What it is
The Charitology Fund would let anyone give to the field’s current best estimate of where money does the most good, without doing the research themselves. When the estimate changed, the grants would change with it.
How it works
“Best” depends on values, so the estimate would be built in the open from Charitology’s research. The fund would split money across the moral frameworks the field tracks, using a published method such as the credence-weighted one in the Portfolio Builder. It would also set a deliberate mix across the depth scale, so relief for today and work on sources are both funded on purpose. Within each part, it would give to the strongest opportunities the research can find, including gaps on the Gap Map.
Every grant, weight and change would be published with its reasons. An independent board, separate from the people who write the research, would approve allocations, and every conflict of interest would be disclosed.
First, though, the fund needs three things: a legal entity, a fiscal sponsor and independent governance. A fiscal sponsor is an existing public charity that receives gifts for a project and manages them under a formal agreement. Until all three are in place, the fund accepts nothing.
Why it matters for the system
Three conditions pull money away from the best estimate, and one fund could push back on all three. The Story Bias sends gifts toward the most visible need, while the fund would allocate by evidence and scale. The Symptom Trap favors relief that is easy to see, while the fund would set its depth mix on purpose. The Single Lens hides whole categories of good, while the fund would give across frameworks with its weights in plain view.
Risks and limits
A single fund that many people follow could become a new gatekeeper, one of the problems Charitology exists to study. Its estimate will sometimes be wrong. The charter would cap the share any one grantee can receive and publish dissent from reviewers. And because a fund’s grants are rankings in practice, the allocation method would have to pass public red-team review first: Charitology publishes no rankings of named organizations until its method has done so.
What success looks like
Within five years of opening, the fund’s allocation is a public reference point, and anyone can check its record of changing grants when the evidence changed.