There’s no inherent contradiction between the current sponsorship program isn’t a good fit for this sponsor and these sponsored orgs and fiscal sponsorship is often a good thing.
There are a number of specific reasons I could see that this wasn’t a good fit:
EV’s reputation took damage due to the FTX scandal, particularly with the Charity Commission
We don’t know what action the CC will take, but—either by CC mandate or “voluntary” action—EV’s board will likely have to be significantly more involved in monitoring sponsored orgs than another sponsor would be, given that the CC appears to be concerned about lack of control issues
There’s no reason for sponsored orgs to be linked to a corporation that is seen as the flagship corporation of effective altruism. Under that structure, bad stuff that happens at a sponsored org can disproportionately affect EA as a whole (and bad stuff that happens with EA senior leadership can have a disproportionate negative effect on sponsored orgs).
EA Funds and GWWC may be relatively legal-risk-intolerant in that they regrant large amounts of donor monies
CEA is relatively legal-risk-creating, especially the Community Health / Special Projects team
Certain sponsored orgs may create reputational risk for other sponsored orgs (e.g., GWWC seems relatively sensitive to reputational risk given its purpose and target audience)
In my view, fiscal sponsorship is a good thing for the right sponsored orgs. But that function should be placed in a corporation whose primary role is to be a fiscal sponsor. Its board should consist mainly of people who have the time and talents to guide sponsored orgs, not some of the most prominent people in EA. Their role would be more to make the trains run on time than trying to lead the effective altruism movement.
I think centralization can have a lot of benefits, but the situation with EV in particular seemed to have substantial downsides. (I’m not sure how much of this was historic aspects of EV vs. being a charity in the UK, which, from what I understand, has some unique hurdles).
Also, it’s not entirely clear to me that each of the spun-off orgs need to have the whole cumbersome dual US/UK structure. There are simpler ways for a UK non-profit to be able to access tax-advantaged donations from the US (e.g., a so-called “Friends Of” organization). And as you imply, UK charitable regulation is more onerous, so it’s not clear that an organization whose funding and operations were primarily in the US would find having a legal existence in the UK sufficiently worthwhile.
I think you’re underrating run-of-the-mill operational/bureaucratic reasons why a project might want to be its own org rather than part of a larger org
There’s no inherent contradiction between the current sponsorship program isn’t a good fit for this sponsor and these sponsored orgs and fiscal sponsorship is often a good thing.
There are a number of specific reasons I could see that this wasn’t a good fit:
EV’s reputation took damage due to the FTX scandal, particularly with the Charity Commission
We don’t know what action the CC will take, but—either by CC mandate or “voluntary” action—EV’s board will likely have to be significantly more involved in monitoring sponsored orgs than another sponsor would be, given that the CC appears to be concerned about lack of control issues
There’s no reason for sponsored orgs to be linked to a corporation that is seen as the flagship corporation of effective altruism. Under that structure, bad stuff that happens at a sponsored org can disproportionately affect EA as a whole (and bad stuff that happens with EA senior leadership can have a disproportionate negative effect on sponsored orgs).
EA Funds and GWWC may be relatively legal-risk-intolerant in that they regrant large amounts of donor monies
CEA is relatively legal-risk-creating, especially the Community Health / Special Projects team
Certain sponsored orgs may create reputational risk for other sponsored orgs (e.g., GWWC seems relatively sensitive to reputational risk given its purpose and target audience)
In my view, fiscal sponsorship is a good thing for the right sponsored orgs. But that function should be placed in a corporation whose primary role is to be a fiscal sponsor. Its board should consist mainly of people who have the time and talents to guide sponsored orgs, not some of the most prominent people in EA. Their role would be more to make the trains run on time than trying to lead the effective altruism movement.
This take makes a lot of sense to me.
I think centralization can have a lot of benefits, but the situation with EV in particular seemed to have substantial downsides. (I’m not sure how much of this was historic aspects of EV vs. being a charity in the UK, which, from what I understand, has some unique hurdles).
Also, it’s not entirely clear to me that each of the spun-off orgs need to have the whole cumbersome dual US/UK structure. There are simpler ways for a UK non-profit to be able to access tax-advantaged donations from the US (e.g., a so-called “Friends Of” organization). And as you imply, UK charitable regulation is more onerous, so it’s not clear that an organization whose funding and operations were primarily in the US would find having a legal existence in the UK sufficiently worthwhile.
I think you’re underrating run-of-the-mill operational/bureaucratic reasons why a project might want to be its own org rather than part of a larger org