[More of a general question for Manifund, but posting it here as others may benefit from whatever insight @Austin or others can provide]
What is the expected distribution of vetting labor between Manifund users and Manifund itself? In particular, I see a number of very small organizations previously unknown to me (especially African animal-welfare organizations this round) -- which is great! However, that does raise some due diligence questions that I don’t have to think about when I’m considering allocating money to, e.g., GiveWell. It would be unfortunate either for me to falsely assume Manifund is performing certain due diligence (in which case it isn’t done) or to duplicate what Manifund is already doing (which would be inefficient and waste grantees’ time).
(The rest of this question will have some non-U.S. focus, in part because the legal expectations are different for U.S. and non-U.S. grants.)
In particular, is it fair to assume that:
Manifund verifies that the grantee is who they claim to be? It’s hard to imagine a system that would comply with (e.g.) anti-money laundering and similar laws that didn’t include some degree of identity verification.
It would be helpful to know how far this identity proofing goes. For instance, if I submitted a proposal for law-related work on X which claimed that I was a lawyer who graduated from Yale[1] and had five years’ experience in subject matter X, how much of that gets verified by Manifund?
Manifund follows applicable IRS rules for non-profits regarding foreign grantmaking? I’m being general there because I’m not going to opine on whether I think Manifund is a public charity, a DAF, or a private foundation. See here for a summary of the DAF rules. But my understanding is that the funds flow through a 501(c)(3), so I’m not sure how Manifund could avoid taking either expenditure responsibility or making equivalency determinations (which aren’t cheap).
If so, it would be helpful to post what the process is, so users can decide whether it meets their needs or whether they feel the need to conduct additional due diligence to confirm the money will be serving appropriate charitable ends.
I appreciate, of course, that Manifund doesn’t want to wield a broad veto power over proposals that users want to see funded. I guess I would roughly draw the line at Manifund ensuring that the proposal is legitimate, but deferring to the user on whether funding it is a good idea?
Thanks for the questions! Most of our due diligence happens in the step where the Manifund team decides whether to approve a particular grant; this generally happens after a grant has met its minimum funding bar and the grantee has signed our standard grant agreement (example). At that point, our due diligence usually consists of reviewing their proposal as written for charitable eligibility, as well as a brief online search, looking through the grant recipient’s eg LinkedIn and other web presences to get a sense of who they are. For larger grants on our platform (eg $10k+), we usually have additional confidence that the grant is legitimate coming from the donors or regrantors themselves.
In your specific example, it’s very possible that I personally could have missed cross-verifying your claim of attending Yale (with the likelihood decreasing the larger the grant is for). Part of what’s different about our operations is that we open up the screening process so that anyone on the internet can chime in if they see something amiss; to date we’ve paused two grants (out of ~160) based on concerns raised from others.
I believe we’re classified as a public charity and take on expenditure responsibility for our grants, via the terms of our grant agreement and the status updates we ask for from grantees.
And yes, our general philosophy is that Manifund as a platform is responsible for ensuring that a grant is legitimate under US 501c3 law, while being agnostic about the impact of specific grants—that’s the role of donors and regrantors on our platform.
[More of a general question for Manifund, but posting it here as others may benefit from whatever insight @Austin or others can provide]
What is the expected distribution of vetting labor between Manifund users and Manifund itself? In particular, I see a number of very small organizations previously unknown to me (especially African animal-welfare organizations this round) -- which is great! However, that does raise some due diligence questions that I don’t have to think about when I’m considering allocating money to, e.g., GiveWell. It would be unfortunate either for me to falsely assume Manifund is performing certain due diligence (in which case it isn’t done) or to duplicate what Manifund is already doing (which would be inefficient and waste grantees’ time).
(The rest of this question will have some non-U.S. focus, in part because the legal expectations are different for U.S. and non-U.S. grants.)
In particular, is it fair to assume that:
Manifund verifies that the grantee is who they claim to be? It’s hard to imagine a system that would comply with (e.g.) anti-money laundering and similar laws that didn’t include some degree of identity verification.
It would be helpful to know how far this identity proofing goes. For instance, if I submitted a proposal for law-related work on X which claimed that I was a lawyer who graduated from Yale[1] and had five years’ experience in subject matter X, how much of that gets verified by Manifund?
Manifund follows applicable IRS rules for non-profits regarding foreign grantmaking? I’m being general there because I’m not going to opine on whether I think Manifund is a public charity, a DAF, or a private foundation. See here for a summary of the DAF rules. But my understanding is that the funds flow through a 501(c)(3), so I’m not sure how Manifund could avoid taking either expenditure responsibility or making equivalency determinations (which aren’t cheap).
If so, it would be helpful to post what the process is, so users can decide whether it meets their needs or whether they feel the need to conduct additional due diligence to confirm the money will be serving appropriate charitable ends.
I appreciate, of course, that Manifund doesn’t want to wield a broad veto power over proposals that users want to see funded. I guess I would roughly draw the line at Manifund ensuring that the proposal is legitimate, but deferring to the user on whether funding it is a good idea?
I did not graduate from Yale, by the way.
Thanks for the questions! Most of our due diligence happens in the step where the Manifund team decides whether to approve a particular grant; this generally happens after a grant has met its minimum funding bar and the grantee has signed our standard grant agreement (example). At that point, our due diligence usually consists of reviewing their proposal as written for charitable eligibility, as well as a brief online search, looking through the grant recipient’s eg LinkedIn and other web presences to get a sense of who they are. For larger grants on our platform (eg $10k+), we usually have additional confidence that the grant is legitimate coming from the donors or regrantors themselves.
In your specific example, it’s very possible that I personally could have missed cross-verifying your claim of attending Yale (with the likelihood decreasing the larger the grant is for). Part of what’s different about our operations is that we open up the screening process so that anyone on the internet can chime in if they see something amiss; to date we’ve paused two grants (out of ~160) based on concerns raised from others.
I believe we’re classified as a public charity and take on expenditure responsibility for our grants, via the terms of our grant agreement and the status updates we ask for from grantees.
And yes, our general philosophy is that Manifund as a platform is responsible for ensuring that a grant is legitimate under US 501c3 law, while being agnostic about the impact of specific grants—that’s the role of donors and regrantors on our platform.