My favorite midsized grantmaker is Scott Alexander’s ACX Grants, mainly because I’ve enjoyed his blog for over a decade and it’s been really nice to see the community that sprang up around his writing grow and flourish, especially the EA stuff. His recent ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates is a great read in this vein. Some quotes:
The first cohort of ACX Grants was announced in late 2021, the second in early 2024. In 2022, I posted one-year updates for the first cohort. Now, as I start thinking about a third round, I’ve collected one-year updates on the second and three-year updates on the first. …
The total cost of ACX Grants, both rounds, was about $3 million. Do these outcomes represent a successful use of that amount of money? …
It’s harder to produce Inside View estimates, because so many of the projects either produce vague deliverables (eg a white paper that might guide future action) or intermediate results only (eg getting a government to pass AI safety regulations is good, but can’t be considered an end result unless those regulations prevent the AI apocalypse). Because we tend towards incubating charities and funding research (rather than last-mile causes like buying bednets), achieved measurable deliverables are thin on the ground. But here are things that ACX grantees have already accomplished:
Improved the living/slaughter conditions of 30 million fish.
Helped create Manifold Markets, a prediction market site with thousands of satisfied users, whose various spinoffs play a central role in the rationalist/EA community.
Helped create thousands of jobs in Rwanda and other developing countries
Passed an instant runoff vote proposition in Seattle.
Saved between a few dozen and a few hundred lives in Nigeria through better obstetric care.
And here are some intermediate deliverables from grantees:
Made Australian government take AI x-risk more seriously (estimated from 50th percentile to 60th percentile outcome)
Gotten the End Kidney Deaths Act (could save >1000 lives and billions of dollars per year) in front of Congress, with decent odds of passing by 2026.
Plausibly saved 2 billion chickens from painful death over next decade2.
Antiparasitic medication oxfendazole continues to advance through the clinical trial process.
And here are some things that have not been delivered yet but that I remain especially optimistic about:
Creation of anti-mosquito drones that provide a second level of defense along with bednets.
Revolutionize diagnosis of traumatic brain injury
Improve dietary guidelines in developing countries
Continue to support research and adoption of far UV light for pandemic prevention
Reduce lead poisoning in Nigeria
I think these underestimate success since many projects have yet to pay off (or to convince me to be especially optimistic), and others have paid off in vague hard-to-measure ways.
This is a beautifully crosswise oriented slice of the entire collective endeavor of effective altruism, and quite a lot of good done (or poised to be done) helped by a not-that-large sum of $3M over 2 cohorts given that GW and OP move 2 OOMs more $ per year.
It’s also been quite intellectually enriching to just see the sheer diversity of proposals to make the world better in these cohorts; e.g. I was a bit let down to learn that the Far Out Initiative didn’t pan out ($50k to fund a team to work on pharmacologic and genetic interventions to imitate the condition of Jo Cameron, a 77-year old Scottish woman who is both incapable of experiencing any physical or psychological suffering and has lived an astonishingly well-adjusted life despite that, by creating painkillers to splice into farm animals to promote cruelty-free meat and “end all suffering in the world forever”).
Of Scott’s lessons learned, this one stood out to me in light of the recent elitism in EA survey I just took, I think because I was leaning towards the same hope he had:
One disappointing result was that grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups (whether companies or nonprofits). For example, Innovate Animal Ag was in many ways overdetermined as a grantee—former Yale grad and Google engineer founder, profiled in NYT, already funded by Open Philanthropy—and they in fact did amazing work. On the other hand, there were a lot of promising ACX community members with interesting ideas who were going to turn them into startups any day now, but who ended up kind of floundering (although this also describes Manifold, one of our standout successes). One thing I still don’t understand is that Innovate Animal Ag seemed to genuinely need more funding despite being legibly great and high status—does this screen off a theoretical objection that they don’t provide ACX Grants with as much counterfactual impact? Am I really just mad that it would be boring to give too many grants to obviously-good things that even moron could spot as promising?
The other takeaway of his that gave me mixed feelings was this one, I think because I’d been secretly hoping for some form of work-life balance compatibility with really effective (emphasis) direct-work altruism:
Someone (I think it might be Paul Graham) once said that they were always surprised how quickly destined-to-be-successful startup founders responded to emails—sometimes within a single-digit number of minutes regardless of time of day. I used to think of this as mysterious—some sort of psychological trait? Working with these grants has made me think of it as just a straightforward fact of life: some people operate an order of magnitude faster than others. The Manifold team created something like five different novel institutions in the amount of time it’s taken some other grantees to figure out a business plan; I particularly remember one time when I needed something, sent out a request to talk about it with two or three different teams, and the Manifold team had fully created the thing and were pestering me to launch a trial version before some of the other people had even gotten back to me. I take no pleasure in reporting this—I sometimes take a week or two to answer emails, and all of the predictions about my personality that this implies would be correct—but it’s increasingly something that I look for and respect. A lot of the most successful grants succeeded quickly, or at least were quick to get on a promising track. Since everything takes ten times longer than people expect, only someone who moves ten times faster than people expect can get things done in a reasonable amount of time.
Edited to add: I appreciated this comment by Alex Toussaint, an ACX grantee:
Tornyol (anti-mosquito drones) is based in France and we couldn’t have got the support from ACX Grants from a local VC. …
VCs, like potential employees or clients, have reading grids (i.e. rubrics, a transliteration of « une grille de lecture ») to evaluate pitches. The great thing I found about ACX Grants is that the grid is different, and encourages different kinds of projects. Founder obsession for a problem seems to be encouraged in ACX Grants, although it’s clearly discouraged for very early VC funding. VCs like very well made slides, communication abilities, and beautiful people in general, while I’ve found no such bias for ACX Grants. Being based outside the US is a big minus for American VCs, but ACX Grants almost seems to be favoring it. VCs tend to think a lot by analogy (the Uber for X, the Cursor for Y …) while I found ACX Grants to be much more thinking from first principles than the median VC I met.
I’m not criticizing the VC reading grid. It obviously comes from experience and it tends to work financially for them. But you have to remember that a large part of the decision comes down to the potential for a quite early (3-4 years) and billion-dollar exit option. Not all projects fit that and it’s a good thing to support the other. The other advantage of it is that it selects founders that can go through the hoops of making their project fit the grid. That proves VCs the founders are capable of adapting their message to their interlocutors, which is highly necessary when raising further money, recruiting or discussing with any partner. That’s something ACX Grants does not seem to value much.
All in all, ACX Grants is great in that it provides funding with a very unique reading grid, so it helps projects that could get no help anywhere else.
Thanks Nick, and great take as usual (for others’ convenience, here it is)
I myself work at a CE-incubated charity, so I’m of course inclined to agree with you on the reasons you listed as to how CE’s approach mitigates the disadvantages smaller orgs and individuals have vs larger ones.
(As a tangent this is also why I have incredible respect for what you’ve managed to build at OneDay Health, AFAICT you don’t have any of those advantages we benefit from! Seriously: since 2017, 53(!) nurse-led health centers launched leading to 340k patients treated, >$600k saved by patients, 165k malaria cases treated, 125k under-5s treated is phenomenal. I wish you gave a talk at EAG on how you and the team did this, lots of lessons for aspiring “moral entrepreneurs” I’m sure. Sorry btw if this makes you feel awkward I’ve always wanted to express this)
That said I do think Scott is pointing to a slightly different thing than big vs small orgs, which is traditionally impressive credentials and ways of working vs non-traditional credentials or the lack thereof. I took Scott’s hope (which I shared) to be that there are a lot more people than we think who are “diamonds in the rough” — they may not have gone to Oxbridge / Ivy etc or have training & experience in medicine / law / consulting / tech / whatever prestigious career, and their ideas for making the world better may not be the usual ideas everyone agrees is “best” but oddball ones that make you go ”… huh?”, and most talent-spotters filter for these kinds of markers and would exclude them — but Scott (who doesn’t have a traditionally-impressive background himself) would see their potential and give them a shot, and the follow-up would hopefully prove him right. He’s disappointed that this doesn’t seem to be true, which suggests that those traditionally impressive credentials really do give a lot of hard-to-fake signal of your projects panning out. I mean I don’t think this is all that surprising, but also this is grist for the mill of the discussion around EA feeling elitist and exclusive to people with more “relatable” or less privileged backgrounds who nevertheless really want to contribute meaningfully to the whole “doing good better” project.
Yeah I think he might be combining/ conflating both the elitism and the bigger org issues actually. Based on “grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups” and “there were a lot of promising ACX community members with interesting ideas who were going to turn them into startups any day now, but who ended up kind of floundering”.
It makes me sad too, but I do agree on the traditionally impressive credentials front. There are definitely diamonds in the rough but they ain’t so easy to find!
My favorite midsized grantmaker is Scott Alexander’s ACX Grants, mainly because I’ve enjoyed his blog for over a decade and it’s been really nice to see the community that sprang up around his writing grow and flourish, especially the EA stuff. His recent ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates is a great read in this vein. Some quotes:
This is a beautifully crosswise oriented slice of the entire collective endeavor of effective altruism, and quite a lot of good done (or poised to be done) helped by a not-that-large sum of $3M over 2 cohorts given that GW and OP move 2 OOMs more $ per year.
It’s also been quite intellectually enriching to just see the sheer diversity of proposals to make the world better in these cohorts; e.g. I was a bit let down to learn that the Far Out Initiative didn’t pan out ($50k to fund a team to work on pharmacologic and genetic interventions to imitate the condition of Jo Cameron, a 77-year old Scottish woman who is both incapable of experiencing any physical or psychological suffering and has lived an astonishingly well-adjusted life despite that, by creating painkillers to splice into farm animals to promote cruelty-free meat and “end all suffering in the world forever”).
Of Scott’s lessons learned, this one stood out to me in light of the recent elitism in EA survey I just took, I think because I was leaning towards the same hope he had:
The other takeaway of his that gave me mixed feelings was this one, I think because I’d been secretly hoping for some form of work-life balance compatibility with really effective (emphasis) direct-work altruism:
Edited to add: I appreciated this comment by Alex Toussaint, an ACX grantee:
Fantastic summary love it!
Made some comments on the small org vs. Big org thing, was going to reply here but it became a mini essay so put it on my quicktakes lol.
Thanks Nick, and great take as usual (for others’ convenience, here it is)
I myself work at a CE-incubated charity, so I’m of course inclined to agree with you on the reasons you listed as to how CE’s approach mitigates the disadvantages smaller orgs and individuals have vs larger ones.
(As a tangent this is also why I have incredible respect for what you’ve managed to build at OneDay Health, AFAICT you don’t have any of those advantages we benefit from! Seriously: since 2017, 53(!) nurse-led health centers launched leading to 340k patients treated, >$600k saved by patients, 165k malaria cases treated, 125k under-5s treated is phenomenal. I wish you gave a talk at EAG on how you and the team did this, lots of lessons for aspiring “moral entrepreneurs” I’m sure. Sorry btw if this makes you feel awkward I’ve always wanted to express this)
That said I do think Scott is pointing to a slightly different thing than big vs small orgs, which is traditionally impressive credentials and ways of working vs non-traditional credentials or the lack thereof. I took Scott’s hope (which I shared) to be that there are a lot more people than we think who are “diamonds in the rough” — they may not have gone to Oxbridge / Ivy etc or have training & experience in medicine / law / consulting / tech / whatever prestigious career, and their ideas for making the world better may not be the usual ideas everyone agrees is “best” but oddball ones that make you go ”… huh?”, and most talent-spotters filter for these kinds of markers and would exclude them — but Scott (who doesn’t have a traditionally-impressive background himself) would see their potential and give them a shot, and the follow-up would hopefully prove him right. He’s disappointed that this doesn’t seem to be true, which suggests that those traditionally impressive credentials really do give a lot of hard-to-fake signal of your projects panning out. I mean I don’t think this is all that surprising, but also this is grist for the mill of the discussion around EA feeling elitist and exclusive to people with more “relatable” or less privileged backgrounds who nevertheless really want to contribute meaningfully to the whole “doing good better” project.
Yeah I think he might be combining/ conflating both the elitism and the bigger org issues actually. Based on “grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups” and “there were a lot of promising ACX community members with interesting ideas who were going to turn them into startups any day now, but who ended up kind of floundering”.
It makes me sad too, but I do agree on the traditionally impressive credentials front. There are definitely diamonds in the rough but they ain’t so easy to find!
Love the quick thoughts with quotes, wouldn’t have read it otherwise and now glad to have sat through some of the insights :)