I believe the comment you linked to in 1 is referring to the Protect Our Future super PAC, which was, in Carrick’s case buying ads for him and could not donate to his campaign directly.
My understanding is that the GAP (non-super) PAC donates directly to candidates (up to $5000), that they can then spend those funds the same as any other campaign contribution.
The benefit, as it was explained to me, was that GAP is in contact with the candidates, does some amount of vetting, and the candidates see that the money comes from them. An individual donation would not carry any association with preventing pandemics. Important because these are candidates that are not EA aligned or necessarily that committed to pandemic preparedness.
I believe that is the basic case for it. That said, it seems unlikely to be anywhere close to as impactful as a donation to an EA aligned candidate (not sure there are any of those right now though), and I am not aware of any kind of cost effectiveness analysis comparing such a donation to AMF or anything like that.
There is also the $5000 limit that you can donate to GAP as well.
There was this post from GAP about it a while back, but I didn’t find that it made a very strong case for it.
Oh, this seems like an excellent point. I’ll try to learn more but in the meantime you changed my mind. I’ll edit the parent comment.
Also, for the how-the-PAC-supports-candidates question, it would be useful to know what specific kind of PAC the GAP PAC is. (A “multi-candidate PAC”?) I didn’t find this quickly on Google but surely it’s public.
I’ve seen it referred to as a hybrid PAC, but I’m not sure what that means exactly. I guess that part of it is unlimited in funding but can’t donate to candidiases and part of it is limited and can.
I believe the comment you linked to in 1 is referring to the Protect Our Future super PAC, which was, in Carrick’s case buying ads for him and could not donate to his campaign directly.
My understanding is that the GAP (non-super) PAC donates directly to candidates (up to $5000), that they can then spend those funds the same as any other campaign contribution.
The benefit, as it was explained to me, was that GAP is in contact with the candidates, does some amount of vetting, and the candidates see that the money comes from them. An individual donation would not carry any association with preventing pandemics. Important because these are candidates that are not EA aligned or necessarily that committed to pandemic preparedness.
I believe that is the basic case for it. That said, it seems unlikely to be anywhere close to as impactful as a donation to an EA aligned candidate (not sure there are any of those right now though), and I am not aware of any kind of cost effectiveness analysis comparing such a donation to AMF or anything like that.
There is also the $5000 limit that you can donate to GAP as well.
There was this post from GAP about it a while back, but I didn’t find that it made a very strong case for it.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Btm562wDNEuWXj9Gk/guarding-against-pandemics
Oh, this seems like an excellent point. I’ll try to learn more but in the meantime you changed my mind. I’ll edit the parent comment.
Also, for the how-the-PAC-supports-candidates question, it would be useful to know what specific kind of PAC the GAP PAC is. (A “multi-candidate PAC”?) I didn’t find this quickly on Google but surely it’s public.
I’ve seen it referred to as a hybrid PAC, but I’m not sure what that means exactly. I guess that part of it is unlimited in funding but can’t donate to candidiases and part of it is limited and can.