What Navigation Fund does
Navigation Fund (site: navigation.org) is a U.S.-based philanthropic grantmaker that funds “neglected” or underfunded global challenges through a practitioner-led, invitation-forward model. It concentrates grantmaking in three main cause areas—Climate Change, Farm Animal Welfare, and Transforming Criminal Justice—and also supports Nuclear Safety via a partnership rather than an internal program. The fund describes its core differentiator as funding work other philanthropic channels “often overlook,” including high-risk/high-reward strategies and capacity or movement-building efforts, with an emphasis on transparency (e.g., publishing annual program strategies) and using speed/low-overhead processes to deploy capital when opportunities are time-sensitive.
Institutionally, Navigation Fund positions itself as both a direct grantmaker and a collaborator across philanthropy: it says it partners with other donors through advice, regranting, pooled funds, and coordination among grantee partners in its issue areas. It also frames its open-science stance as a grantmaking principle—stating that knowledge funded through philanthropy should belong to the public—and notes that it does not run impact investing (instead managing its endowment to support long-term grantmaking).