Rules & FAQs

Who is eligible to submit?

If you are reading this, you are almost certainly eligible to submit your work. You don’t need to be an expert or have a PhD to apply.

There are four categories of person who are not eligible:

• People aged under 18.

• People who are residing in, or nationals of, Puerto Rico, Quebec, or countries or jurisdictions that prohibit such contests by law.

• People who are based in a US-sanctioned country or are specifically sanctioned by the United States (more info).

• People who are employees of Open Philanthropy, or their immediate family members or household members (more info).

What if I don’t want to receive prize money or a participation award?

If you would prefer, in lieu of receiving prize money or a participation award, we can facilitate having the funds sent to GiveWell (a charity assessor focused on cost-effective global health charities) or a charity of your choice. Note that because this would be a recommendation to a third party, it would not count as a deductible donation for your own tax purposes.

What do you mean by a good-faith submission?

Good-faith submissions are submissions that directly address the provided prompt, do not plagiarize the work of others, have not been previously published, have not been generated by artificial intelligence or any other computer software, and demonstrate critical engagement with academic literature relevant to the chosen prompt. We expect that good-faith submissions will be at least 3,000 words in length. Open Philanthropy has sole discretion to identify whether a submission is a good-faith submission.

Can I submit work that I have already completed?

You can use work that you have already completed, so long as posting and submitting it does not infringe, misappropriate, or violate any intellectual property rights, privacy rights, publicity rights, or other proprietary rights of any third party.

However, we are trying to reward the creation and sharing of new work, so you may not submit work that has previously been published or posted publicly on the internet (e.g., on a blog, preprint server, or academic article).

We expect that work completed in another context (e.g. academic research work) will not be well-adapted to the needs of a philanthropic funder. We ask you to consider adapting work that you have already completed after reviewing our guidance on what makes a good submission.

Can I write about non-human animals?

Yes. Open Philanthropy is a major funder of work to improve farm animal welfare. If you want to write about a potential new cause area where the primary beneficiaries are non-human animals, please use the open prompt.

Will my work be published or shared by Open Philanthropy?

We hope that submissions will be valuable both for us and for others who are working to improve the world. For that reason, all good-faith submissions will be published on the Effective Altruism (EA) Forum, where it will be publicly viewable. You can publish anonymously or pseudonymously if you wish. 

You can either:

• Publish your work on the EA Forum directly and complete our submission form with a link to your work, or:

• Attach your work to our submission form. We will then publish your work on the EA Forum on your behalf.

Can I submit my work anonymously?

Yes. When you submit your essay, we will ask you for your real name and an email address so that we can contact you about any participation award or prize. But you can use the form to specify if you’d rather not have your name used when we publish winners’ names or share submissions on the EA Forum.

Can I submit multiple entries?

Yes. You can submit up to 3 entries as an author or co-author.

Can I submit work that I have completed with one or more co-authors?

Yes. Any prizes or participation awards will be shared equally between co-authors.

Will you run this process again?

The Cause Exploration Prizes are an experiment for us. We may run them again in the future, but we’re not sure.

When will I hear back from you about my work?

We will respond to everyone who has submitted after the closure of the submission period on August 11, 2022. We expect to be able to award prizes and participation awards on or before September 9, 2022.

I have another question not covered here. Who can I ask?

Please send your question to hello@causeexplorationprizes.com.