One reading of this is that Open Phil’s new ‘bar for funding’ is that
“we should fund everything at tier 4 and better, as well as funding tier-5 grants under various conditions” ″about 40-70% of the grantmaking we did over the last 18 months would’ve qualified for funding under the new bar. I think 55% would be a reasonable point estimate.”
So (very roughly!) a new project would need to be ranked as better than the average longtermist grant over the past 18 months in order to be funded.
I looked at OpenPhil grants tagged as “Longtermism” in 2021 or 2022 (from here or the downloadable spreadsheet). I count 142 grants made since the beginning of July 2021. The bar isn’t being set by grants per se, but as a percentage: “% of our longtermist grantmaking over the last 18 months (by dollars)”. These 142 grants are about $235m, so half would be $117m.
For context, some grants are tiny, e.g. the smallest is $2,400. The top 10 represent over half that funding ($129m).
Edit: cut the following text thanks to Linch’s spot:
Though I note that you mentioned “we also included a number of grants now-defunct FTX-associated funders had made.”—it would be helpful for you to at least release the spreadsheet of grants you considered, even if for very understandable reasons you don’t want to publish the Tier ranking.
I looked at OpenPhil grants tagged as “Longtermism” in 2021 or 2022 (from here or the downloadable spreadsheet). Though I note that you mentioned “we also included a number of grants now-defunct FTX-associated funders had made.”
I think this is screened off by Holden’s explanation:
About 40% of our longtermist grantmaking over the last 18 months (by dollars) would have qualified for tier 4 or better (which, under the new guidance, means it would be funded). Note that this figure refers only to our longtermist grantmaking, and does not include grants by other funders (we included some of the latter in our exercise, but I’m reporting a figure based on Open Philanthropy alone because I think it will be easier to interpret). [emphasis mine, included surrounding text in quote so easier to interpret]
One reading of this is that Open Phil’s new ‘bar for funding’ is that
So (very roughly!) a new project would need to be ranked as better than the average longtermist grant over the past 18 months in order to be funded.
Is that a wild misrepresentation?
I looked at OpenPhil grants tagged as “Longtermism” in 2021 or 2022 (from here or the downloadable spreadsheet). I count 142 grants made since the beginning of July 2021. The bar isn’t being set by grants per se, but as a percentage: “% of our longtermist grantmaking over the last 18 months (by dollars)”. These 142 grants are about $235m, so half would be $117m.
For context, some grants are tiny, e.g. the smallest is $2,400. The top 10 represent over half that funding ($129m).
Edit: cut the following text thanks to Linch’s spot:
I think this is screened off by Holden’s explanation: