Thank you, Nicole, for compiling and sharing this writeup. It sounds like you inherited a program with a lot of significant problems, and have been working hard to rectify them. I agree with many of the points you raise, and this post is a welcome improvement in transparency around EA Grants.
However, I’d like to push back against the idea that there was a “Lack of clarification about the role EA Grants played in the funding ecosystem”. I’d argue that your predecessors clearly articulated a vision of EA Grants as a major funder in the ecosystem.
We are planning to run EA Grants throughout 2018, with an anticipated budget of around £2m… We plan to accept applications year-round with quick reviews and responses for urgent applications and quarterly reviews for less urgent applications.
My thinking in choosing £2m was that we would want to fund more projects than we had money to fund last year, but that we would have picked much of the low-hanging fruit, so there’d be less to fund. In any case, I’m not taking that number too seriously. We should fund all the projects worth funding and raise more money if we need it.
We also have a regranting budget of $3.7M for EA Grants and EA Community Building Grants, which we use to fund other organizations, projects, individuals, and groups.
Throughout 2018, CEA also repeatedly communicated that a large, open round of EA Grants would be starting soon, which turned out to be overly optimistic. (See updates in mid-February, April, and mid-August.)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure EA Grants has granted significantly less money than the public communications would suggest. Your writeup explains several reasons why that would be the case. But that doesn’t change the fact that CEA’s communications have likely led potential grantees and potential funders to overestimate how much funding was available for early stage projects. My strong intuition is that these dynamics have contributed to a funding shortage for this type of project, and that addressing this shortage should be a priority for the EA community.
I think Hauke is asking a critical question: “Would shutting down EA grants significantly reduce the overall quantity of meta funding in the community or would the freed up resources be routed into the Meta-fund?” Even if the money gets routed into the Meta Fund (and/or other funds), some of it will likely be granted to established organizations leaving less money for individuals and early stage projects.
I also wonder whether shuttering EA Grants now risks wasting the progress that’s been made in developing operational capacity (“CEA is now in a place where we are able to disburse EA Grants with correct bank information routinely within a month, sometimes quicker, putting us solidly within the norm of the grant making industry.”) Would EA Funds be able to leverage those improvements?
I hope this doesn’t come across as overly critical. I know EA Grants, and CEA as a whole, has changed leadership since most of these issues occurred. But to fix things going forward, I think it’s important to have an accurate understanding of how they worked in the past. With respect to EA Grants, the past has involved a lot of overpromising and underdelivering, which seems to be a recurring theme in feedback.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment! I agree with many of the points you raise. A few responses/clarifications:
On the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem: While I agree with you that EA Grants projected it would disburse more money than it actually did, when I said that “the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem was unclear” I primarily meant that there was ambiguity about which type of projects were likely to be accepted for EA Grants, and it was unclear to applicants whether they should apply to Funds or EA Grants. I also think that the hopes and plans for EA Grants were articulated but not clarified or updated, which they should have been as things evolved and EA Grants was failing to take the position in the grantmaking ecosystem it had originally claimed it would take (e.g. how much money it would disburse).
I agree that CEA’s communications have likely led to inaccurate perceptions of how much funding was available for early stage projects. It’s unclear to me how much of a shortage of funding there actually is, though, given what people expressed interest in doing this year. I think that a more important constraint in the ecosystem is not funding, but likely support and feedback for grantees and applicants. I think that it is very hard and time costly to give good feedback and support, but very important for individuals and early stage projects. This is part of why I’m excited about Charity Entrepreneurship’s incubation program. I am also exploring how the funding ecosystem may be able to provide more support to grantees to try to address this problem somewhat, though I expect this to be a hard problem to solve. On funding, if the Meta Fund sees funding shortages, I hope that they will make that known to donors, so that donors can fund the Meta Fund accordingly. To my knowledge, this has not been the case to date.
Where the freed up resources go is dependent on donors. EA Grants never had (to my knowledge) multi-year commitments. For example, since I’ve started, it’s been ~entirely funded by 1 anonymous donor.
EA Funds is already leveraging the improvements made for EA Grants. The work was not for nothing :)
I agree with this: “to fix things going forward, I think it’s important to have an accurate understanding of how they worked in the past. With respect to EA Grants, the past has involved a lot of overpromising and underdelivering, which seems to be a recurring theme in feedback.”
Where the freed up resources go is dependent on donors. EA Grants never had (to my knowledge) multi-year commitments. For example, since I’ve started, it’s been ~entirely funded by 1 anonymous donor.
Can you share any information about how likely it is these donors will fund similar projects through alternative means if EA Grants winds down? Do you know what the 1 anonymous donor is planning?
Taking a longer perspective, my understanding is that Open Phil funded the initial 2017 round of EA Grants (~$475k), and I’d guess they wouldn’t fund small early stage projects without a mechanism like EA Grants to do so through. Then in 2018, EA Grants awarded ~$850k through the referral round and some amount (that I haven’t seen announced) during the September 2018 round. Were these also funded by Open Phil? Do you have any sense of whether the funder(s) of these rounds funded similar projects through non-EA Grants channels in 2019? If not, is there any reason to expect them to fund these types of projects in 2020 or beyond? Are you able to share the amount granted from the September 2018 round, to help the community understand how much funding would need to be replaced if other channels need to fill the role EA Grants historically played?
Unfortunately, I don’t know the identity of the anonymous donor myself, so I can’t speak to their plans for 2020 and beyond.
The most relevant question might be: if EA Grants is going to collapse into EA Funds, what would that mean in terms of funding needs for EA Funds? EA Funds grew something like 30% last year. From 2018-2019, Funds grew by $1.3M (and growth was concentrated in the Meta, Long Term Future, and Animal Welfare Funds, all of which make grants to individuals). If this growth rate remained steady through 2020, we would expect the ‘funding gap’ created by EA Grants (at the historical level of Grants funding, under $1M per year) to be covered by organic growth in EA Funds. However, if the number of strong grant opportunities also continues to increase, organic growth could still leave a similar proportion of strong opportunities going unfunded. In that case, I’d encourage Fund teams to make that known and fundraise accordingly. Of course, it’s hard to predict how much the size of the total pool of opportunities will increase in 2020 and beyond.
My strong prior (which it sounds like you disagree with), is that we should generally expect funding needs to increase over time. If that’s true, then EA Funds would need to grow by more than enough to offset EA Grants in order to keep pace with needs. More reliance on EA Funds would shift the mix of funding too: for instance, relatively more funding going to established organizations (which EA Grants doesn’t fund) and no natural source of funding for individuals working on Global Poverty (as that fund doesn’t grant to individuals).
I agree it would be helpful for Fund management teams to explicitly make it known if they think there are a lot of strong opportunities going unfunded. Similarly, if Fund managers think they have limited opportunities to make strong grants with additional funds, it would be good to know that too. I’ve been operating on the assumption that the funds all believe they have room for more funding; if that’s not the case, seems like an important thing to share.
It’s unclear to me how much of a shortage of funding there actually is, though, given what people expressed interest in doing this year. I think that a more important constraint in the ecosystem is not funding, but likely support and feedback for grantees and applicants. I think that it is very hard and time costly to give good feedback and support, but very important for individuals and early stage projects. This is part of why I’m excited about Charity Entrepreneurship’s incubation program. I am also exploring how the funding ecosystem may be able to provide more support to grantees to try to address this problem somewhat, though I expect this to be a hard problem to solve. On funding, if the Meta Fund sees funding shortages, I hope that they will make that known to donors, so that donors can fund the Meta Fund accordingly. To my knowledge, this has not been the case to date.
In your opinion, is this a recent development or do you think feedback was a larger constraint than funding even when EA Grants was more actively funding projects? If you think it’s a recent development, was the change driven by EA Grants, EA Funds, and other grantmakers funding the most funding constrained projects, or did something else change?
I feel very uncertain. I wasn’t very involved with funding individuals and that ecosystem before taking on EA Grants, so it’s hard for me to speak to the changes over time.
Thank you, Nicole, for compiling and sharing this writeup. It sounds like you inherited a program with a lot of significant problems, and have been working hard to rectify them. I agree with many of the points you raise, and this post is a welcome improvement in transparency around EA Grants.
However, I’d like to push back against the idea that there was a “Lack of clarification about the role EA Grants played in the funding ecosystem”. I’d argue that your predecessors clearly articulated a vision of EA Grants as a major funder in the ecosystem.
See, for instance, CEA’s 2017 Annual Report:
And the former head of EA Grants commenting on that report:
And CEA’s end of 2018 fundraising appeal (which solicited donations to fund EA Grants):
Throughout 2018, CEA also repeatedly communicated that a large, open round of EA Grants would be starting soon, which turned out to be overly optimistic. (See updates in mid-February, April, and mid-August.)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure EA Grants has granted significantly less money than the public communications would suggest. Your writeup explains several reasons why that would be the case. But that doesn’t change the fact that CEA’s communications have likely led potential grantees and potential funders to overestimate how much funding was available for early stage projects. My strong intuition is that these dynamics have contributed to a funding shortage for this type of project, and that addressing this shortage should be a priority for the EA community.
I think Hauke is asking a critical question: “Would shutting down EA grants significantly reduce the overall quantity of meta funding in the community or would the freed up resources be routed into the Meta-fund?” Even if the money gets routed into the Meta Fund (and/or other funds), some of it will likely be granted to established organizations leaving less money for individuals and early stage projects.
I also wonder whether shuttering EA Grants now risks wasting the progress that’s been made in developing operational capacity (“CEA is now in a place where we are able to disburse EA Grants with correct bank information routinely within a month, sometimes quicker, putting us solidly within the norm of the grant making industry.”) Would EA Funds be able to leverage those improvements?
I hope this doesn’t come across as overly critical. I know EA Grants, and CEA as a whole, has changed leadership since most of these issues occurred. But to fix things going forward, I think it’s important to have an accurate understanding of how they worked in the past. With respect to EA Grants, the past has involved a lot of overpromising and underdelivering, which seems to be a recurring theme in feedback.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment! I agree with many of the points you raise. A few responses/clarifications:
On the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem: While I agree with you that EA Grants projected it would disburse more money than it actually did, when I said that “the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem was unclear” I primarily meant that there was ambiguity about which type of projects were likely to be accepted for EA Grants, and it was unclear to applicants whether they should apply to Funds or EA Grants. I also think that the hopes and plans for EA Grants were articulated but not clarified or updated, which they should have been as things evolved and EA Grants was failing to take the position in the grantmaking ecosystem it had originally claimed it would take (e.g. how much money it would disburse).
I agree that CEA’s communications have likely led to inaccurate perceptions of how much funding was available for early stage projects. It’s unclear to me how much of a shortage of funding there actually is, though, given what people expressed interest in doing this year. I think that a more important constraint in the ecosystem is not funding, but likely support and feedback for grantees and applicants. I think that it is very hard and time costly to give good feedback and support, but very important for individuals and early stage projects. This is part of why I’m excited about Charity Entrepreneurship’s incubation program. I am also exploring how the funding ecosystem may be able to provide more support to grantees to try to address this problem somewhat, though I expect this to be a hard problem to solve. On funding, if the Meta Fund sees funding shortages, I hope that they will make that known to donors, so that donors can fund the Meta Fund accordingly. To my knowledge, this has not been the case to date.
Where the freed up resources go is dependent on donors. EA Grants never had (to my knowledge) multi-year commitments. For example, since I’ve started, it’s been ~entirely funded by 1 anonymous donor.
EA Funds is already leveraging the improvements made for EA Grants. The work was not for nothing :)
I agree with this: “to fix things going forward, I think it’s important to have an accurate understanding of how they worked in the past. With respect to EA Grants, the past has involved a lot of overpromising and underdelivering, which seems to be a recurring theme in feedback.”
Thank you for your thoughtful response Nicole!
Can you share any information about how likely it is these donors will fund similar projects through alternative means if EA Grants winds down? Do you know what the 1 anonymous donor is planning?
Taking a longer perspective, my understanding is that Open Phil funded the initial 2017 round of EA Grants (~$475k), and I’d guess they wouldn’t fund small early stage projects without a mechanism like EA Grants to do so through. Then in 2018, EA Grants awarded ~$850k through the referral round and some amount (that I haven’t seen announced) during the September 2018 round. Were these also funded by Open Phil? Do you have any sense of whether the funder(s) of these rounds funded similar projects through non-EA Grants channels in 2019? If not, is there any reason to expect them to fund these types of projects in 2020 or beyond? Are you able to share the amount granted from the September 2018 round, to help the community understand how much funding would need to be replaced if other channels need to fill the role EA Grants historically played?
Unfortunately, I don’t know the identity of the anonymous donor myself, so I can’t speak to their plans for 2020 and beyond.
The most relevant question might be: if EA Grants is going to collapse into EA Funds, what would that mean in terms of funding needs for EA Funds? EA Funds grew something like 30% last year. From 2018-2019, Funds grew by $1.3M (and growth was concentrated in the Meta, Long Term Future, and Animal Welfare Funds, all of which make grants to individuals). If this growth rate remained steady through 2020, we would expect the ‘funding gap’ created by EA Grants (at the historical level of Grants funding, under $1M per year) to be covered by organic growth in EA Funds. However, if the number of strong grant opportunities also continues to increase, organic growth could still leave a similar proportion of strong opportunities going unfunded. In that case, I’d encourage Fund teams to make that known and fundraise accordingly. Of course, it’s hard to predict how much the size of the total pool of opportunities will increase in 2020 and beyond.
Thanks Nicole!
My strong prior (which it sounds like you disagree with), is that we should generally expect funding needs to increase over time. If that’s true, then EA Funds would need to grow by more than enough to offset EA Grants in order to keep pace with needs. More reliance on EA Funds would shift the mix of funding too: for instance, relatively more funding going to established organizations (which EA Grants doesn’t fund) and no natural source of funding for individuals working on Global Poverty (as that fund doesn’t grant to individuals).
I agree it would be helpful for Fund management teams to explicitly make it known if they think there are a lot of strong opportunities going unfunded. Similarly, if Fund managers think they have limited opportunities to make strong grants with additional funds, it would be good to know that too. I’ve been operating on the assumption that the funds all believe they have room for more funding; if that’s not the case, seems like an important thing to share.
In your opinion, is this a recent development or do you think feedback was a larger constraint than funding even when EA Grants was more actively funding projects? If you think it’s a recent development, was the change driven by EA Grants, EA Funds, and other grantmakers funding the most funding constrained projects, or did something else change?
I feel very uncertain. I wasn’t very involved with funding individuals and that ecosystem before taking on EA Grants, so it’s hard for me to speak to the changes over time.