Agree with a lot of what Asya said here, and very appreciative of her taking the time to write it up.
One complimentary point I want to emphasize: I think hiring a full-time chair is great, and that LTFF / EA Funds should in general be more willing to hire fund managers who have more time and less expertise. In my experience fund managers have very little time for the work (they’re both in part-time roles, and often extremely busy people), and little support (there’s relatively little training / infrastructure / guidance), but a fair amount of power. This has a few downsides:
Insular funding: Fund managers lean heavily on personal networks and defer to other people’s impressions of applicants, which means known applicants are much more likely to be funded. This meant LTFF had an easy time funding EAs/rationalists, but was much less likely to catch promising, non-EA candidates who weren’t already known to us. (This is already a common dynamic in EA orgs, but felt particularly severe because of our time constraints.)
Less ambitious funding: Similarly, it’s particularly time-intensive to evaluate new organizations with substantial budgets, or novel theories of change. This meant that we were more likely to fund individuals, and had a harder time making large grants to new ambitious orgs. (We were also more likely to lean on OP’s evaluation of the person or org.)
I left the LTFF because of capacity issues related to being on the EV board post FTX collapse, but I didn’t return because I ended up feeling pretty skeptical of a funding dynamic that moved money primarily within existing social circles with relatively little supervision, especially post FTX. I think full-time fund managers & more structure and support could help with this. In the past, I think we’ve been recruiting from too narrow of a pool — I think there are a fair number of people who could do this job well (and that the quality of work they can do improves if they have more time and more support), and moving in that direction could be good for the fund. (Though I haven’t actually done the hiring for these roles, so I could be wrong.)
Really excited about EAF/LTFF potentially being more independent from OP & having more full-time staff. I think both of those are really great directions to move in, and I’m very appreciative to Asya & Caleb for putting in the time to think it through.
(I was previously a fund manager on the LTFF)
Agree with a lot of what Asya said here, and very appreciative of her taking the time to write it up.
One complimentary point I want to emphasize: I think hiring a full-time chair is great, and that LTFF / EA Funds should in general be more willing to hire fund managers who have more time and less expertise. In my experience fund managers have very little time for the work (they’re both in part-time roles, and often extremely busy people), and little support (there’s relatively little training / infrastructure / guidance), but a fair amount of power. This has a few downsides:
Insular funding: Fund managers lean heavily on personal networks and defer to other people’s impressions of applicants, which means known applicants are much more likely to be funded. This meant LTFF had an easy time funding EAs/rationalists, but was much less likely to catch promising, non-EA candidates who weren’t already known to us. (This is already a common dynamic in EA orgs, but felt particularly severe because of our time constraints.)
Less ambitious funding: Similarly, it’s particularly time-intensive to evaluate new organizations with substantial budgets, or novel theories of change. This meant that we were more likely to fund individuals, and had a harder time making large grants to new ambitious orgs. (We were also more likely to lean on OP’s evaluation of the person or org.)
I left the LTFF because of capacity issues related to being on the EV board post FTX collapse, but I didn’t return because I ended up feeling pretty skeptical of a funding dynamic that moved money primarily within existing social circles with relatively little supervision, especially post FTX. I think full-time fund managers & more structure and support could help with this. In the past, I think we’ve been recruiting from too narrow of a pool — I think there are a fair number of people who could do this job well (and that the quality of work they can do improves if they have more time and more support), and moving in that direction could be good for the fund. (Though I haven’t actually done the hiring for these roles, so I could be wrong.)
Really excited about EAF/LTFF potentially being more independent from OP & having more full-time staff. I think both of those are really great directions to move in, and I’m very appreciative to Asya & Caleb for putting in the time to think it through.