Rethink Priorities has been trusted by EA Funds and Open Philanthropy to start new projects (e.g., on capacity for welfare of different animal species) and open entire new departments (such as AI governance).
These and other large organizations often only fund 25–50% of our needs in any particular area because they trust our ability to find other sources of funding. Therefore we rely on a broad range of individual donors to continue our work.
This surprised me, because I fairly often hear the advice of “donate to EA Funds” as the optimal thing to do, but it seems that if everybody did that, RP would not get funded. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I think donating to the EA Funds is a very good thing to do, but I don’t think every donor should do this. I think for donors who have the time and personal fit, it would be good to do some direct donations on your own and support organizations to help those organizations hedge against idiosyncratic risk from particular funders and help give them more individual support (which matters for showing proof to other funders and also matters for some IRS stuff).
I don’t think any one funder likes to fund the entirety of an organization’s budget, especially when that budget is large. But between the different institutional funders (EA Funds, Survival and Flourishing Fund, OpenPhil, etc.), I still think there is a strong (but not guaranteed) chance we will be funded (at least enough to meet somewhere between our “Low” and “High” budget amounts). Though if everyone assumed we were not funding constrained, than we definitely would be.
My other pitch is that I’d like RP, as an organization, to have some direct financial incentive and accountability to the EA community as a whole, above and beyond our specific institutional funders who have specific desires and fund us for specific reasons that don’t always match what the community as a whole wants or needs.
Lastly, if you trust us, we also value unrestricted funds highly (probably 1.5x-2x per dollar) because this allows us to start new research areas and programs that have less pre-existing proof/traction and get them to a point where they are ready to show bigger funders.
In your yearly report you mention:
This surprised me, because I fairly often hear the advice of “donate to EA Funds” as the optimal thing to do, but it seems that if everybody did that, RP would not get funded. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I think donating to the EA Funds is a very good thing to do, but I don’t think every donor should do this. I think for donors who have the time and personal fit, it would be good to do some direct donations on your own and support organizations to help those organizations hedge against idiosyncratic risk from particular funders and help give them more individual support (which matters for showing proof to other funders and also matters for some IRS stuff).
I don’t think any one funder likes to fund the entirety of an organization’s budget, especially when that budget is large. But between the different institutional funders (EA Funds, Survival and Flourishing Fund, OpenPhil, etc.), I still think there is a strong (but not guaranteed) chance we will be funded (at least enough to meet somewhere between our “Low” and “High” budget amounts). Though if everyone assumed we were not funding constrained, than we definitely would be.
My other pitch is that I’d like RP, as an organization, to have some direct financial incentive and accountability to the EA community as a whole, above and beyond our specific institutional funders who have specific desires and fund us for specific reasons that don’t always match what the community as a whole wants or needs.
Lastly, if you trust us, we also value unrestricted funds highly (probably 1.5x-2x per dollar) because this allows us to start new research areas and programs that have less pre-existing proof/traction and get them to a point where they are ready to show bigger funders.