SFF grant recipients need to be charities or orgs hosted by charities (for example, with a fiscal sponsorship from Rethink Priorities). This means SFF is unlikely to be a good fit for most individuals. I believe Nonlinear is able to facilitate grants to US citizens, and Open Phil should be able to make grants to individuals generally, although I think they’re quite bandwidth-constrained at the moment.
There’s several people or entities who did not seek FTX funding or consequential associations with SBF.
I think individuals who did this because they had private negative information, or the ability to perceive FTX or SBF’s enterprises accurately prior to November, should be somewhat rewarded in states of the world where FTX fails due to fraud.
It seems like there are strange and bad community effects if the opposite is true, especially if impact is much more difficult than it seems, funding or status gradients are distorted, and evaluating communication and expertise in a public setting is made further difficult than it already was.
Really happy to see this! Thanks to those working on it.
> In response to the recent extraordinary need, Jaan Tallinn, the main funder of SFF, is doubling speculation budgets.
Increasing the budgets this year seems like a solid move to me.
I think longtermist organizations should be planning for a smaller funding environment in the future. However, in the near-term, it seems really good to cover the immediate and urgent obligations.
I imagine that in the worst case, if not many great groups actually apply, you could just fund like a normal year.
AFAIK, the SFF main grant cycle budget isn’t increasing. Rather, this initiative looks to pull a larger fraction of the next (unannounced, usually semi-annual) grant round’s funding to the near future with speculation grants, which can help smooth out consumption / help deal with acute needs.
I agree that the EA funding environment, especially for longtermist and meta orgs, is shrinking quite a lot, and folks should plan accordingly.
SFF routinely makes grants of both types. The “specific project” scope tends to be pretty broad, like “general support of 80,000 Hours, a project of CEA”.
Great program, thanks for sharing. Can individuals apply, or is this funding only available for charitable organizations?
SFF grant recipients need to be charities or orgs hosted by charities (for example, with a fiscal sponsorship from Rethink Priorities). This means SFF is unlikely to be a good fit for most individuals. I believe Nonlinear is able to facilitate grants to US citizens, and Open Phil should be able to make grants to individuals generally, although I think they’re quite bandwidth-constrained at the moment.
There’s several people or entities who did not seek FTX funding or consequential associations with SBF.
I think individuals who did this because they had private negative information, or the ability to perceive FTX or SBF’s enterprises accurately prior to November, should be somewhat rewarded in states of the world where FTX fails due to fraud.
It seems like there are strange and bad community effects if the opposite is true, especially if impact is much more difficult than it seems, funding or status gradients are distorted, and evaluating communication and expertise in a public setting is made further difficult than it already was.
Really happy to see this! Thanks to those working on it.
> In response to the recent extraordinary need, Jaan Tallinn, the main funder of SFF, is doubling speculation budgets.
Increasing the budgets this year seems like a solid move to me.
I think longtermist organizations should be planning for a smaller funding environment in the future. However, in the near-term, it seems really good to cover the immediate and urgent obligations.
I imagine that in the worst case, if not many great groups actually apply, you could just fund like a normal year.
AFAIK, the SFF main grant cycle budget isn’t increasing. Rather, this initiative looks to pull a larger fraction of the next (unannounced, usually semi-annual) grant round’s funding to the near future with speculation grants, which can help smooth out consumption / help deal with acute needs.
I agree that the EA funding environment, especially for longtermist and meta orgs, is shrinking quite a lot, and folks should plan accordingly.
Will you consider applications for specific projects or only for the general operating expenses of the entire organization?
SFF routinely makes grants of both types. The “specific project” scope tends to be pretty broad, like “general support of 80,000 Hours, a project of CEA”.