As I have highlighted in another comment, I appreciate the post as a conversation starter for thinking about EA CB grants in general but somewhat disagree with the strength of the evidence presented here. Nevertheless, I do see a kernel of truth in the proposition that CB grants might be skewed towards specific trust networks and people outside of those trust networks seem to be disadvantaged.
Taking this at my point of departure, I want to be constructive and propose to reconsider the structure of the CB funding pipeline. Currently, there are centralized funding bodies who make decisions about CB grants on an individual basis. No matter where you are from, you are judged to the standards of those grant makers and either you clear the bar or you don’t. This might be problematic as CB is not like funding a start up that needs to survive in a global competitive market, rather CB is much more of an contextual effort whose effectiveness depends on the local circumstances. Thus, it stands to reason that simply through the nature of the problem, a centralized funding pipeline with very few grant makers might not be optimal.
To improve this situation, a reasonable strategy might be to consider more polycentric approaches to CB funding through the establishment of intermediate regional re-granting entities that are better positioned to appreciate the contextual nature of CB. The natural choice for these intermediate regional re-granting entities would be national EA organizations focused on regional CB. This set up would create a funding pipeline that is much more aligned with the nature of the problem. At the top is CEA which is contact with national CB organizations who in turn are in contact with local CB projects. Funding is allocated as a budget to national CB organizations based on aggregate metrics that are comparable across regions and allow for a fine-grained prioritization of funding across regions. Thus, national CB organizations are incentivized to consider their specific context and invest in those local CB projects which make the most sense for the region. Local CB would have a clear point of contact that is much more interested in them than a global entity ever could be. My hypothesis would be that a much more natural and distributed trust network would develop compared to the situation that we have at the moment.
If people here like these thoughts, I might be willing to write them up in a separate post. This thinking is inspired by prior work by other EAs and economics research which I would like to highlight more but don’t have the time to right now. Anyhow, would love to discuss along those lines.
I’m a little surprised this has been downvoted. I don’t have strong feelings either way about regional/national EA groups regranting to local community building, instead of CEA.
As I have highlighted in another comment, I appreciate the post as a conversation starter for thinking about EA CB grants in general but somewhat disagree with the strength of the evidence presented here. Nevertheless, I do see a kernel of truth in the proposition that CB grants might be skewed towards specific trust networks and people outside of those trust networks seem to be disadvantaged.
Taking this at my point of departure, I want to be constructive and propose to reconsider the structure of the CB funding pipeline. Currently, there are centralized funding bodies who make decisions about CB grants on an individual basis. No matter where you are from, you are judged to the standards of those grant makers and either you clear the bar or you don’t. This might be problematic as CB is not like funding a start up that needs to survive in a global competitive market, rather CB is much more of an contextual effort whose effectiveness depends on the local circumstances. Thus, it stands to reason that simply through the nature of the problem, a centralized funding pipeline with very few grant makers might not be optimal.
To improve this situation, a reasonable strategy might be to consider more polycentric approaches to CB funding through the establishment of intermediate regional re-granting entities that are better positioned to appreciate the contextual nature of CB. The natural choice for these intermediate regional re-granting entities would be national EA organizations focused on regional CB. This set up would create a funding pipeline that is much more aligned with the nature of the problem. At the top is CEA which is contact with national CB organizations who in turn are in contact with local CB projects. Funding is allocated as a budget to national CB organizations based on aggregate metrics that are comparable across regions and allow for a fine-grained prioritization of funding across regions. Thus, national CB organizations are incentivized to consider their specific context and invest in those local CB projects which make the most sense for the region. Local CB would have a clear point of contact that is much more interested in them than a global entity ever could be. My hypothesis would be that a much more natural and distributed trust network would develop compared to the situation that we have at the moment.
If people here like these thoughts, I might be willing to write them up in a separate post. This thinking is inspired by prior work by other EAs and economics research which I would like to highlight more but don’t have the time to right now. Anyhow, would love to discuss along those lines.
I’m a little surprised this has been downvoted. I don’t have strong feelings either way about regional/national EA groups regranting to local community building, instead of CEA.