Theres a good deal more transparency there—the Good Ventures Foundation has filed 990-PFs as required by law, and you can see both how much has been irrevocably devoted to charity and what the underlying assets are. Of course, tax forms are not ground truth, but asking questions is not going to get someone who has hypothetically perjured themselves to IRS to ’fess up.
More generally, although I think the overall idea is good, one has to be really careful that the donors feel respected. The biggest risk in most cases is that the donors will pick up their money and either donate it elsewhere or (if not yet in a 501c3) spend it themselves.
They are human, and e.g. knowing the movement is funding an FTE devoted to investigating and planning for the possibility that they are a total phony would unsettle most people and make them feel less connected. Even more so since there would only be a small # of people who would justify costly vetting.
And especially if the FTE is employed by a org they financially supported! Which gets back to a meta point that EA needs an org that is funded and controlled by rank-and-file EAs including “small” donors . . .
I think that we probably spent too much time ensuring SBF felt respected and too little ensuring that he and Caroline weren’t engaged in large scale fraud.
Very likely true! My point was that there are many types of donor risks, and we have to be careful about managing the entire basket of them. Means of mitigating certain types of donor risks may increase other risks. Thus, we should consider the risk of fraud/insolvency based on readily-available information against other donor-related risks before deciding how much to poke the bear.
Here, SBF’s wealth was poorly understood, was in a small private company, was in an industry with lots of fraud and very poor regulation, was new money, and was not “in the bag” in terms of being committed to charitable causes. The next megadonor might be someone whose wealth came from shares in a publicly-traded “boring” company in a more mature and properly-regulated field. Their donor risk profile would be much different than SBF’s.
Theres a good deal more transparency there—the Good Ventures Foundation has filed 990-PFs as required by law, and you can see both how much has been irrevocably devoted to charity and what the underlying assets are. Of course, tax forms are not ground truth, but asking questions is not going to get someone who has hypothetically perjured themselves to IRS to ’fess up.
More generally, although I think the overall idea is good, one has to be really careful that the donors feel respected. The biggest risk in most cases is that the donors will pick up their money and either donate it elsewhere or (if not yet in a 501c3) spend it themselves.
They are human, and e.g. knowing the movement is funding an FTE devoted to investigating and planning for the possibility that they are a total phony would unsettle most people and make them feel less connected. Even more so since there would only be a small # of people who would justify costly vetting.
And especially if the FTE is employed by a org they financially supported! Which gets back to a meta point that EA needs an org that is funded and controlled by rank-and-file EAs including “small” donors . . .
I think that we probably spent too much time ensuring SBF felt respected and too little ensuring that he and Caroline weren’t engaged in large scale fraud.
Very likely true! My point was that there are many types of donor risks, and we have to be careful about managing the entire basket of them. Means of mitigating certain types of donor risks may increase other risks. Thus, we should consider the risk of fraud/insolvency based on readily-available information against other donor-related risks before deciding how much to poke the bear.
Here, SBF’s wealth was poorly understood, was in a small private company, was in an industry with lots of fraud and very poor regulation, was new money, and was not “in the bag” in terms of being committed to charitable causes. The next megadonor might be someone whose wealth came from shares in a publicly-traded “boring” company in a more mature and properly-regulated field. Their donor risk profile would be much different than SBF’s.