It could be interesting to explore/āoffer funds with different distribution thresholds (for example, saving all funds for 100+ years out versus donating a small percentage every year or nearly every year while still letting assets compound) for donors that have different distribution preferences. Knowing your money will be used to better the world every year in the present while also compounding indefinitely into the future to help future generations may be appealing.
That indeed sounds like a valuable idea to me.
Personally, my current best guess is that EA should move more in the direction of āpatient philanthropyā, and that it makes sense for most of my own giving to take that form, at least until research into and debate on that topic has progressed further. But I also quite like giving some amount now. So Iām continuing to give at 10% per yearāas per my Giving What We Can pledge, which I took before learning about the arguments for patient philanthropy, but I think Iād like doing that anyway. And then I try to save and invest a lot beyond that, so that I can hopefully eventually do something like a ābackdatedā Further Pledge, in which Iāll ultimately give as much as I earned from ~2019 onwards beyond ~15-30k USD per year.
Maybe this is actually the optimal strategy, for reasons such as giving each year helping me avoid value drift, or me having taken the pledge already and it being a good general principle to stick to oneās promises (see also). But I think Iād like doing this even if it wasnāt optimal.
So I imagine many other people would also find it appealing to have the option of getting to feel that theyāre doing good each year. And it seems plausible to me that making that option available, alongside arguments for mostly taking the āpatientā approach, would actually increase the total funding allocated to the āpatientā approach.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think that making some fund distributions in the present also serves to demonstrate the decision making and grantmaking capabilities of the fundās grantmakers. Some donors might consider it an uncertainty to donate to a fund that has not made any grants for, say, three decades, whereas having the fund make microgrants or having a version of the fund that makes grants demonstrates that the fund has been and will continue to make a positive social impact.
That indeed sounds like a valuable idea to me.
Personally, my current best guess is that EA should move more in the direction of āpatient philanthropyā, and that it makes sense for most of my own giving to take that form, at least until research into and debate on that topic has progressed further. But I also quite like giving some amount now. So Iām continuing to give at 10% per yearāas per my Giving What We Can pledge, which I took before learning about the arguments for patient philanthropy, but I think Iād like doing that anyway. And then I try to save and invest a lot beyond that, so that I can hopefully eventually do something like a ābackdatedā Further Pledge, in which Iāll ultimately give as much as I earned from ~2019 onwards beyond ~15-30k USD per year.
Maybe this is actually the optimal strategy, for reasons such as giving each year helping me avoid value drift, or me having taken the pledge already and it being a good general principle to stick to oneās promises (see also). But I think Iād like doing this even if it wasnāt optimal.
So I imagine many other people would also find it appealing to have the option of getting to feel that theyāre doing good each year. And it seems plausible to me that making that option available, alongside arguments for mostly taking the āpatientā approach, would actually increase the total funding allocated to the āpatientā approach.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think that making some fund distributions in the present also serves to demonstrate the decision making and grantmaking capabilities of the fundās grantmakers. Some donors might consider it an uncertainty to donate to a fund that has not made any grants for, say, three decades, whereas having the fund make microgrants or having a version of the fund that makes grants demonstrates that the fund has been and will continue to make a positive social impact.