Itâs Marginal Funding Week! In order to help us all make better donation decisions this giving season, organisations will be sharing what they would be able to do with extra funding.
If your project is fundraising, you can write a full post for Marginal Funding week, or answer below. Only projects that post or answer + message me are eligible for next weekâs Donation Election. However, please answer below even if you wonât be taking part in the Donation Election.
What to include in your response:
The name of the project, and your role in relation to it.
A description of how your project is likely to use extra donations.
Any other information which might help readers understand the value of marginal donations: for example, if your organisation would be able to hire an assistant with the money, how much more productive would this make you? How would it affect the output of your intervention?
For Marginal Funding week inspiration, check out last yearâs posts, and thread.
Answering on behalf of Shrimp Welfare Project :)
Our overheads (i.e. salaries, travel/âconferences), and program costs for our work in India are currently covered by grants until the end of 2026. This means that any additional funds are put towards our Humane Slaughter Initiative. (For context, our secured grants also cover the cost of some stunners, but HSI as a program is still able to absorb more funding.)
Each stunner costs us $55k and we ask the producers we work with to commit to stunning a minimum of 120 million shrimps per annum. This results in a cost-effectiveness of ~2,000+ shrimps helped /â $ /â year (i.e. our marginal impact of additional dollars is higher than our historical cost-effectiveness).
Although weâre very excited by how cost-effective it is in its own right, ultimately we want to catalyse industry-wide adoption by deploying stunners to the early adopters in order to build towards a tipping point that achieves critical mass. In other words, over the next few years we want to take the HSI program from Growth to Scale.
Weâve had some good indications recently that HSI does contribute to âlocking-inâ industry adoption, with Tesco and Sainsburyâs recently publishing welfare policies, building on similar wins in the past (such as M&S and Albert Heijn).
If anyone wants to reach out to me directly, you can contact me at aaron@shrimpwelfareproject.org. You can also donate to SWP through our website, or book a meeting with me via this link.
Good luck with fundraising! :)
One nit: SWPâs cost effectiveness numbers donât seem to include any operational overhead in the denominator (see the CEA, where youâre only counting the cost of the stunners).
I understand youâve fundraised for overhead separately, but IMO it should be best practice to include overhead costs in your denominator â obviously someone would have to cover those costs! Thought came from this thread with Vasco.
Iâd be curious for the overhead inclusive costs if that was quick â maybe as a proxy, you can multiply by [total org costs] /â [non operational costs]? :)
Thanks Angelina :)
In our Guesstimate model, the overhead costs to date are included in the bottom right (something like cell L15 if it were a spreadsheet) - between the total cost of the stunners, and the final overall cost titled SWP Total Expenses.
So the cost-effectiveness we report on our website factors in this cost, but when weâre fundraising for marginal dollars, we often try to highlight the fact that marginal dollars are more cost-effective than the average dollar (which is unusual for an animal charity). But I agree that this is something of a judgement call, and the complex reality of marginal dollars is somewhere between those two numbers.
Hope thatâs helpful!
Oh! Well Iâm sorry for spreading misinformation :) Thanks for the correction!
How much room for more funding do you have? Or, say, how many more stunners do you expect to be worth buying?
Good question Michael!
Our current estimate is that weâll buy 50 stunners, but Iâd take that number with a huge pinch of salt, as there are a number of factors that could influence how many stunners we ultimately need to buy (probably the most important one is that we want to focus on getting retailer commitments as our goal going forward (rather than a specific number of stunners), and itâs not super clear to us what the adoption curve will look like for retail commitments as we work with retailers outside of the UK).
We regularly evaluate our HSI program, and update our estimates if we think itâs appropriate. It could turn out we need fewer than 50, it could turn out that we need more. I guess a message I would like to emphasise is that we will use marginal funding in the most cost-effective way we can, whether or not the marginal funding goes towards a specific stunner, or towards more general corporate engagment work to reach commitments.
How much room for more funding do you expect to have in general for work in 2025 (after including funding coming from ACE)?
Something in the ballpark of a few hundred thousand dollars.
This is a slightly tricky question to answer as:
We donât have a specific funding gap for 2025
i.e. our overheads are covered, as well as the costs for our target number of stunners
However, it could be the case that we get unexpected momentum next year, and can give away more stunners than weâd planned for
Weâve run into this situation before, where we had an unexpected string of wins, and had to rapidly fundraise in order to pay for them
So effectively weâre trying to build up our war chest so that weâre able to deploy it when the opportunities present themselves
So all of that doesnât lead me to be confident in saying any specific number, but I think something in the ballpark of a few hundred thousand dollars seems reasonable
Answering on behalf of New Incentives.
We provide small cash incentives to encourage childhood vaccinations in northern Nigeria, an area with some of the highest under-five mortality rates and lowest vaccination rates in the world.
We are currently working to fill a $30.5 M funding gap so that we can reach an additional 1.9 million infants and protect them from deadly diseases like measles and pneumonia. You can learn more about our future plans here.
DonateOtto Barten here, director of the Existential Risk Observatory.
We reduce AI existential risk by informing the public debate. Concretely, we do media work, organize events, do research, and give policy advice.
Currently, public awareness of AI existential risk among the US public is around 15% according to our measurements. Low problem awareness is a major reason why risk-reducing regulation such as SB-1047, or more ambitious federal or global proposals, do not get passed. Why solve a problem one does not see in the first place?
Therefore, we do media work to increase awareness of AI existential risk and propose helpful regulation. Today, we published our fourth piece in TIME Magazine, arguing AI is an existential risk and proposing the Conditional AI Safety Treaty. According to survey-based measurements (n=50 per media item), our âconversion rateâ, measuring how many readers newly connect AI to human extinction after reading our articles, is between 34% and 50%, of which about half remains over time. We have published four TIME pieces and around 20 other media items in the last two years. Although we cannot cleanly separate media work from other work, we could estimate that $35k should get a funder roughly two leading media pieces, plus 10 supporting ones.
In addition to media work, we also organize events. Our track record contains four debates with leading existential risk voices such as Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Jaan Tallinn on one hand, and journalists from e.g. TIME and The Economist and MPs on the other. Our events aim to inform leading voices of the societal debate and policymakers about existential risk and give experts the chance to propose helpful policy. We have organized events ahead of the AI Safety Summits in Bletchley Park, Korea/âremote, and will do so again in Paris. These events have helped and will help to shape the summitsâ narratives towards concern for existential risk. We can organize one event for around $20k, including venue costs, traveling/âhotel costs, and organization hours.
We are also doing policy research. In the coming year, we will focus on what the optimal Conditional AI Safety Treaty should look like exactly, and how we can get it implemented. We are uniquely positioned to not only do leading research, but also communicate this directly to a large audience, including e.g. MPs and leading journalists. We are planning to write a paper on what the optimal shape should be for the Conditional AI Safety Treaty, working together with other institutes. We can produce such a paper for around $18k.
As an organization, we are heavily funding constrained. We have been supported by established funders such as SFF, LTFF, and ICFG in the past, but only for relatively modest amounts. Our current runway is therefore about five months. Additional funding would mostly enable us to keep doing what we are doing (and get even better at it!): media work, organizing events, and doing research. Within these three focus areas, we are also open to receiving earmarked funding, or additional funding to scale up our work.
For donations, best to contact us by email. Your support is much appreciated!
TL;DR: MATS is fundraising for Summer 2025 and could support more scholars at $35k/âscholar
Ryan Kidd here, MATS Co-Executive Director :)
The ML Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS) Program is twice-yearly independent research and educational seminar program that aims to provide talented scholars with talks, workshops, and research mentorship in the fields of AI alignment, interpretability, and governance and connect them with the Berkeley AI safety research community. The Winter 2024-25 Program will run Jan 6-Mar 14, 2025 and our Summer 2025 Program is set to begin in June 2025. We are currently accepting donations for our Summer 2025 Program and beyond. We would love to include additional interested mentors and scholars at $35k/âscholar. We have substantially benefited from individual donations in the past and were able to support ~11 additional scholars due to Manifund donations.
MATS helps expand the talent pipeline for AI safety research by empowering scholars to work on AI safety at existing research teams, found new research teams, and pursue independent research. To this end, MATS connects scholars with research mentorship and funding, and provides a seminar program, office space, housing, research management, networking opportunities, community support, and logistical support to scholars. MATS supports mentors with logistics, advertising, applicant selection, and research management, greatly reducing the barriers to research mentorship. Immediately following each program is an optional extension phase in London where top performing scholars can continue research with their mentors. For more information about MATS, please see our recent reports: Alumni Impact Analysis, Winter 2023-24 Retrospective, Summer 2023 Retrospective, and Talent Needs of Technical AI Safety Teams.
You can see further discussion of our program on our website and Manifund page. Please feel free to AMA in the comments here :)
Answering on behalf the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute!
Weâre looking to raise another ~$200k for 2025, to cover our current two-person team plus expenses. Weâd also be enthusiastic about expanding our efforts if there is donor interest.
We at QURI have been busy on software infrastructure and epistemics investigations this last year. We currently have two full-time employeesâmyself and Slava Matyuhin. Slava focuses on engineering, I do a mix of engineering, writing, and admin.
Our main work this year has been improving Squiggle and Squiggle Hub.
In the last few months weâve built Squiggle AI as well, which weâve started getting feedback on and will write more about here shortly. Basically, we believe that BOTECs and cost-benefit models are good fits for automation. So far, with some tooling, we think that weâve created a system that produces decent first passes on many simple models. This would ideally be something EAs benefit from directly, and something that could help inspire other epistemic AI improvements.
On the side of software development, weâve posted a series of articles about forecasting, epistemics, and effective altruism. Recently these have focused on the combination of AI and epistemics.
For 2025, weâre looking to expand more throughout the EA and AI safety ecosystems. We have a backlog of Squiggle updates to inform people, and have a long list of new things we expect people to like. Weâve so far focused on product experimentation and development, and would like to spend more time on education and outreach. In addition, weâll probably continue focusing a lot on AIâboth on improving AI systems to write and audit cost-effectiveness models and similar, and also on helping build cost-effectiveness models to guide AI safety.
If you support this sort of work and are interested in chatting or donating, please reach out! You can reach me at ozzie@quantifieduncertainty.org. Weâre very focused on helping the EA ecosystem, and would really like to diversify our base of close contacts and donors.
DonateQURI is fiscally sponsored by Rethink Priorities. We have a simple donation page here.
What is QURIâs total budget for 2025? If Iâm reading this correctlyâthat thereâs currently a $200K funding gap for the fast-approaching calendar yearâthat is surprising information to me in light of what I assumed the total budget for a two-person org would be.
We so far raised $62,000 for 2025, from the Survival and Flourishing Fund.
Slava and myself are both senior software engineers, Iâm in Berkeley (to be close to the EA scene here). Total is roughly $200k for the two of us (including taxes and health care).
In addition, we have server and software payments, plus other misc payments.
We then have a 14% overhead from our sponsorship with Rethink Priorities.
I said around $200k, so this assumes basically a $262k budget. This is on the low end for what Iâd really prefer, but given the current EA funding situation, is what Iâll aim for now.
If we had more money we could bring in contractors for things like research and support.
If the confusion is that you expected us to have more runway, Iâm not very sure what to say. I think this sector can be pretty difficult. Weâre in talks for funding from one donor, which would help cover this gap, but Iâd like to not depend that much on them.
We also do have a few months of reserves that we could spend in 2025 if really needed.
The surprise for me was that QURI has only been able to fundraise for ~24% of its lower-estimate CY25 funding needs. Admittedly, I donât follow funding trends in this space, so maybe that news isnât surprising to others. The budget seems sensible to me, by the way. Having less runway also makes sense in light of events over the past two years.
I think the confusion for me involves a perceived tension between numbers that might suggest a critical budget shortfall at present and text that seemed more optimistic in tone (e.g., talking about eagerness to expand). Knowing that thereâs a possible second major funder helps me understand why that tension might be thereâdepending on the possible major funderâs decision, it sounds like the effect of Forum-reader funding on the margin might range from ~âkeeping the lights onâ to âfunding some expansionâ?
Thanks for the clarification!
Yea, Iâm not very sure what messaging to use. Itâs definitely true that thereâs a risk we wonât be able to maintain our current team for another year. At the same time, if we could get more than our baseline of funding, I think we could make good use of it (up to another 1-2 FTE, for 2025).
Iâm definitely still hoping that we could eventually (next 1-5 years) either significantly grow (this could mean up to 5-7 FTE) or scale in other ways. Our situation now seems pretty minimal to me, but I still strongly prefer it to not having it.
Iâd flag that the funding ecosystem feels fairly limited for our sort of work. The main options are really the SFF and the new Open Philanthropy forecasting team. Iâve heard that some related groups have also been having challenges with funding.
Iâm interested in learning more!
How many active users do your tools currently have? Any examples of standout successes from these tools?
Do you have some metrics on impact/âadoption within EA/âAI safety orgs?
Whatâs the competitive landscape here? Iâm slightly worried that this kind of initiative should be a for-profit and EA-independent
To give these questions full justice would take quite a while. Iâll give a quick-ish summary.
On Guesstimate and Squiggle, you can see some of the examples on the public websites. On Guesstimate, go here, then select ârecentâ. We get a bunch of public models by effective altruist users. Guesstimate is still much more popular than Squiggle, but I think Squiggle has a decent amount more potential in the long-term. (Itâs much more powerful and flexible, but more work to learn).
I think Guesstimate is continuing to hold fairly steady, though is slowly declining in use each year (we havenât been improving it, mainly doing minimal maintenance).
With Squiggle, I understand that a fair amount of modeling is done with the public Playground, where we canât measure activity very well. We do have metrics of use on Squiggle Hub, which does exist but is limited now.
Iâd flag that these are somewhat specialized tools that are often are used for certain occasions. A bunch of orgs do modeling in specific batches, then donât touch the models for a few months.
âexamples of standout successes from these tools?â â Our largest one was the Global Unified Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (GUCEM) by the FTX Future Fund, in 2023. Leopold Aschenbrenner specifically did a lot of work making a very comprehensive estimates of their funding. Frustratingly, after FTX collapsed, so too did this project.
We have not since had other users who have been as ambitious. We have had several users inside CEA, OP, and the LTFF. Iâm not sure how much I can get into detail into the specifics. I think most of this has been private so far, I hope more eventually becomes public.
In Michael Dickenâs recent post, he linked to a Squiggle model he used for some of his cost-effectiveness estimates.
Some models from CEA were linked in these posts. Ben West was into this when he was the interim CEO there.
https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââxrQkYh8GGR8GipKHL/ââhow-expensive-is-leaving-your-org-squiggle-model
https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââ4wNDqRPJWhoe8SnoG/ââcea-is-fundraising-and-funding-constrained
Guesstimate Activity
Squiggle Hub Activity
I think these results, by themselves, are not as impressive as Iâd like. If that was all we were aiming for and accomplished, and we were making a fairly ordinary web application, Iâd consider this a minor success, but one with unsure cost-effectiveness, especially given the opportunity cost of our team.
However, Iâll flag that:
- A lot of what weâve been doing with Squiggle has been on the highly-experimental end. I see this as a research project and an experiment to identify promising interventions, more than a direct value-adding internal tool so far. Through this lens, I think what we have now is much more impressive. Weâve developed a usable programming language with some unique features, a novel interactive environment, a suite of custom visualizations, all of which are iterated on and open-source. We did this with a very small team (less than 2 FTEs, for less than 2 years on it), and a low budget for any serious technical venture. Thereâs a bunch of experimental features weâve been trying out, but have not yet fully written about. Relative Value Functions was one such experiment that we have had some use of, and are still excited to promote to other groups, though perhaps in different forms.
- A lot of what Iâve been doing has been on thinking through and envisioning where forecasting/âepistemics should go. If you look through our posts you can see a lot of this. I think we have one of the most ambitious and coherent visions for where we can encourage epistemic research and development. I see much of our tooling as a way to help clarify and experiment with these visions. Most of our writing is open and free.
- Iâm not sure how much sense it makes to focus on increasing direct authorship of Guesstimate/âSquiggle now. I think in the future, itâs very likely that a lot of Squiggle would be written by AIs, perhaps with some specialists analysts in-house. Training people to build these models is fairly high-cost. Iâve done several workshops now. I think theyâve went decently, but I think it would take far more training to substantially increase the amount of numeric cost-effectiveness models written across most EA orgs.
Yea, I get that often. We think about it sometimes. I plan to continue to consider it, but Iâd flag that there are a lot of points that makes this less appealing than it might seem:
1. I tried turning Guesstimate into a business and realized it would be an uphill battle, unless we heavily pivoted into something different.
2. The market for numeric tooling is honestly quite narrow and limited. You can maybe make a business, but itâs very hard to scale it.
3. If you go the VC route, theyâll heavily encourage you to pivot to specific products that make more money. Then you can get bought out /â closed down, if itâs not growing very quickly. Causal went this route, then semi-pivoted to finance modeling, then got bought out.
4. Itâs really hard to make a successful business, especially one with enough leeway to also support EAs and EA use cases. Weâre a 2-person team, I donât think we have the capacity or skills to do this well now.
5. I want to be sure that we can quickly change focus to whatâs most promising. For example, AI has been changing, and so too has whatâs possible with tools on AI. When you make a business, it can be easy to lock-in to a narrow product.
6. I think that what EAs/âRationalists want is generally a fair bit different from what others want, and especially what other companies would pay a lot for. So itâs difficult to support both.
I hope that helps clarify things. Happy to answer other questions!
Answering on behalf of The Humane League (THL)! THL currently has room for funding of $10.5 million to grow our Open Wing Alliance and our Animal Policy Alliance.
Open Wing Alliance (OWA)
We have developed a robust expansion plan for the OWA through 2030, which we would be able to put into place with significant additional funding. The goal is to free one billion hens from cages by 2030 and achieve a critical tipping point in the fight to eradicate the battery cage. .
To achieve this, we aim to strengthen the OWA by recruiting new member organizations in high priority regions around the globe. But to do that, we first need to build internal capacity. Our current modelâhaving a single regional OWA coordinator to support many member groups with differing needs across an entire continentâis no longer sustainable. But we see great interest from groups in the OWAâs offerings, so we know we are poised to build an even more robust global coalition.
To meet the need, we need to create small teams in key regions around the world to support the specific needs of groups in each region, including in Asia-Pacific, the Americas, and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). We would need to hire more campaigners, corporate negotiators, animal welfare scientists, and regional support team members. We estimate we will need an additional $8 million in 2025 and beyond. In addition, we would also need to scale up our core supporting teams (Operations, Communications, and Development) in order to meet the needs of the expanded OWA and Global Teamsâa lesson learned from historical THL growth periods.
In addition, we also aim to provide much-needed grant funding to animal protection groups. Each year, we hope to distribute $2 million to $2.4 million in OWA grants. (In 2024, we provided more than $2 million in grant funding to 38 OWA groups.) These grants are transformative and flexible, covering general operating support, staff expenses, and campaign materials. But as of November, we have no committed funding for OWA grants in 2025 and beyond. Consequently, these grants will come from THLâs final 2025 annual operating budget budget.
Animal Policy Alliance
Another program primed for expansion is our Animal Policy Alliance, a coalition of organizations across the United States fighting for meaningful change for animals through public policy.
Launched by THL in 2022, the APA organizes, unites, and empowers local and state-level animal advocacy groups focused on issue-based advocacy and legislative change for animals raised for food. The APA has been behind some significant victories for animals, including getting octopus farming banned in Washington and California.
Our current goals for the APA include growing it from 23 to 30 active members, building power, and providing grants that will permit APA groups to carry out meaningful work.
While we distributed $500k in grants to APA members in 2022, weâve been unable to sustain that level in the years since. But we are confident that in 2025 we could effectively deploy up to $750k in grants to APA members. The need for funding among our member groups is strong, and there are dozens of groups eager to expand their advocacy for farmed animals. But as of November, we have no committed funding for APA grants in 2025 and beyond, and any funds available will depend on THLâs 2025 operating budget. Any regranting funds we receive could allow us to maintain momentum as we build progressively stronger US policy protections for farmed animals.
As we expand the alliance and rebuild our grant program, we would also need to expand the APA team and core teams, which we estimate would cost $1 million in 2024 and $1.5 million in 2025.
For full details of THLâs room for more funding, check out this post!
Answering on behalf of Arthropoda Foundation. Weâve summarized our funding priorities here. Everything we raise will go toward funding insect welfare science (as we have no staff or overhead), with a particular focus on humane slaughter, nutrition and living conditions, and implementable welfare assessment tools.
Support Insect WelfareWe are facing a funding cliff at the end of this yearâthe multiyear grant that kickstarted Giving Green is coming to an end. We have a good relationship with this funder and they feel the grant has been a success, but theyâve expressed that they may want to scale back their giving in the upcoming grant cycle. We are looking to new individual donors to fill the gapâand to support our continued growth.
All additional funding until our $500k gap is closed will go towards paying our seven staff members and continuing the work weâre currently doing.
In the world in which this multiyear funder renews at the same level and we close the remainder of this gap, our use of the next marginal funds depends on how much additional funding we raise, so here are three possible answers:
~$10k: streamline our operations by spending money to get back time, e.g. pay for tools to manage our donor lists and media outreach instead of manually finding, cleaning, and arranging this data.
~$50k: hire a communications firm to improve our branding and redesign our website. We have gotten user feedback that our website is hard to navigate, and we think that this reduces donorsâ trust and willingness to give.
~$200k: hire an additional staff member with guaranteed runway for ~2 years. We envision this being one of the below roles:
a researcher, to expand our capacity to evaluate grants if and as the Giving Green Fund continues to grow
a communications/âevents specialist, to increase our capacity to reach new audiences. Our 4 events this year have garnered positive feedback and fundraising leads but we donât have capacity to run more than this.
We estimate that every $1 donated to Giving Green yields ~$15 to our recommended organizations!
Support Giving GreenWeâre looking for seed funding for Effective Environmentalism, a field-building initiative.
Link to stand-alone post: Effective Environmentalism has re-launched! (And weâre looking for funding)
Effective Environmentalism is currently not funded, and weâd be able to use seed funding to devote time to spread EA ideas in the environmental movement and grow an effective environmentalism community!
Name of the project: Effective Environmentalism
My role: Co-director
How we would use extra donations: We would use a seed grant to devote time to the project, particularly for community-building, providing introductory resources and information to environmental professionals, and outreach to the environmental community.
Marginal funding: This would be our first funding since the re-launch.
Answering on behalf of Apart Research!
Weâre a non-profit research and community-building lab with a strategic target on high-volume frontier technical research. Apart is currently raising a round to run the lab throughout 2025 and 2026 but here Iâll describe what your marginal donation may enable.
In just two years, Apart Research has established itself as a unique and efficient part of the AI safety ecosystem. Our research output includes 13 peer-reviewed papers published since 2023 at top venues including NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, and EMNLP, with six main conference papers and nine workshop acceptances. Our work has been cited by OpenAIâs Superalignment team, and our team members have contributed to significant publications like Anthropicâs âSleeper Agentsâ paper.
With this track record, weâre able to capitalize on our position as an AI safety lab and mobilize our work to impactful frontiers of technical work in governance, research methodology, and AI control.
Besides our ability to accelerate a Lab fellowâs research career at an average direct cost of around $3k, enable research sprint participants for as little as $30, and enable growth at local groups at similar high price/âimpact ratios, your marginal donation can enable us to run further impactful projects:
Donate to Apart ResearchImproved access to our program ($7k-$25k): Professional rewamp of our website and documentation would make our programs and research outputs more accessible to talented researchers worldwide. Besides our establishment as a lab through our paper acceptances, a redesign will help us cater even more to institutional funding and technical professionals, which will help scale our impact through valuable counterfactual funding and talent discovery. At the higher end, we will also be able to make our internal resources publicly available. These resources are specifically designed to accelerate AI safety technical careers.
Higher conference attendance support ($20k): Currently, we only support one fellow per team to attend conferences. Additional funding would enable a second team member to attend, at approximately $2k per person.
Improving worldview diversity in AI safety ($10k-$20k): Weâve been working on all continents now and find a lot of value in our approach to enable international and underrepresented professional talent (besides our work at organizations such as 7 of the top 10 universities). With this funding, you would enable more targeted outreach from Apartâs side and existing lab membersâ participation in conferences to discuss and represent AI safety to otherwise underrepresented professional groups.
Continuing impactful research projects ($15k-$30k): We will be able to extend timely and critical research projects. For instance, weâre looking to port our cyber-evaluations work to Inspect, making it a permanent part of UK AISI catastrophic risk evaluations. Our recent paper also finds novel methods to test whether LLMs game public benchmarks and we would like to expand the work to run the same test on other high-impact benchmarks while making the results more accessible. These projects have direct impacts on AI evaluation methodology but we see other opportunities like this for expanding projects at reasonable follow-up costs.
Youâll be supporting a growing organization with the Apart Lab fellowship already doubling from Q1âČ24 to Q3âČ24 (17 to 35 fellows) and our research sprints having moved thousands closer to AI safety.
Given current AGI development timelines, the need to scale and improve safety research is urgent. In our view, Apart seems like one of the better investments to reduce AI risk.
If this sounds interesting and youâd like to hear more (or have a specific marginal project youâd like to see happen), my inbox is open.
Hi! :-) I chose the option of creating an independent post, but thought maybe I should also comment here to link to it?
Cruelty --> Liability: Legal Impact for Chickensâs room for funding & marginal impact
Thank you so much for doing this, @Toby Tremlettđč !
Thank you, Alene! Legal Impact for Chickens also has a match for GivingTuesday: bit.ly/ââLICgivingtuesday
Hi! My name is Taylor Meek and Iâm the development & project coordinator at Sentient âșïž
What Weâre Doing:
Sentient is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that publishes stories and solutions to explain factory farms and their effect on climate, animals, public health, politics and more. Founded in 2018, our content is fact-checked and science-driven, with reporting that serves readers interested in the impacts of what they eat on the world around them.
Our team has been hard at work this year getting factory farming issues in front of new audiences. In April, we attended the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Annual Summit, where our Editor-in-Chiefâs panel discussions put animal agriculture on the agenda for the first time in the conferenceâs 34-year history.
In July, Sentient became the first media outlet to formally join the Public News Serviceâs new Industrial Meat program â where reporters will transform 300 articles about industrial meat into audio snippets. So far, 24 of our articles have been converted into PNS audio snippets with a reach of over 22 million listeners.
If youâd like to hear an example, click here to listen to their snippet of A Tyson Exec Wrote Kentuckyâs Ag-Gag Law. What Could Go Wrong?
How Marginal Funding Can Help:
Receiving marginal funding would help us sustain our current operations and scale our organization to match the growing significance of reporting on food systems and animal agriculture. Itâs vital that Sentient leads this discourse to ensure that comprehensive storytelling, including animal suffering, replaces the current dominant narrative, which is riddled with red-herring solutions like âshop localâ or regenerative agriculture.
One specific way this marginal funding would help Sentient is by supporting our editorial expansion.
Currently, we publish rigorous solutions journalism, accountability journalism, disinformation debunking and fact-checked explainers. Our team of reporters, editors and fact-checkers are all experts in their fields, with bylines in significant outlets from The New York Times to The Washington Post.
Our editorial activities for the next 24 months include expanding the team by hiring a rural reporter to help with local news coverage and outreach to rural farmers so that these communities can see themselves in the food system change story.
Six in ten Americans say they have more trust in local news than national news to give them information they can use in their daily life. Itâs critical we get news about factory farming delivered to these audiences in a voice they trust to achieve any impact (find the study here).
The salary range for this position is between $65,000 - $75,000 so some of the marginal funding would go toward this.
In addition to hiring a rural reporter, our ongoing partnership with the Public News Service (PNS) will help us reach those in rural communities through a medium they trust and in a voice they recognize. Each clip PNS produces is distributed to 10,000+ radio stations nationwide for free syndication. PNSâ network reaches 50-60 million weekly listeners nationwide, primarily in red states, rural communities, news deserts and other areas with low or no engagement with information on climate change or factory farming. Our partnership gives us unprecedented access to these communities.
We appreciate you taking the time to read this. Thank you! If youâd like to support our work, you can find our donation page via the button below. Weâre participating in the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) NewsMatch program, so new donations will be matched up to $1,000!
Support Sentientâs WorkIf you have any questions, feel free to email me at taylor@sentientmedia.org
Answering on behalf of Faunalytics: we posted Faunalyticsâ Funding Gap of $385,000 to address how we would use donations from Marginal Funding Week. Thank you for organizing this, and best wishes to everyone involved in their fundraising efforts.
Answering on behalf of AVA International :) I just wrote this post Close the match and enable impactful advocates to benefit from AVA! about how we would use donations from Marginal Funding Week. Thank you for setting this up and all the best to everybody who is fundraising!
Hi there, answering on behalf of Veganuary. We have a funding gap of c. 450k USD until the end of our financial year in February 2025.
What We Do
Veganuary is an international organisation (and charity registered in England and Wales) that is changing the way we eat by driving a global shift towards plant-based foods with the aim to reduce the number of animals suffering in factory farms.
Although Veganuary is best known for our 1-month challenge encouraging millions of people to try vegan in January and beyond, our work is actually most valuable as a mechanism to enable corporate engagement. By creating millions of vegan-curious shoppers every January, as well as generating press and social media hype around the campaign, we incentivise brands, retailers and restaurants to launch new plant-based options as well as promote and discount their existing vegan foods. This increased availability, visibility and affordability of alternative proteins helps drive increased consumption and acceptance across wider society while reducing the amount of animal products that are being consumed.
Due to the effects of the difficult economic climate, Veganuary is currently facing significant funding shortages and had to scale back recently by closing our Brazil office. We are still facing a funding gap of c.450k USD until the end of our financial year (February 2025). That is why any extra donations would currently go toward closing our funding gap.
What We Hope To Achieve When Closing The Funding Gap
If we are able to close our funding gap, we are striving for the following achievements for the 2025 campaign:
More than 26 million people take part in Veganuary 2025 and try eating plant-based in January (based on external surveys and population estimates)
Over 2000 new vegan products and menus launched for Veganuary; over 400 major food businesses work in direct collaboration on their Veganuary branded campaign; 300 businesses take part in the workplace challenge; 10 long-term commitments by major companies
Over 10,000 media stories about Veganuary and plant-based eating
Some Key Facts from the 2024 Campaign
25 million people worldwide participated in Veganuary by eating plant-based in January 2024 (based on YouGov surveys and population data in our core countries)
A survey conducted by Veganuary among its email participants revealed that 81% of respondents reported either staying fully vegan or reducing their animal product consumption by at least half, even six months after participating in Veganuary for the first time
Over 2,100 new vegan products and menu items were launched for Veganuary 2024 globally by thousands of participating businesses
Over 10,000 media stories featured Veganuary around the world
In Germany the National Statistical Institute (destatis) published data that showed that large supermarket chains and other food retailers sold between 5-10% less meat in January 2023 and January 2024 than the average for the preceding months of February to December.
Matching Component
Any donations to Veganuary are currently being matched, therefore doing twice as much good. If youâre interested in supporting Veganuary, you can donate here or get in touch with me directly at ria@veganuary.com. Thank you for your consideration!
Effective Thesis
This comment is on behalf of Effective Thesis. I (Joel) served as its director from July 2023 to August 2024.
How would Effective Thesis use extra donations?
Effective Thesis helps students align their academic work with the worldâs most pressing challenges. We provide personalized coaching, a database of high-impact research questions, and a thriving community for students worldwide.
Hereâs how we would use additional funding:
1. Expand Support for Students in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs):
Translate key resources into more languages to make our materials accessible to non-English speakers.
Run targeted outreach to engage students in LMICs who could benefit the most from aligning their theses with global priorities.
2. Enhance Personalized Guidance:
Hire additional advisors with expertise in areas like biosecurity, AI safety, and economic development.
Expand our weekly Office Hours to support more students in real time.
3. Grow the Research Question Database:
Add new, underexplored research directions and refine existing ones.
Collaborate with domain experts to ensure questions are relevant and actionable.
4. Strengthen Our Community and Resources:
Scale our Slack community and workshops to foster collaboration among students, researchers, and professionals.
Organize virtual events featuring researchers and policymakers to inspire impactful research projects.
Why support Effective Thesis?
Effective Thesis has a proven track record of impact:
Over 500 students have received personalized one-on-one guidance.
More than 750 students are part of our online communities.
At least 200 theses influenced by our resources and coaching have tackled pressing global challenges.
With additional funding, we can reach more students, particularly in underserved regions, and scale our support to empower the next generation of researchers to create meaningful change.
If youâd like to learn more or partner with Effective Thesis, please feel free to reach out. Thank you for considering supporting our work!
We also accept donations via Stripe.
Donate NowHereâs our Marginal Funding Week post for Connect For Animals. Iâm Steven Rouk, the Executive Director. :)
Hi! On behalf of Evidence Action, Iâm linking to our post with our answer :)
Answer on behalf of Scarlet Spark. Iâve written a post outlining our capacity-building work for the animal welfare movement and how marginal funding would help us power the movement. Thank you so much for organizing this opportunity!
Answering on behalf of PIBBSS, as ED of Operations.
We have our Manifund page, which goes in-depth here:
PIBBSS ManifundIn brief, PIBBSS is an AI Safety org that does both field-building and research, mostly focused in non-prosaic directions. We organize (in ascending order of seniority of attendees and cost) reading groups, summer fellowships, horizon scanning, and research affiliate programs.
Marginally, funds that you donate would most likely go to either affiliate salaries or fellowship costs (~20.000 USD per marginal fellow for three months based on last yearâs costs). This requires us to get funding for our fixed costs, but we are fairly optimistic, although our runway expires in ~6 months. If you are a large funder, please get in touch, as we have the capacity for ~3 million or more in field-building and research over the next 18 months.
Reach out with any questions!
The Marginal Funding Opp: Closing the Hunger Gap for More Smallholder Farmers in Africa
By 2030, the World Bank forecasts that 9 out of 10 of the worldâs $1-a-day poor will reside in Sub-Saharan Africa, predominantly in rural places. This incredible demographic concentration of extreme poverty presents a unique impact opportunity for One Acre Fund, as we now have operations in ten countries which collectively hold over two-thirds of the continentâs estimated base of ~50 million smallholder farmers.
Through bottom-up modeling of new territory expansion, increased market penetration, and new partnerships, One Acre Fund established a realistic pathway to reach 10 million farm families by 2030, representing approximately 10% of the planetâs $1-a-day poor.
>> However, we have been forced to slow our growth plan for 2025 due to lack of sufficient funding; in order to continue expanding our program to reach new farming families, we require additional support.
Donate Now**************************************
The Challenge
Seventy percent of the worldâs poor are rural families who make their living through small-scale farming. They consume nearly everything they grow often with little surplus left over to sell for income. Crop yields are particularly low in Sub-Saharan Africa, and many families face an annual âhunger season,â a period of meal-skipping and substitution before the next harvest. Without access to credit or enough income to spend on modern farming tools and training, these families struggle to break generational cycles of poverty.
Our Approach
We have pioneered a holistic market bundle of financing, high-quality farm inputs, on-farm training, and market support that enables smallholder clients to dramatically improve their yields, increasing their income on supported activities by an average of 40%+. This income boost enables clients to alleviate hunger and extreme poverty, increase their resilience to external shocks, and unlock their full potential â as farmers and as providers for their families.
Continued scaling our our model to additional farmers in 2025 will require:
Hiring and training of local full-time Field Officers: Our core program is delivered by local Field Officers, primarily farmers from the communities we serve. Staff undergo intensive training in pedagogy and project management and receive ongoing training at weekly meetings.
Community engagement: Before launching operations in any community, One Acre Fundâs Field Officers work to develop close relationships with local village officials, leaders and Government officials at varying levels. They explain the merits of our program, invite visits during key activities in program delivery (e.g., input distribution, field training), and work to resolve any questions or concerns among local authorities.
Farmer enrollment and Farmer Group formation: Field Officers engage in a farmer enrollment process, marketing our program to prospective farmers and facilitating contract signing. The first stage in our enrollment process is recruiting volunteer Farmer Group Leaders â this is often done by tapping into existing networks of community leaders. Each One Acre Fund Group Leader then mobilizes a group of 8-16 potential clients. After learning the details of the program, Farmer Groups who elect to join One Acre Fund sign a contract, and select their input types and land size.
Procurement and distribution of farm inputs and other life-improving products: One Acre Fund has strong relationships with manufacturers and input suppliers in Sub-Saharan Africa and globally. We procure thousands of tons of high-quality inputs, store them in dozens of warehouses, then distribute them in 5-10 ton allotments to market points (typically within 1 mile of our clients) where farmers can pick them up.
Provision of loans: Unlike other organizations serving our target population, rather than handouts, we provide the option of purchasing farm inputs and other technologies on credit. This gives our clients a commanding voice in our program delivery and enables our sustainable business model, with the majority of program costs covered through farmer loan repayments. As our clients typically have irregular or low incomes, Field Officers collect loan repayments on a flexible basis up until the seasonâs deadline (a few weeks after each countryâs harvest).
Training on good agricultural practices (GAP): One Acre Fund Field Officers deliver tailored field-based trainings on a range of improved climate-smart agricultural techniques to boost farmersâ yields and ensure strong impact. In 2025, our Field Officers will conduct ~20 in-field and digital sessions over a typical 10-month season and regularly visit clientsâ farms to offer individual guidance on planting practices.
Post-harvest support and market facilitation: At harvest time, Field Officers train farmers on proper crop storage techniques and how to connect to local markets. We also equip farmers with optional add-on products to prevent pest-related post-harvest loss. Such support allows them to store a portion of their harvests and sell several months later during the off-season, when supply is low and prices are high.
Our Impact
We benchmark our success on our ability to make farmers more prosperous. Every year, we rigorously measure our results against a control group in each country of operation. On average, farmers working with One Acre Fund increase their incomes on supported activities by roughly 40 percent. In 2023, these farmers realized a nearly 150 percent return on their investment. With the improved harvests, farmers are able to end hunger in their homes, and invest profits from surplus sales into education for their children, new businesses, and other productive assets.
Your investment would enable the hardest working farm families on earth to chart their pathway out of poverty and into prosperity.
Claire McGuinness
Strategy & Partnerships Manager
.
Donate NowThanks for sharing Claire!
No worries if not, but do you know how you compare to GiveDirectly as a benchmark in the areas where you work?
Thanks for the question, Toby!
One of One Acre Fundâs key metricâs is SROI, or social return on investment. This is a ratio that compares the amount of funds donated to the additional profits generated for farmers who participate in our program. In other words, it measures how many additional dollars end up in a farmerâs pocket for each dollar of donor investment.
A cash transfer model has an SROI of 1:1, as each dollar donated equates to one dollar given to the recipient. One Acre Fund has an SROI of 1: 3.9 (for more detail on this, you can reference our webpage on SROI here: https://ââoneacrefund.org/ââour-impact/ââhow-we-measure-impact/ââwhat-social-return-investment). All models have a role to play in the social sector, and cash transfer is a critical tool in the toolbox. But for One Acre Fund, we see leverage on donor investment is a key north star efficiency metric for investments in a farming householdâs productivity.
Thanks for the response Claire! Iâm not sure I quite understand why cash transfers would be 1:1 (if you are given $100 and use it to buy a goat to sell the milk, you get more than $100 of value), but Iâll check out the link to find out more.
BTW- the link doesnât work for me, is it broken for you as well?
I just wanted to make sure The Unjournal was eligible @Toby Tremlettđč . We made this post and tagged it but you state, âonly projects that post or answer + message me are eligible for next weekâs Donation Electionâ. I hadnât seen that earlier, so Iâm messaging you now. (Maybe other orgs also overlooked that?)
@Toby Tremlettđč Updates from the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics, Jos, Nigeria
Greetings from Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria!
I want to share some exciting updates on our work at the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics. The Centre began with seed funding from Emergent Ventures to establish a phage bank. So far, we have set up a bank with the essential equipment needed for phage research.
Why is a phage bank essential for Nigeria and Africa?
Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR):
The burden of AMR is overgrowing in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). By 2050, it is projected that 10 million lives will be lost annually due to drug-resistant infections, with 90% of these deaths occurring in Africa and Asia. Developing new antibiotics is slow, making phage therapy a viable and urgent alternative.
Need-Driven Personalized Therapies:
A robust phage bank tailored to local pathogens lays the groundwork for personalized, need-driven phage therapy. This approach ensures that treatment options are directly relevant to our regionâs unique challenges.
Boosting Biotech Research:
Biotechnology research is underdeveloped in Nigeria and much of Africa. Phage research provides a scalable pathway to develop biotech products and foster the creation of innovative startups.
What could additional funding enable us to achieve?
Sustainable Electricity:
Secure a solar-powered solution to maintain freezer operations for phage preservation.
Training the Next Generation:
Train more students in phage research. Currently, we are mentoring two Masterâs students working on phages.
Expanding Our Collection:
Isolate and characterize a larger library of phages targeting WHO-listed priority pathogens.
Therapeutic Readiness:
Acquire facilities for phage purification to meet therapeutic-grade standards.
Operational Support:
Support salaries for researchers and staff to sustain our efforts.
Upcoming Collaboration:
I will soon visit Dr. Roderick Slavcevâs lab at Theraphage Bio to learn advanced technologies for using phages in vaccine design and therapeutic development. This experience will help us explore homegrown phage-based solutions to address pressing health challenges.
If youâd like to learn more or collaborate, please donât hesitate to reach out at eennadi@gmail.com.
Thank you for your interest and support in our mission to advance phage research in Africa.
Answering on the behalf of Sentient
Project Name: Sentient â Empowering Animal Rights Community via Investigations and Education
At Sentient, we create, customize, and share tools for activists. For example, weâve customized and used small, cellular, camouflaged cameras placed on the backs of animals (lambs, cows, and pigs) during their last day alive. This project, we named Camera on Animal (COA), allows us to film in places that are otherwise unreachable â all from their point of view, making the animal the investigator. Here is one-minute video investigation performed using COA. We have Sentient TV, which is a dedicated section on the our website that offers a collection of thought-provoking videos and lectures focused on activism, sentientism, and animal rights. Moreover, we have The Alien Dictionary that offers an unbiased perspective on life on Earth, crafted by an âalien journalistâ who prioritizes experiences over norms, aiming to communicate Earthâs reality. It challenges anthropocentrism and fosters a broader understanding of sentient beings.
Upcoming Work
Over the past two years, we have collaborated with the investigative community to support a network of over 200 investigators, primarily from Europe, working closely with Reporters for Animal International. Moving forward, our goal is to expand our efforts to Asia, aiming to expand our impact beyond Europe.
How We Will Use Marginal Funding: We are seeking USD $20,000 to sustain our operations and increase our outreach. This funding will help us pay salary to our Project Manager Idan, who is highly connected with investigators worldwide and assist them on daily basis. Furthermore, he played a crucial role in creating several tools, including some digital tools and the COA which has exposed the most hidden places of animal suffering â the slaughterhouses.
If anyone wants to reach out to me directly and know more about our work or how the donated money will be used to reduce animal suffering, you can contact me at abhishek@sentientworld.org. You can also donate to Sentient through our website.
Disclaimer: Kindly note that Sentient (https://ââsentientworld.org/ââ) is a separate organization and should not be confused with Sentient Media, the animal advocacy reporting organization. While we share a commitment to animal welfare, our missions and areas of focus are distinct.
My name is Greg Kawere I am the co-founder and ceo of the Bikita Institute of Technology a community college that teaches out of school rural youth in Zimbabwe how to code. If we get extra funding we will be able to increase our student enrollment, build an additional computer lab and finalize our accreditation so that we can offer Diplomas in AI, Data Science, IT and Software Engineering.