If you disagree with the priorities of major EA donors (notably, if you want CEA to be less GCR-focused than OP’s GCRCB team), you may wish to donate to CEA to preserve funder diversity.
In most scenarios, the benefits of a marginal increase in funder diversity seem rather modest in comparison to the opportunity costs. At present, OP would be ~ $22.6MM of a $28.2MM budget, with other established donors at ~ $2MM and a funding gap of ~ $3.6MM. In other words, depending on how much of the gap was filled, OP would be funding somewhere between 80 and 92% of the budget. Where the actual percentage is within that range has ~ zero impact on my assessment of COI risk, and not too much more impact on my assessment of its potential influence on CEA more generally. (Of course, some of the “other” donors are also GCR-focused, and so do not contribute to funder diversity from a cause-area perspective.)
Stated metaphorically, this feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I think the effect of funder diversity may be very roughly exponential between 0% and ~50%,[1] but in the sense that the effect may be “almost imperceptable” at 8% and “very modest” at 20%.
Moreover, it’s not clear that if I hypothetically had $1MM to donate this year (I don’t!), that doing so while identifying strongly as a non-GCR donor would generate any appreciable shift in the focus of CEA’s work as a result of marginally increasing funder diversity. I’m sure hypothetical me could earmark those funds, but money is fungible. I’m not sure I am getting much “vote” for my $1MM.
On the other hand—given that non-GCR meta seems much more thinly funded than GCR and GCR-leaning meta -- $1MM could have a pretty significant effect if the donor figured out a way to counterfactually increase non-GCR meta spending by other organizations by most of $1MM. So the opportunity cost of improving CEA’s funder diversity to a donor interested in non-GCR meta seems fairly high. This may be even more so at the $100K point, which would still be a pretty significant donation to (e.g.) Probably Good.
50% is a stand-in for the point at which the organization could perceive itself as substantially continuing to exist without the predominant donor’s support. I’m hazy on what substantially means here; obviously, it would involve a lot of downsizing but would be significantly more than the minimum viable organization.
Yep, I ~agree – I think people should mostly be donating because they want to fund things like what was listed as the counterfactual projects (e.g. an organizer in Boston).
In most scenarios, the benefits of a marginal increase in funder diversity seem rather modest in comparison to the opportunity costs. At present, OP would be ~ $22.6MM of a $28.2MM budget, with other established donors at ~ $2MM and a funding gap of ~ $3.6MM. In other words, depending on how much of the gap was filled, OP would be funding somewhere between 80 and 92% of the budget. Where the actual percentage is within that range has ~ zero impact on my assessment of COI risk, and not too much more impact on my assessment of its potential influence on CEA more generally. (Of course, some of the “other” donors are also GCR-focused, and so do not contribute to funder diversity from a cause-area perspective.)
Stated metaphorically, this feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I think the effect of funder diversity may be very roughly exponential between 0% and ~50%,[1] but in the sense that the effect may be “almost imperceptable” at 8% and “very modest” at 20%.
Moreover, it’s not clear that if I hypothetically had $1MM to donate this year (I don’t!), that doing so while identifying strongly as a non-GCR donor would generate any appreciable shift in the focus of CEA’s work as a result of marginally increasing funder diversity. I’m sure hypothetical me could earmark those funds, but money is fungible. I’m not sure I am getting much “vote” for my $1MM.
On the other hand—given that non-GCR meta seems much more thinly funded than GCR and GCR-leaning meta -- $1MM could have a pretty significant effect if the donor figured out a way to counterfactually increase non-GCR meta spending by other organizations by most of $1MM. So the opportunity cost of improving CEA’s funder diversity to a donor interested in non-GCR meta seems fairly high. This may be even more so at the $100K point, which would still be a pretty significant donation to (e.g.) Probably Good.
50% is a stand-in for the point at which the organization could perceive itself as substantially continuing to exist without the predominant donor’s support. I’m hazy on what substantially means here; obviously, it would involve a lot of downsizing but would be significantly more than the minimum viable organization.
Yep, I ~agree – I think people should mostly be donating because they want to fund things like what was listed as the counterfactual projects (e.g. an organizer in Boston).