Quick possible oversight—I didn’t see any discussion of recusal because the fund member is employed or receives funds from the potential grantee? Sorry if I just misread! The closest I saw was this:
A very close friend or partner of a fund member is employed, receiving funds from, or has some kind of other directly dependent relationship to the potential grantee
Right now I assume this would mainly apply to you (CFAR) and possibly Alex.
Separately, you mentioned OpenPhil’s policy of (non-) disclosure as an example to emulate. I strongly disagree with this, for two reasons.
Firstly, I think OpenPhil’s policy is bad. They enacted this policy as part of their general movement towards secrecy, but the actual reasons they described for sharing less details about their evaluation (i.e. issues are too complex, don’t want to aid hostile actors etc.) do not seem to be that relevant to not disclosing conflicts. Certainly, OpenPhil’s policy of non-disclosure makes me trust their work significantly less now as I have to assume there is a significant chance any given decision was unfairly biased.
Secondly, there are significant differences between OpenPhil and you guys. In particular, OpenPhil’s main job is advising a very small number of individuals, who (I presume) have access to many private details that they do not need to make public. Additionally, those individuals have a considerable amount of influence over OpenPhil. In the case of the LTFF, however, donors are reliant on public disclosure in order to be able to evaluate the fund. It is like the difference between a private company (who have almost no public disclosure requirements) and a public one (who have a lot of disclosure requirements).
I didn’t see any discussion of recusal because the fund member is employed or receives funds from the potential grantee?
Yes, that should be covered by the CEA fund policy we are extending. Here are the relevant sections:
Own organization: any organization that a team member
is currently employed by
volunteers for
was employed by at any time in the last 12 months
reasonably expects to become employed by in the foreseeable future
does not work for, but that employs a close relative or intimate partner
is on the board of, or otherwise plays a substantially similar advisory role for
has a substantial financial interest in
And:
A team member may not propose a grant to their own organization
A team member must recuse themselves from making decisions on grants to their own organizations (except where they advocate against granting to their own organization)
A team member must recuse themselves from advocating for their own organization if another team member has proposed such a grant
A team member may provide relevant information about their own organization in a neutral way (typically in response to questions from the team’s other members).
Which covers basically that whole space.
Note that that policy is still in draft form and not yet fully approved (and there are still some incomplete sentences in it), so we might want to adjust our policy above depending on changes in the the CEA fund general policy.
Separately, you mentioned OpenPhil’s policy of (non-) disclosure as an example to emulate. I strongly disagree with this, for two reasons.
This sounds a bit weird to me, given that the above is erring quite far in the direction of disclosure.
The specific dimension of the OpenPhil policy that I think has strong arguments going for it is to be hesitant with recusals. I really want to continue to be very open with our Conflict of Interest, and wouldn’t currently advocate for emulating Open Phil’s policy on the disclosure dimension.
Thanks for writing this up for comment.
Quick possible oversight—I didn’t see any discussion of recusal because the fund member is employed or receives funds from the potential grantee? Sorry if I just misread! The closest I saw was this:
Right now I assume this would mainly apply to you (CFAR) and possibly Alex.
Separately, you mentioned OpenPhil’s policy of (non-) disclosure as an example to emulate. I strongly disagree with this, for two reasons.
Firstly, I think OpenPhil’s policy is bad. They enacted this policy as part of their general movement towards secrecy, but the actual reasons they described for sharing less details about their evaluation (i.e. issues are too complex, don’t want to aid hostile actors etc.) do not seem to be that relevant to not disclosing conflicts. Certainly, OpenPhil’s policy of non-disclosure makes me trust their work significantly less now as I have to assume there is a significant chance any given decision was unfairly biased.
Secondly, there are significant differences between OpenPhil and you guys. In particular, OpenPhil’s main job is advising a very small number of individuals, who (I presume) have access to many private details that they do not need to make public. Additionally, those individuals have a considerable amount of influence over OpenPhil. In the case of the LTFF, however, donors are reliant on public disclosure in order to be able to evaluate the fund. It is like the difference between a private company (who have almost no public disclosure requirements) and a public one (who have a lot of disclosure requirements).
Yes, that should be covered by the CEA fund policy we are extending. Here are the relevant sections:
And:
Which covers basically that whole space.
Note that that policy is still in draft form and not yet fully approved (and there are still some incomplete sentences in it), so we might want to adjust our policy above depending on changes in the the CEA fund general policy.
Makes sense, thanks for clarifying!
This sounds a bit weird to me, given that the above is erring quite far in the direction of disclosure.
The specific dimension of the OpenPhil policy that I think has strong arguments going for it is to be hesitant with recusals. I really want to continue to be very open with our Conflict of Interest, and wouldn’t currently advocate for emulating Open Phil’s policy on the disclosure dimension.