The Sorting Hat

A cause-agnostic orientation tool for philanthropists. Eleven questions in, three conversations out.

Built by Jørn Lager Lyngås on the fund taxonomy of Elevate Philanthropy's Top New Funds evaluation (2026). An independent prototype, not affiliated with Elevate Philanthropy.

This happened: you have capital and intent. Here is what it means for your options. Here is what you might do about it now.

Eleven questions

Answer honestly, not aspirationally. The tool matches who you are, not who philanthropy thinks you should be.

Show my three next conversations

Your three next conversations

Ranked by fit. Every score is decomposable below it; nothing is a black box.

No confident match

Your profile does not fit this database well, and a confident wrong match is worse than no match. The honest next step is a bespoke conversation, not a padded list.

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Why this scored as it did

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Adjust my answers

Under the hood: the weights are the work

R(s, P) = Σ w_i · sim(s, c_i)

Each entry is scored per dimension against your profile. The similarity functions are a commodity; the curated taxonomy and the weights below are the actual work. Move them and watch the ranking change — that transparency is the point.

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{{ dbCount }} curated entries in this build. The database is a plain data block in the page source; curation, not code, is the deliverable.

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A note on incompleteness. This prototype holds a deliberately small, hand-curated set of entries. Vectors can be scraped; weights have to be earned. The database is a plain, editable JSON block in the page source — the invitation is to argue with it. A confident wrong match is worse than no match, so where fit is genuinely poor, the tool says so rather than padding the list.

The companion piece. This prototype is one half of an open application to Elevate Philanthropy. The other half is written: What they most need →

© 2026 Jørn Lager Lyngås · aboutjll.com