I agree that your list of “signals that we are making progress on this problem” would all be positive developments. And I recognize that since CEA is resetting some of its strategy, it’s a difficult time to make firm commitments, especially around short-term priorities.
However, there’s one near-term step that I think would be relatively easy and particularly high impact. I’d love to see CEA publish how much money it has regranted through EA Grants and CBG in 2018 and 2019, and a rough estimated range for how much it expects to grant through those programs in 2020. As I commented on the recent writeup on EA Grants, the public communication around these programs has indicated that they’d grant significantly more money than they appear to have granted in practice. For instance, CEA’s end of 2018 fundraising post referred to “a regranting budget of $3.7M for EA Grants and EA Community Building Grants, which we use to fund other organizations, projects, individuals, and groups” but the grants that have been announced from those programs don’t even come close to that figure.
I think it’s critical for the EA community to get a more accurate understanding of how much funding has been/will be available, so that other funders and potential grantees can make informed decisions. As SiebeRozendalwrites: “I’m afraid there is a dynamic where CB-efforts have trouble finding non-CEA funding because alternative funders believe CEA has got all the good opportunities covered.”
If CEA will be granting large amounts next year, that’s great: I think past grantees have mostly been good projects to fund, and as I argued in OP I think there are plenty more good opportunities out there. If CEA will only be making small grants, or doesn’t really know how much it will grant (due to uncertainty around the future of EA Grants, for example) other donors can adjust their behavior accordingly. But for that to happen, they need to be informed about CEA’s plans.
We’ll be releasing a write up of our 2019 review and 2020 plans in the near future, and will include historic spending for EA Grants and CBGs in 2019, as well as our projected spending in 2020. We spent $688,875 on CBGs in 2018. Because we didn’t have a separate accounting line item for EA Grants in 2018 and did not have consolidated internal documentation, it would take some time to come up with a specific amount. From our quick estimates, it is unlikely our EA grants spending was more than $1M, which would indicate we spent significantly less on EA Grants and CBGs in 2018 than the $3.7M announced in the 2018 fundraising post. We believe we were overly optimistic about the speed in which we could launch new programs historically and now are more conservative with our expectations related to launching new programs.
Thanks for this Joan! I may have some followup questions related to this, but will wait to see if they’re addressed by the forthcoming writeup as I want to be respectful of your time. I look forward to reading it!
I agree that your list of “signals that we are making progress on this problem” would all be positive developments. And I recognize that since CEA is resetting some of its strategy, it’s a difficult time to make firm commitments, especially around short-term priorities.
However, there’s one near-term step that I think would be relatively easy and particularly high impact. I’d love to see CEA publish how much money it has regranted through EA Grants and CBG in 2018 and 2019, and a rough estimated range for how much it expects to grant through those programs in 2020. As I commented on the recent writeup on EA Grants, the public communication around these programs has indicated that they’d grant significantly more money than they appear to have granted in practice. For instance, CEA’s end of 2018 fundraising post referred to “a regranting budget of $3.7M for EA Grants and EA Community Building Grants, which we use to fund other organizations, projects, individuals, and groups” but the grants that have been announced from those programs don’t even come close to that figure.
I think it’s critical for the EA community to get a more accurate understanding of how much funding has been/will be available, so that other funders and potential grantees can make informed decisions. As SiebeRozendal writes: “I’m afraid there is a dynamic where CB-efforts have trouble finding non-CEA funding because alternative funders believe CEA has got all the good opportunities covered.”
If CEA will be granting large amounts next year, that’s great: I think past grantees have mostly been good projects to fund, and as I argued in OP I think there are plenty more good opportunities out there. If CEA will only be making small grants, or doesn’t really know how much it will grant (due to uncertainty around the future of EA Grants, for example) other donors can adjust their behavior accordingly. But for that to happen, they need to be informed about CEA’s plans.
We’ll be releasing a write up of our 2019 review and 2020 plans in the near future, and will include historic spending for EA Grants and CBGs in 2019, as well as our projected spending in 2020. We spent $688,875 on CBGs in 2018. Because we didn’t have a separate accounting line item for EA Grants in 2018 and did not have consolidated internal documentation, it would take some time to come up with a specific amount. From our quick estimates, it is unlikely our EA grants spending was more than $1M, which would indicate we spent significantly less on EA Grants and CBGs in 2018 than the $3.7M announced in the 2018 fundraising post. We believe we were overly optimistic about the speed in which we could launch new programs historically and now are more conservative with our expectations related to launching new programs.
Thanks for this Joan! I may have some followup questions related to this, but will wait to see if they’re addressed by the forthcoming writeup as I want to be respectful of your time. I look forward to reading it!