This is fantastic. Thank you for writing up. Whilst reading I jotted down a number of thoughts, comments, questions and concerns.
.
ON EA GRANTS
I am very excited about this and very glad that CEA is doing more of this. How to best move funding to the projects that need it most within the EA community is a really important question that we have yet to solve. I saw a lot of people with some amazing ideas looking to apply for these grants.
1
“with an anticipated budget of around £2m”
I think it is quite plausible that £2m is too low for the year. Not having enough funding increases the costs to applicants (time spent applying) and you (time spent assessing) relative to the benefits (funding moved), especially if there are applicants above the bar for funding but that you cannot afford to fund.
Also I had this thought prior to reading that one of your noted mistakes was “underestimated the number of applications”, it feels like you might still be making this mistake.
2
“mostly evaluating the merits of the applicants themselves rather than their specific plans”
Interesting decision. Seems reasonable. However I think it does have a risk of reducing diversity and I would be concerned that the applicants would be judged on their ability to hold philosophise in an academic oxford manner etc.
Best of luck with it
.
OTHER THOUGHTS
3
“encouraging more people to use Try Giving,”
Could CEA comment or provide advise to local group leaders on if they would want local groups to promote the GWWC pledge or the Try Giving pledge or when one might be better than the other? To date the advise seems to have been to as much as possible push the Pledge and not Try Giving
4
″… is likely to be the best way to help others.”
I do not like the implication that there is a single answer to this question regardless of individual’s moral frameworks (utilitarian / non-utilitarian / religious / etc) or skills and background. Where the mission is to have an impact as a “a global community of people...” the research should focus on supporting those people to do what they has the biggest impact given their positions.
5
Positives
“Self-sorting: People tend to interact with others who they perceive are similar to themselves”
This is a good thing to have picked up on.
“Community Health”
I am glad this is a team
“CEA’s Mistakes”
I think it is good to have this written up.
6
“Impact review”
It would have been interesting to see an estimates for costs (time/money) as well as for the outputs of each team.
I think it is quite plausible that £2m is too low for the year. Not having enough funding increases the costs to applicants (time spent applying) and you (time spent assessing) relative to the benefits (funding moved), especially if there are applicants above the bar for funding but that you cannot afford to fund. Also I had this thought prior to reading that one of your noted mistakes was “underestimated the number of applications”, it feels like you might still be making this mistake.
That’s fair. My thinking in choosing £2m was that we would want to fund more projects than we had money to fund last year, but that we would have picked much of the low-hanging fruit, so there’d be less to fund.
In any case, I’m not taking that number too seriously. We should fund all the projects worth funding and raise more money if we need it.
I think it is quite plausible that £2m is too low for the year. Not having enough funding increases the costs to applicants (time spent applying) and you (time spent assessing) relative to the benefits (funding moved), especially if there are applicants above the bar for funding but that you cannot afford to fund. Also I had this thought prior to reading that one of your noted mistakes was “underestimated the number of applications”, it feels like you might still be making this mistake.
I haven’t thought about this much, but a natural strategy is to try to have a budget sufficiently large that you know you’ll definitely be able to fund all the good projects, and then binary search down to the amount that only funds all the good projects.
I’d also be interested to find out what happens if CEA announces they’re budgeting like 5 million for this, and see if there are any good projects that appear when that much money is potentially available in the community. Naturally CEA neednt give it all away.
(But right now I’d expect most of the best projects are just 1-3 people’s full time salaries for a small team to work together, so each grant being <200k at most.)
Added: On the margin I’d expect the most useful thing EA Grants could do would be to offer multi-year grants, so people in the community can consider major careeer changes based on what’s most effective rather than what’s most stable.
This is fantastic. Thank you for writing up. Whilst reading I jotted down a number of thoughts, comments, questions and concerns.
.
ON EA GRANTS
I am very excited about this and very glad that CEA is doing more of this. How to best move funding to the projects that need it most within the EA community is a really important question that we have yet to solve. I saw a lot of people with some amazing ideas looking to apply for these grants.
1
I think it is quite plausible that £2m is too low for the year. Not having enough funding increases the costs to applicants (time spent applying) and you (time spent assessing) relative to the benefits (funding moved), especially if there are applicants above the bar for funding but that you cannot afford to fund. Also I had this thought prior to reading that one of your noted mistakes was “underestimated the number of applications”, it feels like you might still be making this mistake.
2
Interesting decision. Seems reasonable. However I think it does have a risk of reducing diversity and I would be concerned that the applicants would be judged on their ability to hold philosophise in an academic oxford manner etc.
Best of luck with it
.
OTHER THOUGHTS
3
Could CEA comment or provide advise to local group leaders on if they would want local groups to promote the GWWC pledge or the Try Giving pledge or when one might be better than the other? To date the advise seems to have been to as much as possible push the Pledge and not Try Giving
4
I do not like the implication that there is a single answer to this question regardless of individual’s moral frameworks (utilitarian / non-utilitarian / religious / etc) or skills and background. Where the mission is to have an impact as a “a global community of people...” the research should focus on supporting those people to do what they has the biggest impact given their positions.
5 Positives
This is a good thing to have picked up on.
I am glad this is a team
I think it is good to have this written up.
6
It would have been interesting to see an estimates for costs (time/money) as well as for the outputs of each team.
.
WELL DONE FOR 2017. GOOD LUCK FOR 2018!
That’s fair. My thinking in choosing £2m was that we would want to fund more projects than we had money to fund last year, but that we would have picked much of the low-hanging fruit, so there’d be less to fund.
In any case, I’m not taking that number too seriously. We should fund all the projects worth funding and raise more money if we need it.
I haven’t thought about this much, but a natural strategy is to try to have a budget sufficiently large that you know you’ll definitely be able to fund all the good projects, and then binary search down to the amount that only funds all the good projects.
I’d also be interested to find out what happens if CEA announces they’re budgeting like 5 million for this, and see if there are any good projects that appear when that much money is potentially available in the community. Naturally CEA neednt give it all away.
(But right now I’d expect most of the best projects are just 1-3 people’s full time salaries for a small team to work together, so each grant being <200k at most.)
Added: On the margin I’d expect the most useful thing EA Grants could do would be to offer multi-year grants, so people in the community can consider major careeer changes based on what’s most effective rather than what’s most stable.