4) There is plenty of funding, a fair number of interested junior employees, and also some ideas for megaprojects. The biggest bottleneck seems like leadership. Second would be more and better ideas.
If there is plenty of funding, is it just in the wrong place? Given Ben’s latest post should we be encouraging donations to the EA Infrastructure Fund (and Long-Term Future Fund) rather than the Global Health and Development Fund, which currently has over $7m available?
Hi, thanks for mentioning this—I am the chairperson of the EA Infrastructure Fund and wanted to quickly comment on this: We do have room for more funding, but the $65k number is too low. As of one week ago, the EAIF had at least $290k available. (The website for me now does show $270k, not $65k.)
It is currently hard to get accurate numbers, including for ourselves at EA Funds, due to an accounting change at CEA. Apologies for any confusion this might cause. We will fix the number on the website as soon as possible, and will also soon provide more reliable info on our room for more funding in an EA Forum post or comment.
ETA: according to a new internal estimate, as of August 10th the EAIF had $444k available.
I’d be happy to see more going to meta at the margin, though I’d want to caution against inferring much from how much the EA Infastructure Fund has available right now.
The key question is something like “can they identify above-the-bar projects that are not getting funded otherwise?”
I believe the Infrastructure team has said they could fund a couple of million dollars worth of extra projects, and if so, I hope that gets funded.
Though even that also doesn’t tell us much about the overall situation. Even in a world with a big funding overhang, we should expect there to be some gaps.
Yeah, in the same thread Ben tweets:
But the EA Infrastructure Fund currently only has ~$65k available
If there is plenty of funding, is it just in the wrong place? Given Ben’s latest post should we be encouraging donations to the EA Infrastructure Fund (and Long-Term Future Fund) rather than the Global Health and Development Fund, which currently has over $7m available?
Hi, thanks for mentioning this—I am the chairperson of the EA Infrastructure Fund and wanted to quickly comment on this: We do have room for more funding, but the $65k number is too low. As of one week ago, the EAIF had at least $290k available. (The website for me now does show $270k, not $65k.)
It is currently hard to get accurate numbers, including for ourselves at EA Funds, due to an accounting change at CEA. Apologies for any confusion this might cause. We will fix the number on the website as soon as possible, and will also soon provide more reliable info on our room for more funding in an EA Forum post or comment.
ETA: according to a new internal estimate, as of August 10th the EAIF had $444k available.
I have edited all our fund pages to include the following sentence:
I’d be happy to see more going to meta at the margin, though I’d want to caution against inferring much from how much the EA Infastructure Fund has available right now.
The key question is something like “can they identify above-the-bar projects that are not getting funded otherwise?”
I believe the Infrastructure team has said they could fund a couple of million dollars worth of extra projects, and if so, I hope that gets funded.
Though even that also doesn’t tell us much about the overall situation. Even in a world with a big funding overhang, we should expect there to be some gaps.