I think there’s an expectations mismatch here. I think the latest public payout report might be helpful for expectations setting.
Other updates
Our grant volume and overall giving increased significantly in 2021 (and in 2022 – to be featured in a later payout report). In the second half of 2021, we applied for funding from larger institutional funders to make sure we could make all the grants that we thought were above the bar for longtermist spending. We received two large grants at the end of 2021:
Going forward, my guess is that donations from smaller funders will be insufficient to support our grantmaking, and we’ll mainly be relying on larger funders.
More grants and limited fund manager time mean that the write-ups in this report are shorter than our write-ups have been traditionally. I think communicating publicly about our decision-making process continues to be valuable for the overall ecosystem, so in future reports, we’re likely to continue writing short one-sentence summaries for most of our grants, and more for larger grants or grants that we think are particularly interesting.
Just FYI, I personally don’t donate to LTFF, so while I have some general concern that charitable funds should be spent in an accountable way and that GWWC donors should feel comfortable with how their money is being spent, my personal concern is with GHDF. If the issue of public reports being optional applies only or mostly to LTFF and EAIF, perhaps that could be clarified?
Luke Freeman did recently email me offering to chat, so I guess I could ask him. I think I can personally solve the problem by redirecting my donations to GiveWell, but I can’t be the only person who’s troubled by this.
I don’t really know much about GHDF, sorry. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem very active and probably not meaningfully different from donating to GiveWell (the fund managers are literally all Givewell staff!)
Well, I think in the past the managers might use it to fund things that they thought were good but didn’t fit with the main GiveWell recommendations, but now that GiveWell have the “All Funds” option I’m not sure what would differentiate that from GHDF; it may be that it’s just a presentational difference. I’m 85% sure that the GHDF grants are exactly those which are displayed in the GiveWell spreadsheet as having been made via GHDF, but I’m just slightly worried by the notice that payout reports are optional.
I think there’s an expectations mismatch here. I think the latest public payout report might be helpful for expectations setting.
Just FYI, I personally don’t donate to LTFF, so while I have some general concern that charitable funds should be spent in an accountable way and that GWWC donors should feel comfortable with how their money is being spent, my personal concern is with GHDF. If the issue of public reports being optional applies only or mostly to LTFF and EAIF, perhaps that could be clarified?
Luke Freeman did recently email me offering to chat, so I guess I could ask him. I think I can personally solve the problem by redirecting my donations to GiveWell, but I can’t be the only person who’s troubled by this.
I don’t really know much about GHDF, sorry. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem very active and probably not meaningfully different from donating to GiveWell (the fund managers are literally all Givewell staff!)
Well, I think in the past the managers might use it to fund things that they thought were good but didn’t fit with the main GiveWell recommendations, but now that GiveWell have the “All Funds” option I’m not sure what would differentiate that from GHDF; it may be that it’s just a presentational difference. I’m 85% sure that the GHDF grants are exactly those which are displayed in the GiveWell spreadsheet as having been made via GHDF, but I’m just slightly worried by the notice that payout reports are optional.