I’m especially interested in things which could be very good, but might fall outside the bounds of the current GHD funding ecosystem
The scope of Founders Pledge’s global health and development fund was different in the recent past, right? From the 1.70 M$ (= 1.22 + 0.100413 + 0.231672 + 0.05125 + 0.1) you have granted from November 2020 to September 2023[1] (BTW, the website says 1.3 M$), it looks like 1.22 M$ (= 0.05 + 0.16 + 0.17918 + 0.03 + 0.02 + 0.07 + 0.125 + 0.05 + 0.05 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.05 + 0.112 + 0.100027 + 0.012498 + 0.011733), i.e. 71.8 % (= 1.22/​1.70) have gone to organisations already supported by funders aligned with effective altruism:
University of Washington has been supported by GiveWell.
Full disclosure that we haven’t been the best at publicly publishing evaluations- due to capacity, but still. I hope to improve this/​ generally provide more resources about how we do grantmaking from the fund over the next year or so.
Thanks for being open about this! For readers reference, Founders Pledge’s global health and development fund has made 21 grants, and published 8 write-ups, but these only have 1 paragraph each. Here is the one respecting the grant to Family Empowerment Media in August 2022:
The GHD Fund granted $70,000 to FEM for a program that uses radio broadcasts to inform people in Nigeria about modern forms of contraception. In Nigeria, contraceptives are available, but many women are reluctant to use them due to misconceptions such as the belief that IUDs or birth control pills can cause infertility. FEM is seeking to raise 50% of their operating budget for 2023. This grant will go towards these operating costs, enabling them to reach more women with their broadcasts. A secondary goal of this grant is to put FEM in a stronger position to apply for funding for a randomized controlled trial; if such funding is received, they will be better able to assess impact and, if evidence is promising, to raise considerably more capital.
GHDF has reports of a few sentences too, but it is effectively managed by people at GiveWell, which does in-depth research to inform their recommendations. I think it would be valuable for you to explain your reasoning if you depart from GiveWell’s recommendations.
RE: most of the funding going to groups which are already in the EA ecosystem- yep, I think this is correct. I still think this is compatible with the statement of ‘being especially interested in stuff falling outside the main GHD ecosystem’ though, and that the grantmaking focus has changed somewhat in the last year or two.
* r.i.c.e we granted to an early stage (before they were GiveWell supported) when they were having a severe funding crunch. * FEM, Suvita and LEEP we evaluated and granted to at an early stage. I think there’s value here in ‘identifying promising charities and getting up to scale asap’. * Our most recent grants aren’t up on the website yet: I don’t think (? could be wrong) 1daysooner’s malaria stuff has gotten EA funding yet, Ubongo isn’t EA supported afaik, or Essential.
It’s true though that a lot of FP GHD grantmaking is stuff that’s already supported by the EA community. I could have been clearer here; our guiding principle is just ‘whatever we think is most cost-effective’ and many of the existing EA-supported orgs still have funding gaps that are highly cost-effective. Aka I wouldn’t want to prioritise something that sounds cool on a ‘this is new basis’ over something that is already known in EA, and is more cost-effective. Most of the decisions that I really agonise over are ‘does this really beat bednets? Most things don’t beat bednets, and I’m aware that most things seem less cost-effective as more researcher hours go into probing them’. I do think it is possible though to to find funding opportunities in the ‘falling outside the current GHD ecosystem and >10X in expectation’ space though, and these have been some of my favourite grants.
RE: the scope of Founders Pledge’s global health and development fund being different in the past. This was before my time (I joined FP maybe 1.5 years ago) but yes, I would say that our scope has changed a little to be somewhat more risk tolerant (while still focusing on evidence base) and figuring out where our comparative advantages are (speed being one of them).
RE: being more open with evaluations; yeah I totally agree with you, and think you’re right that explaining when we depart from GiveWell is esp important. (Some places where we’ve just started to do this: Vadim’s education work, my mass media stuff. But I haven’t published actual FO evals as often). IMO our evals are rigorous, without being as in-depth as GiveWell; there’s a process of understanding the area (some of our cause area reports are on the EA forum), then a ~25 page ish eval & CEA, and red-teaming. Our rapid grants are shorter, but still have an eval, CEA/​ BOTEC + red-teaming.
Thanks for elaborating, Rosie! I said over 90 % of the grants you made were to organisations already supported by EA, but I have now corrected it to 71.8 % (see 2nd paragraph of my comment). I was relying on the total money granted displayed on the website, but I do not think it is correct. Now I am just adding up the amount of all the grants there.
FEM, Suvita and LEEP we evaluated and granted to at an early stage (I think we did the first EA-style evals of them? my bad if another funder org did this before us and I didn’t realise). I think there’s value here in ‘identifying promising charities and getting up to scale asap’.
The 3 organisations above were incubated by Charity Entrepeneurship (see links in my previous comment), which is very much aligned with effective altruism, so I assume they take most of the credit for their existence and evaluation.
Our most recent grants aren’t up on the website yet: I don’t think (? could be wrong) 1daysooner’s malaria stuff has gotten EA funding yet, Ubongo isn’t EA supported afaik, or Essential.
Open Phil has granted 2.1 M$ to 1Day Sooner from 2020 to 2021. I also do not recall EA-aligned funders supporting Ubongo or Essential. I think you could link to the websites of these organisations in the page of your fund, as you did for the other grants.
correct: to be absolutely clear, CE and the orgs themselves definitely incubated and developed the first CEAs for the CE charities (not us!). Thanks for this, will edit my comment. What I meant was is that evaluating and supporting orgs in the ‘no longer a seed stage charity but also not yet at scale’ stage is a key role that I see for the FP GHD fund, and I think we’ve had previous success here.
Yep, 1DS’ pandemic preparedness has been supported by OP. And thanks, I will mention to our comms team. FYI that our impact report is upcoming onto the website, which will list all recent grantmaking.
(also cheers for this post, and making the subtleties & differences between different GHD funds etc clearer!)
Thanks for sharing, Rosie!
The scope of Founders Pledge’s global health and development fund was different in the recent past, right? From the 1.70 M$ (= 1.22 + 0.100413 + 0.231672 + 0.05125 + 0.1) you have granted from November 2020 to September 2023[1] (BTW, the website says 1.3 M$), it looks like 1.22 M$ (= 0.05 + 0.16 + 0.17918 + 0.03 + 0.02 + 0.07 + 0.125 + 0.05 + 0.05 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.05 + 0.112 + 0.100027 + 0.012498 + 0.011733), i.e. 71.8 % (= 1.22/​1.70) have gone to organisations already supported by funders aligned with effective altruism:
Evidence Action has been supported by GiveWell.
Lead Exposure Elimination Project was incubated by Charity Entrepeneurship.
Effektiv Spenden has been supported by Open Phil.
New Incentives is one of GiveWell’s top charities.
The Life You Can Save was part of the initial effective giving movement.
Family Empowerment Media was incubated by Charity Entrepeneurship.
r.i.c.e. has been supported by GiveWell.
Effective Altruism Australia has been supported by the EA Infrastructure Fund.
Suvita was incubated by Charity Entrepeneurship.
Malaria Consortium is one of GiveWell’s top charities.
Against Malaria Foundation is one of GiveWell’s top charities.
Sightsavers has been supported by GiveWell.
University of Washington has been supported by GiveWell.
Thanks for being open about this! For readers reference, Founders Pledge’s global health and development fund has made 21 grants, and published 8 write-ups, but these only have 1 paragraph each. Here is the one respecting the grant to Family Empowerment Media in August 2022:
GHDF has reports of a few sentences too, but it is effectively managed by people at GiveWell, which does in-depth research to inform their recommendations. I think it would be valuable for you to explain your reasoning if you depart from GiveWell’s recommendations.
Overall, I would recommend GiveWell’s All Grants Fund or unrestricted funds, or GWWC’s Global Health and Wellbeing Fund over Founders Pledge’s Global Health and Development Fund.
Dates of the latest and most recent grants on the website.
Hey Vasco,
RE: most of the funding going to groups which are already in the EA ecosystem- yep, I think this is correct. I still think this is compatible with the statement of ‘being especially interested in stuff falling outside the main GHD ecosystem’ though, and that the grantmaking focus has changed somewhat in the last year or two.
* r.i.c.e we granted to an early stage (before they were GiveWell supported) when they were having a severe funding crunch.
* FEM, Suvita and LEEP we evaluated and granted to at an early stage. I think there’s value here in ‘identifying promising charities and getting up to scale asap’.
* Our most recent grants aren’t up on the website yet: I don’t think (? could be wrong) 1daysooner’s malaria stuff has gotten EA funding yet, Ubongo isn’t EA supported afaik, or Essential.
It’s true though that a lot of FP GHD grantmaking is stuff that’s already supported by the EA community. I could have been clearer here; our guiding principle is just ‘whatever we think is most cost-effective’ and many of the existing EA-supported orgs still have funding gaps that are highly cost-effective. Aka I wouldn’t want to prioritise something that sounds cool on a ‘this is new basis’ over something that is already known in EA, and is more cost-effective. Most of the decisions that I really agonise over are ‘does this really beat bednets? Most things don’t beat bednets, and I’m aware that most things seem less cost-effective as more researcher hours go into probing them’. I do think it is possible though to to find funding opportunities in the ‘falling outside the current GHD ecosystem and >10X in expectation’ space though, and these have been some of my favourite grants.
RE: the scope of Founders Pledge’s global health and development fund being different in the past. This was before my time (I joined FP maybe 1.5 years ago) but yes, I would say that our scope has changed a little to be somewhat more risk tolerant (while still focusing on evidence base) and figuring out where our comparative advantages are (speed being one of them).
RE: being more open with evaluations; yeah I totally agree with you, and think you’re right that explaining when we depart from GiveWell is esp important. (Some places where we’ve just started to do this: Vadim’s education work, my mass media stuff. But I haven’t published actual FO evals as often). IMO our evals are rigorous, without being as in-depth as GiveWell; there’s a process of understanding the area (some of our cause area reports are on the EA forum), then a ~25 page ish eval & CEA, and red-teaming. Our rapid grants are shorter, but still have an eval, CEA/​ BOTEC + red-teaming.
Thanks for elaborating, Rosie! I said over 90 % of the grants you made were to organisations already supported by EA, but I have now corrected it to 71.8 % (see 2nd paragraph of my comment). I was relying on the total money granted displayed on the website, but I do not think it is correct. Now I am just adding up the amount of all the grants there.
The 3 organisations above were incubated by Charity Entrepeneurship (see links in my previous comment), which is very much aligned with effective altruism, so I assume they take most of the credit for their existence and evaluation.
Open Phil has granted 2.1 M$ to 1Day Sooner from 2020 to 2021. I also do not recall EA-aligned funders supporting Ubongo or Essential. I think you could link to the websites of these organisations in the page of your fund, as you did for the other grants.
correct: to be absolutely clear, CE and the orgs themselves definitely incubated and developed the first CEAs for the CE charities (not us!). Thanks for this, will edit my comment. What I meant was is that evaluating and supporting orgs in the ‘no longer a seed stage charity but also not yet at scale’ stage is a key role that I see for the FP GHD fund, and I think we’ve had previous success here.
Yep, 1DS’ pandemic preparedness has been supported by OP. And thanks, I will mention to our comms team. FYI that our impact report is upcoming onto the website, which will list all recent grantmaking.
(also cheers for this post, and making the subtleties & differences between different GHD funds etc clearer!)