An alternative that we’ve been toying with are reverse charity fundraisers of sorts. You do your thing, and when you’re done, you publish it, and then there’s a reward button where anyone can reward you for it. “Your thing” can be doing research, funding research, copyediting research, etc.
I love the simplicity of it, but there are a few worries that we have when it comes to incentives for collaboration when participants have different levels of social influence. Still, it’s a very promising model in my mind.
Although after I wrote this post I updated towards this not being a good idea for anyone to get their income from this system long term. But I still think it would be a good alternative to other funding systems for new EAs. Retrospective funding have definite disadvantages, but for someone with out enough reputation, it may be better than the available alternatives.
Indeed! I think this transition from impact markets to other sources of funding can happen quite naturally. A new, unknown researcher may enjoy the confidence in her abilities of some close friends but has little to show that would convince major funders that she can do high-quality research. But once she has used impact markets to fund her first few high-quality pieces of research, she will have a good track record to show, and can plausibly access other sources of funding. Then she can choose between them freely, is not dependent on impact markets alone anymore.
An alternative that we’ve been toying with are reverse charity fundraisers of sorts. You do your thing, and when you’re done, you publish it, and then there’s a reward button where anyone can reward you for it. “Your thing” can be doing research, funding research, copyediting research, etc.
I love the simplicity of it, but there are a few worries that we have when it comes to incentives for collaboration when participants have different levels of social influence. Still, it’s a very promising model in my mind.
I would very much want there to be a “money after the project” funding system for smaller projects in EA.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7iptwuSyzDzxsEY5z/the-case-for-impact-purchase-or-part-1
Although after I wrote this post I updated towards this not being a good idea for anyone to get their income from this system long term. But I still think it would be a good alternative to other funding systems for new EAs. Retrospective funding have definite disadvantages, but for someone with out enough reputation, it may be better than the available alternatives.
Indeed! I think this transition from impact markets to other sources of funding can happen quite naturally. A new, unknown researcher may enjoy the confidence in her abilities of some close friends but has little to show that would convince major funders that she can do high-quality research. But once she has used impact markets to fund her first few high-quality pieces of research, she will have a good track record to show, and can plausibly access other sources of funding. Then she can choose between them freely, is not dependent on impact markets alone anymore.