One of the most common questions I have been asked in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests against police violence is: “How can I help?”

Chloe Cockburn, the program officer for criminal justice reform at the Open Philanthropy Project, has thought harder about that question than just about anyone.

Open Phil believes that criminal justice reform is an important area to invest in, up there with fighting global poverty or preventing mass pandemics, and that reducing mass incarceration in particular should be a high priority. The sheer size of the American carceral state means that even a 10 percent reduction in the number of people in prison or jail could over time spare millions of people from living under truly abhorrent conditions.

Cockburn has put together a very useful set of recommendations for donations in the wake of the George Floyd protests, first on a Twitter thread and then in more detail in a memo to donors that she shared with me. Note that Cockburn does not by any means intend the list below to be exhaustive; an organization not being listed does not mean that organization is ineffective. But these are groups for which she, as a professional grant-maker with deep experience in this area, can vouch for as of this writing.

Cockburn is clear that which of the groups on her list is a “top pick” will depend on a donor’s specific goals: whether they want to just reduce incarceration, build alternatives to incarceration, or elect more progressive prosecutors. But “without knowing anything else,” she writes, “I’d say Movement for Black Lives, based on their strategic leadership, commitment to regranting to local efforts, and legitimacy as a movement anchor” would be a top pick for donations.

Read the full article about giving against police violence by Dylan Matthews at Vox.