I think you’ve identified a problem in the funding space, and I’ve had numerous conversations with others about this. A couple of comments:
As mentioned in another comment, I think that Open Phil’s Global Health and Development team is evolving to fill some of this gap. But they have certain issue areas of concentration, and also have a limited team evaluating grants, so I think they aren’t well-suiting to identifying high-impact opportunities in all areas (especially small grants).
I think the right venue for this would be EA Funds’ ‘Global Health and Development Fund’. Currently this fund is managed by Eli Hassenfeld and GW staff, which I think is a missed opportunity to provide a venue for more high-risk opportunities. While this fund has dispersed to some more ‘speculative’ orgs (like GCD, IPA), the most decision was to give 4.2 million to the Against Malaria Fund in Jan 2022. It seem like they don’t give many small grants either. I personally think it would be great if this fund had different managers, who explicitly looked for funding opportunities that are high impact in expectation but don’t fit into the processes and priorities of Open Phil or GiveWell.
Hi Dan. I think GiveWell deserves credit for managing to move huge retail donor $s to evidence based causes, using their high-clarity, high-objectivity approach.
Your approach at GivingGreen seems to test an interesting alternative. You encourage retail donors to give to climate change mitigation policy advocacy opportunities, which you perceive as higher expected impact than carbon offsets, yet offer recommendations on both. Clearly the policy angle is much more “complex” and can’t be assessed without leaning on a bunch of assumptions about how politics & other complex systems work.
But I think it remains to be seen if there is significant retail donor demand for this kind of advice. It’s one thing to gain confidence in somebody analysis on a simple matter like mosquito nets, it’s another to trust sombody’s assumptions and world views about a complex matter like climate change mitigation policy advocacy.
Hi Richard,
I think you’ve identified a problem in the funding space, and I’ve had numerous conversations with others about this. A couple of comments:
As mentioned in another comment, I think that Open Phil’s Global Health and Development team is evolving to fill some of this gap. But they have certain issue areas of concentration, and also have a limited team evaluating grants, so I think they aren’t well-suiting to identifying high-impact opportunities in all areas (especially small grants).
I think the right venue for this would be EA Funds’ ‘Global Health and Development Fund’. Currently this fund is managed by Eli Hassenfeld and GW staff, which I think is a missed opportunity to provide a venue for more high-risk opportunities. While this fund has dispersed to some more ‘speculative’ orgs (like GCD, IPA), the most decision was to give 4.2 million to the Against Malaria Fund in Jan 2022. It seem like they don’t give many small grants either. I personally think it would be great if this fund had different managers, who explicitly looked for funding opportunities that are high impact in expectation but don’t fit into the processes and priorities of Open Phil or GiveWell.
Hi Dan. I think GiveWell deserves credit for managing to move huge retail donor $s to evidence based causes, using their high-clarity, high-objectivity approach.
Your approach at GivingGreen seems to test an interesting alternative. You encourage retail donors to give to climate change mitigation policy advocacy opportunities, which you perceive as higher expected impact than carbon offsets, yet offer recommendations on both. Clearly the policy angle is much more “complex” and can’t be assessed without leaning on a bunch of assumptions about how politics & other complex systems work.
But I think it remains to be seen if there is significant retail donor demand for this kind of advice. It’s one thing to gain confidence in somebody analysis on a simple matter like mosquito nets, it’s another to trust sombody’s assumptions and world views about a complex matter like climate change mitigation policy advocacy.