Applied Rationality | 110000 | General Support |
2019-08 | Centre for the Study of Existential Risk | 40000 | General Support |
2019-08 | Future of Life Institute | 130000 | General Support |
2019-08 | Global Catastrophic Risks Institute | 60000 | General Support |
2019-08 | LessWrong 2.0 | 260000 | General Support |
2019-11 | 80,000 Hours | 40000 | General Support of 80,000 Hours |
2019-11 | AI Impacts | 70000 | General Support of AI Impacts |
2019-11 | AAAI/ACM conference on AI, Ethics and Society (AIES 2020) | 20000 | General Support of AIES |
2019-11 | Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) | 10000 | General Support of ALLFED |
2019-11 | Center For Applied Rationality | 150000 | General Support |
2019-11 | Charter Cities Institute | 60000 | General Support of the Charter Cities Institute |
2019-11 | Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge | 50000 | General Support of Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge |
2019-11 | Earth Law Center | 30000 | General Support |
2019-11 | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute | 30000 | General Support of GCRI |
2019-11 | Longevity Research Institute | 160000 | General Support |
2019-11 | Median Group | 50000 | General Support |
2019-11 | Modeling Cooperation | 50000 | General Support of Modeling Cooperation |
2019-11 | OAK (Optimizing Awakening and Kindness) | 100000 | General Support of OAK (Optimizing Awakening and Kindness) |
2019-11 | Ought Inc. | 100000 | General Support |
2020-05 | LessWrong | 290000 | General Support |
2020-05 | Machine Intelligence Research Institute | 20000 | General Support |
2020-05 | Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute | 120000 | General Support |
2020-05 | 80,000 Hours | 120000 | General Support |
2020-05 | Future of Life Institute | 100000 | General Support |
Contact
If you need to reach SFF, you can send an email to sff(char)contact@googlegroups.com, with (char) replaced by a hyphen (to avoid spam). Note that we are a volunteer-run operation and might take some time to respond.