One common objection to impact-focused for-profits is that for-profits won’t be able to access the incoming torrent of philanthropic funding. But this doesn’t have to be true! There are lots of ways that charitable dollars can be directed to for-profits, and Manifund and other funders do it regularly.
There are four general categories of options—here’s why you might want to do each:
TL;DR
Is there no realistic path to revenue/growth, or is the amount small? → grant
Is there high growth potential? → investment
Is there predictable revenue or future grants, but not high growth potential? → loan (or revenue-share investment)
Do you want to pay for a specific output rather than supporting the organization as a whole? → commission
Grants
You can give charitable funding as a grant to a for-profit, as long as it’s for a scoped charitable purpose and the grant has appropriate restrictions and oversight. Practically speaking, Manifund likes doing this if it’s a smaller amount (eg <$50k) such that it’s not worth doing more complicated paperwork, or if it’s a project where we don’t expect a ton of revenue, growth, or follow-on equity funding.
This is often the case for media, a classic public good. Some examples include Coefficient Giving giving around $2.6m to Should We Studio, a for-profit video production company making animated content about EA concepts. Vox’s Future Perfect has also gotten funding from philanthropic sources like the Rockefeller Foundation (a founding grant of $380k), Animal Charity Evaluators, and the BEMC Foundation.
Outside media, CG, EA Funds, and Jaan Tallinn have all given grants to Metaculus. Metaculus is a for-profit (specifically a public benefit corporation), but not one particularly oriented toward revenue or growth, and most of its funding has come from grants.
In one quite large example, Coefficient Giving gave a $17.5m grant to Sherlock Biosciences in 2019; they talk more about the decision in this interview. They also made an additional investment in the company—the investment was intended to support the company’s general business, while the grant was intended to push them to develop viral diagnostics that they thought would be less profitable and appealing to investors than other products the company could develop. Sherlock has since been acquired.
CG has also made some other large grants to companies that have since been acquired or raised further venture rounds. They granted $6.8m to Pattern Labs Tech Inc, a model redteaming company that changed its name to Irregular and raised an $80m round led by Sequoia and Redpoint. In the biotech space, they made a $2.3m grant to Exscientia, a drug-discovery company since acquired by Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and a $2m grant to Gryphon Scientific, a biosafety consulting firm since acquired by Deloitte. (Manifund would probably consider making grants like these as investments instead, so some of the proceeds could end up going back to charity.)
Investments
An equity investment tends to make sense for projects shaped like startups with high upside potential. If the startup ends up producing high returns, more money will flow back to charity. Imagine if the $6.8m grant to Pattern Labs had instead been an investment—it would be worth tens of millions today. (By the way, this is also why we love impact markets.)
Manifund usually structures our for-profit investments as a SAFE, with any proceeds returning to the user’s DAF account on Manifund, or to another charity. Companies where we’ve facilitated these investments include Lantern Bioworks ($40k to a cavity-preventing bacteria startup), Equistamp ($400k to an AI safety evals firm), and Seldon Labs ($350k to an AI security startup accelerator). We’ve also organized SAFE investments as part of incubator and grant programs, like Surplus and ACX Grants.
In addition to helping the donor, we think startups may be better served with an investment rather than a non-dilutive grant. This might be counterintuitive — isn’t free money better than having to give away equity? But a proper investment structure encourages discipline and helps the startup raise more in the future.
For instance, Manifold Markets received a Future Fund regrant as a $1m investment instead of a grant; the specific structure was $250k unconditional, then $750k conditional on another $750k fundraised. Austin thinks this ended up being great for Manifold; this particular structure gave them the nudge they needed to raise a seed round, including angels and VCs outside of EA.
Another investment structure is a revenue-share investment, like Manifund did for Proof Positive (a YouTube channel on Progress Studies). This is a natural fit for businesses like media that may make revenue but probably won’t raise venture rounds.
One alternative to investing charitable dollars into a for-profit is to simply make these investments out of non-charitable dollars. This is common for big funders—individuals like Dustin Moskovitz and Jaan Tallinn have for-profit entities they use for their investments, and we couldn’t find public examples of e.g. Good Ventures Foundation itself making investments (rather than Good Ventures LLC).
This can make sense for a variety of reasons: private foundations have strict rules about investment; there are limits on how much of a company one foundation can hold; and the tax considerations vary depending on personal circumstances. But if you’re a small-to-medium donor with a lot of your net worth in appreciated stock (potentially in DAFs), it’s worth considering making impact-motivated investments with charitable dollars.
Loans
This makes sense for a for-profit that needs startup capital and is expecting to be revenue-positive (for example, through government contracts or consulting fees) but not necessarily high-growth. Or for an organization that is temporarily cash-crunched, but has a strong story for how they expect to fundraise.
For instance, Manifund facilitated a $400k loan for Ink & Switch, a for-profit research lab. As part of UK ARIA’s Safeguarded AI program, they had access to government funding on a quarterly basis, but getting an upfront loan let them work without worrying about day-to-day cash flow.
We also made a $300k bridge loan to Lightcone, to help them make interest payments on Lighthaven. Lightcone is a nonprofit, but the same logic still applies—we wanted to help them with short-term liquidity while they were in the middle of fundraising.
One more loan-like structure we like is a “backstop”. For example, AISTOF offered the second batch of Frame Fellowship $200k unconditionally but also a “2:1 backstop”: $280k more up front, to be repaid $1 for every $2 fundraised elsewhere. We think this is a great way to help grantees get conviction to start their project now, while still encouraging them to fundraise elsewhere; and also neatly addresses the coordination problem of “funder chicken”, where donors all hope that someone else will make the grant.
The catch is that this is effectively a negative match, which could deter other funders. But there are benefits to a larger, slower funder contributing to a backstopped project—it effectively transfers some of their wealth to smaller, faster funders who can probably use marginal dollars more effectively.
Commissions
You can use charitable funds to commission a specific piece of work from a for-profit. This makes sense when what you want looks less like “making a bet on the organization” and more like “paying it for a specific output.” This is often the best option when you think an organization does good work, but most of its output isn’t relevant to your charitable goals.
For instance, Austin donated $10k through Manifund to The New Critic to commission longform pieces on topics related to EA and AI safety. Type III Audio has gotten funded by several funders this way—it’s a for-profit entity that’s gotten contracts from CEA, Lightcone, and others to record audio versions of blog posts. Coefficient Giving and GiveWell have both funded Good Judgment, Inc. to produce public forecasts on questions they think are important.
We also commissioned Aerodrop, a giveaway of 100 far-UVC disinfectant lamps to community spaces and group houses. This began as a 2025 ACX Grant to Aerolamp; after some discussion, we agreed that a lamp purchase & distribution was better than an unrestricted grant. It pushed Aerolamp to scale up and promoted an new technology aimed at preventing disease spread.
Other things in this general category include prizes, awards, and advance market commitments. If there’s something you want to exist in the world but don’t know what specific organization you want to produce it, you can offer to pay for it and see if anyone takes you up on your offer!
Doing this through Manifund
Reach out if you want to do any of these! We do ask that the for-profit in question posts a public Manifund proposal, that you fund it in public, and that you provide an additional 5% operational/fiscal sponsorship fee to Manifund.
None of this is legal or tax advice, and there are many details and requirements we haven’t gone into here—charitable purpose, restrictions on private benefit, and more. Everything funded by Manifund is subject to due diligence on a case-by-case basis. But we hope laying out the options will be helpful for people interested in supporting for-profits, either through Manifund or in general.
One common objection to impact-focused for-profits is that for-profits won’t be able to access the incoming torrent of philanthropic funding. But this doesn’t have to be true! There are lots of ways that charitable dollars can be directed to for-profits, and Manifund and other funders do it regularly.
There are four general categories of options—here’s why you might want to do each:
TL;DR
Grants
You can give charitable funding as a grant to a for-profit, as long as it’s for a scoped charitable purpose and the grant has appropriate restrictions and oversight. Practically speaking, Manifund likes doing this if it’s a smaller amount (eg <$50k) such that it’s not worth doing more complicated paperwork, or if it’s a project where we don’t expect a ton of revenue, growth, or follow-on equity funding.
This is often the case for media, a classic public good. Some examples include Coefficient Giving giving around $2.6m to Should We Studio, a for-profit video production company making animated content about EA concepts. Vox’s Future Perfect has also gotten funding from philanthropic sources like the Rockefeller Foundation (a founding grant of $380k), Animal Charity Evaluators, and the BEMC Foundation.
Outside media, CG, EA Funds, and Jaan Tallinn have all given grants to Metaculus. Metaculus is a for-profit (specifically a public benefit corporation), but not one particularly oriented toward revenue or growth, and most of its funding has come from grants.
In one quite large example, Coefficient Giving gave a $17.5m grant to Sherlock Biosciences in 2019; they talk more about the decision in this interview. They also made an additional investment in the company—the investment was intended to support the company’s general business, while the grant was intended to push them to develop viral diagnostics that they thought would be less profitable and appealing to investors than other products the company could develop. Sherlock has since been acquired.
CG has also made some other large grants to companies that have since been acquired or raised further venture rounds. They granted $6.8m to Pattern Labs Tech Inc, a model redteaming company that changed its name to Irregular and raised an $80m round led by Sequoia and Redpoint. In the biotech space, they made a $2.3m grant to Exscientia, a drug-discovery company since acquired by Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and a $2m grant to Gryphon Scientific, a biosafety consulting firm since acquired by Deloitte. (Manifund would probably consider making grants like these as investments instead, so some of the proceeds could end up going back to charity.)
Investments
An equity investment tends to make sense for projects shaped like startups with high upside potential. If the startup ends up producing high returns, more money will flow back to charity. Imagine if the $6.8m grant to Pattern Labs had instead been an investment—it would be worth tens of millions today. (By the way, this is also why we love impact markets.)
Manifund usually structures our for-profit investments as a SAFE, with any proceeds returning to the user’s DAF account on Manifund, or to another charity. Companies where we’ve facilitated these investments include Lantern Bioworks ($40k to a cavity-preventing bacteria startup), Equistamp ($400k to an AI safety evals firm), and Seldon Labs ($350k to an AI security startup accelerator). We’ve also organized SAFE investments as part of incubator and grant programs, like Surplus and ACX Grants.
In addition to helping the donor, we think startups may be better served with an investment rather than a non-dilutive grant. This might be counterintuitive — isn’t free money better than having to give away equity? But a proper investment structure encourages discipline and helps the startup raise more in the future.
For instance, Manifold Markets received a Future Fund regrant as a $1m investment instead of a grant; the specific structure was $250k unconditional, then $750k conditional on another $750k fundraised. Austin thinks this ended up being great for Manifold; this particular structure gave them the nudge they needed to raise a seed round, including angels and VCs outside of EA.
Another investment structure is a revenue-share investment, like Manifund did for Proof Positive (a YouTube channel on Progress Studies). This is a natural fit for businesses like media that may make revenue but probably won’t raise venture rounds.
One alternative to investing charitable dollars into a for-profit is to simply make these investments out of non-charitable dollars. This is common for big funders—individuals like Dustin Moskovitz and Jaan Tallinn have for-profit entities they use for their investments, and we couldn’t find public examples of e.g. Good Ventures Foundation itself making investments (rather than Good Ventures LLC).
This can make sense for a variety of reasons: private foundations have strict rules about investment; there are limits on how much of a company one foundation can hold; and the tax considerations vary depending on personal circumstances. But if you’re a small-to-medium donor with a lot of your net worth in appreciated stock (potentially in DAFs), it’s worth considering making impact-motivated investments with charitable dollars.
Loans
This makes sense for a for-profit that needs startup capital and is expecting to be revenue-positive (for example, through government contracts or consulting fees) but not necessarily high-growth. Or for an organization that is temporarily cash-crunched, but has a strong story for how they expect to fundraise.
For instance, Manifund facilitated a $400k loan for Ink & Switch, a for-profit research lab. As part of UK ARIA’s Safeguarded AI program, they had access to government funding on a quarterly basis, but getting an upfront loan let them work without worrying about day-to-day cash flow.
We also made a $300k bridge loan to Lightcone, to help them make interest payments on Lighthaven. Lightcone is a nonprofit, but the same logic still applies—we wanted to help them with short-term liquidity while they were in the middle of fundraising.
One more loan-like structure we like is a “backstop”. For example, AISTOF offered the second batch of Frame Fellowship $200k unconditionally but also a “2:1 backstop”: $280k more up front, to be repaid $1 for every $2 fundraised elsewhere. We think this is a great way to help grantees get conviction to start their project now, while still encouraging them to fundraise elsewhere; and also neatly addresses the coordination problem of “funder chicken”, where donors all hope that someone else will make the grant.
The catch is that this is effectively a negative match, which could deter other funders. But there are benefits to a larger, slower funder contributing to a backstopped project—it effectively transfers some of their wealth to smaller, faster funders who can probably use marginal dollars more effectively.
Commissions
You can use charitable funds to commission a specific piece of work from a for-profit. This makes sense when what you want looks less like “making a bet on the organization” and more like “paying it for a specific output.” This is often the best option when you think an organization does good work, but most of its output isn’t relevant to your charitable goals.
For instance, Austin donated $10k through Manifund to The New Critic to commission longform pieces on topics related to EA and AI safety. Type III Audio has gotten funded by several funders this way—it’s a for-profit entity that’s gotten contracts from CEA, Lightcone, and others to record audio versions of blog posts. Coefficient Giving and GiveWell have both funded Good Judgment, Inc. to produce public forecasts on questions they think are important.
We also commissioned Aerodrop, a giveaway of 100 far-UVC disinfectant lamps to community spaces and group houses. This began as a 2025 ACX Grant to Aerolamp; after some discussion, we agreed that a lamp purchase & distribution was better than an unrestricted grant. It pushed Aerolamp to scale up and promoted an new technology aimed at preventing disease spread.
Other things in this general category include prizes, awards, and advance market commitments. If there’s something you want to exist in the world but don’t know what specific organization you want to produce it, you can offer to pay for it and see if anyone takes you up on your offer!
Doing this through Manifund
Reach out if you want to do any of these! We do ask that the for-profit in question posts a public Manifund proposal, that you fund it in public, and that you provide an additional 5% operational/fiscal sponsorship fee to Manifund.
None of this is legal or tax advice, and there are many details and requirements we haven’t gone into here—charitable purpose, restrictions on private benefit, and more. Everything funded by Manifund is subject to due diligence on a case-by-case basis. But we hope laying out the options will be helpful for people interested in supporting for-profits, either through Manifund or in general.