If you find your opportunities are being constrained by small donation size, you can use donor lotteries to trade your donation for a small chance of a large budget (just get in touch with CEA if you need a chance at a larger pot). You may also be interested in a post I made on this subject.
just get in touch with CEA if you need a chance at a larger pot
do you mean (a) get in touch with CEA if you need a chance at a larger pot than the current lotteries offer or (b) get in touch with CEA if you need a chance at a larger pot by entering a lottery (as there currently aren’t any)?
In terms of finding opportunities, I don’t have a complete framework but I do have some rough heuristics:
(1) look for opportunities that the large donors can’t find, are too small for them to act on, or for some other reason fail to execute on
(2) follow the example of angel investors in the tech community by identifying a funding thesis and then reaching out through personal networks to find people to fund at the very early stage of starting projects/organizations.
In terms of the historical work, I’m considering organizing a much deeper investigation into the history of these organizations. If you or anyone else is interested in working full time / part time on this, do let me know!
This post is excellent. I find the historical work particularly useful, both as a collation of timelines and for the conclusions you tease out of it.
Considering the high quality and usefulness of this post, it is churlish to ask for more, but I’ll do so anyway.
Have you given any thought to how donors might identify funding opportunities in the AI safety space? OpenPhil have written about how they found many more giving opportunities after committing to give, but it may be difficult to shop around a more modest personal giving budget.
A fallback here could be the far future EA fund, but I would be keen to hear other ideas
If you find your opportunities are being constrained by small donation size, you can use donor lotteries to trade your donation for a small chance of a large budget (just get in touch with CEA if you need a chance at a larger pot). You may also be interested in a post I made on this subject.
Thanks Carl, this looks great. By
do you mean (a) get in touch with CEA if you need a chance at a larger pot than the current lotteries offer or (b) get in touch with CEA if you need a chance at a larger pot by entering a lottery (as there currently aren’t any)?
Thank you!
In terms of finding opportunities, I don’t have a complete framework but I do have some rough heuristics: (1) look for opportunities that the large donors can’t find, are too small for them to act on, or for some other reason fail to execute on (2) follow the example of angel investors in the tech community by identifying a funding thesis and then reaching out through personal networks to find people to fund at the very early stage of starting projects/organizations.
In terms of the historical work, I’m considering organizing a much deeper investigation into the history of these organizations. If you or anyone else is interested in working full time / part time on this, do let me know!
Thanks Alex! Those sound like useful heuristics, though I’d love to see some experience reports (perhaps I ought to generate them).
I would be interested! I’ll reach out via private message