I’m not involved in Future Fund but I can attempt an answer. A few things to note on how this differs from Open Phil. Firstly Future Fund is:
particularly keen to launch massively scalable projects: projects that could grow to productively spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Such mega projects seem to have been neglected in the EA community. This is partly due to a lack of money, but I’m not sure why Open Phil hasn’t tended to fund such projects.
Also, the Future Fund seems to be engaging in active grantmaking where they propose particular project ideas that people can take on. Open Phil seems to focus more on funding existing projects/organisations.
Hopefully someone from Future Fund answers your question though as it’s a good one and I may be off the mark here. It does seem to me though that Future Fund is a great addition to the EA funding ecosystem!
I think Open Phil is actually doing the things you say they aren’t doing. I think the main value-add of the Future Fund is additional grantmaking capacity and experimenting with different mechanisms (such as prizes and regranting pools).
OK you may well be right, although I’m not sure Open Phil is as public about specific project ideas they want to be funded as Future Fund is?
The other thing I’d say is that I don’t actually think the cause areas between Open Phil and Future Fund overlap that much. Open Phil isn’t solely longtermist and the main overlap between the two orgs seems to be AI and biosecurity.
I’m not involved in Future Fund but I can attempt an answer. A few things to note on how this differs from Open Phil. Firstly Future Fund is:
Such mega projects seem to have been neglected in the EA community. This is partly due to a lack of money, but I’m not sure why Open Phil hasn’t tended to fund such projects.
Also, the Future Fund seems to be engaging in active grantmaking where they propose particular project ideas that people can take on. Open Phil seems to focus more on funding existing projects/organisations.
Hopefully someone from Future Fund answers your question though as it’s a good one and I may be off the mark here. It does seem to me though that Future Fund is a great addition to the EA funding ecosystem!
I think Open Phil is actually doing the things you say they aren’t doing. I think the main value-add of the Future Fund is additional grantmaking capacity and experimenting with different mechanisms (such as prizes and regranting pools).
OK you may well be right, although I’m not sure Open Phil is as public about specific project ideas they want to be funded as Future Fund is?
The other thing I’d say is that I don’t actually think the cause areas between Open Phil and Future Fund overlap that much. Open Phil isn’t solely longtermist and the main overlap between the two orgs seems to be AI and biosecurity.