The highest-leverage path for donors looking to give to AI safety right now is to give less money, but to more neglected destinations.

Specifically, you should strongly consider routing what would have been a c3 gift to a c4 instead, calibrated to equivalent personal cost, even if the net dollar amount of your donation is significantly lower.

AI safety c3 work is substantially less funding-constrained than c4 work. In a 2-3 year period, Open Philanthropy gave $60m to MATS, $25m to Bluedot, and $25m to FAR.

Meanwhile, the Center for AI Policy shut down due to lack of funding.

AI safety funding is currently heavily biased towards C3 research organizations. Meanwhile, C4 political work is chronically starved, and by some estimates only 2% of all funding entering the ecosystem is directed towards advocacy work.

Politics is where marginal dollars buy the most impact right now, and c4 is where politics lives. More research on cutting-edge technical safety interventions is unimpactful if we don't have the legislation mandating frontier labs to adopt it. Right now the research-to-impact pipeline isn't working, and the reason is because we don't have enough advocacy efforts in Washington to make it work.

some math

A top-earning donor giving $1M to a c3 actually spends ~$650K after the federal deduction (35% cap under OBBBA, effective 2026).

Instead, $650K, given directly to a c4, represents an equivalent personal sacrifice with arguably greater counterfactual impact.

C4-equivalent = X − [(X − floor) × effective deduction rate*]

X = intended c3 gift

floor = 0.5% of AGI (new rule under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: you can't deduct the first 0.5% of AGI donated to c3 organizations, as of 2026)

effective deduction rate = capped at 35% for top-bracket donors, even though their marginal income rate is 37%

*State taxes decrease the C4 equivalent, especially in higher tax states

For a donor with $5M AGI giving $1M to a c3, these are roughly the numbers:

Floor = $25,000 (non-deductible portion of c3 gift)

Deductible portion = $975,000

Tax savings = $975,000 × 35% = $341,250

Net personal cost of c3 donation = $658,750

This is the equivalent that should be donated to a c4.

the floor: a thing that is important to know for mid-tier donors

Starting in 2026, the first 0.5% of a donor's AGI in charitable giving produces zero federal tax benefit under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's new deduction floor.

For a donor whose total c3 giving falls at or below that floor, c3 and c4 donations cost exactly the same per dollar of personal sacrifice, because the amount you're actually donating is equal to your personal sacrifice (there is no deduction). In this instance, the tax case for c3 donations disappears entirely, and c4 wins on any positive impact multiplier.

As an example, let's say we have an Anthropic engineer with $3M AGI who gives $15K to AI safety. The floor is $15K, so zero of that engineer's $15K gift is deductible, meaning c3 and c4 are tax-identical. In this case, it's obvious that the best choice would be to default to c4.