I agree with the issues related to centralized grantmaking flagged by this article! I wrote a bit about this back in 2018. To my understanding, EA has not been trying forms of decentralized/collective thinking, including decentralized grantmaking. I think that this is definitely a very promising area of inquiry worthy of further research and experimentation.
One example of the blind spots and differences in theories of change you mention is reflected in the results of the Future Fund’s Project Ideas Competition. Highly upvoted ideas like “Investment strategies for longtermist funders” and “Highly effective enhancement of productivity, health, and wellbeing for people in high-impact roles,” which came in at #3 and #4 respectively, did not win any awards or mention. This suggests that there is decent community interest and consensus around projects and project areas that aren’t being funded or funded sufficiently by centralized entities. For those project areas, there are a decent number of people within EA , project leads, and smaller-scale funders (BERI, EA Funds, various HNWIs) that I am aware of that either believe such efforts are valuable and underfunded or have funded projects in those areas in the past. The specific grantmaking team at The Future Fund may have interests and theories of change that aren’t the same as other grantmaking teams and EAs. It’s definitely fine to have specialized interests and theories of change, and indeed everyone does, but the issue is only one set of those is coming through to decide how to allocate all of the Future Fund’s funding. As you point out, that’s basically guaranteed to be suboptimal.
I agree with the issues related to centralized grantmaking flagged by this article! I wrote a bit about this back in 2018. To my understanding, EA has not been trying forms of decentralized/collective thinking, including decentralized grantmaking. I think that this is definitely a very promising area of inquiry worthy of further research and experimentation.
One example of the blind spots and differences in theories of change you mention is reflected in the results of the Future Fund’s Project Ideas Competition. Highly upvoted ideas like “Investment strategies for longtermist funders” and “Highly effective enhancement of productivity, health, and wellbeing for people in high-impact roles,” which came in at #3 and #4 respectively, did not win any awards or mention. This suggests that there is decent community interest and consensus around projects and project areas that aren’t being funded or funded sufficiently by centralized entities. For those project areas, there are a decent number of people within EA , project leads, and smaller-scale funders (BERI, EA Funds, various HNWIs) that I am aware of that either believe such efforts are valuable and underfunded or have funded projects in those areas in the past. The specific grantmaking team at The Future Fund may have interests and theories of change that aren’t the same as other grantmaking teams and EAs. It’s definitely fine to have specialized interests and theories of change, and indeed everyone does, but the issue is only one set of those is coming through to decide how to allocate all of the Future Fund’s funding. As you point out, that’s basically guaranteed to be suboptimal.