I find the lack of transparency that comes along with this problematic. Is there a place where I can read about the reasons for the chance or can you elaborate here so that I can understand the trade-off?
We got feedback from several people that they werenât applying to the funds because they didnât want to have a public report. There are lots of reasons that I sympathize with for not wanting a public report, especially as an individual (e.g. youâre worried about it affecting future job prospects, youâre asking for money for mental health support and donât want that to be widely known, etc.). My vision (at least for the Long-Term Future Fund) is to become a good default funding source for individuals and new organizations, and I think that vision is compromised if some people donât want to apply for publicity reasons.
Broadly, I think the benefits to funding more people outweigh the costs to transparency.
Is there a way to make things pseudo-anonymous, revealing the type of grants being made privately but preserving the anonymity of the grant recipient? It seems like that preserves a lot of the value of what you want to protect without much downside.
For example, Iâd be personally very skeptical that giving grants for personal mental support would be the best way to improve the long-term future and would make me less likely to support the LTFF and if all such grants werenât public, I wouldnât know that. There might also be people for whom the opposite is true and they wouldnât donate to LTFF because they didnât know such grants were being made. If you said e.g. â$100K was given out last quarter to support the mental health of individualsâ weâd get what we want, but weâd still have no idea who the recipients are.
I like this idea; Iâll think about it and discuss with others. I think I want grantees to be able to preserve as much privacy as they want (including not being listed in even really broad pseudo-anonymous classifications), but Iâm guessing most would be happy to opt-in to something like this.
(Weâve done anonymous grant reports before but I think they were still more detailed than people would like.)
Any updates here? I share Devonâs concern: this news also makes me less likely to want to donate via EA Funds. At worst, the fear would be this: so much transparency is lost that donations go into mysterious black holes rather than funding effective organizations. What steps can be taken to convince donors that thatâs not whatâs happening?
(I am the new interim project lead for EA funds and will be running EA funds going forward.)
I completely understand that you want to know that your donations are used in a way that you think is good for the world. We refer private grants to private funders so that you know that your money is not being used for projects that you get little or no visibility on.
I think that EA Funds is mostly for donors that are happy to lean on the judgment of our fund managers. Sometimes our fund managers may well fund things like mental health support if they think is one of the best ways to improve the world. LTFF and EAIF in particular, fund a variety of projects that are often unusual. If you donât trust the judgment of our fund managers or donât agree with the scope of our funds there are probably donation opportunities that might be a better fit for you than EA Funds.
We try hard to optimise the service for the grantees and this means that we may fall short of building the best service for our donors. We are exploring more donor-focused products with GWWC, that we will hopefully be able to offer soon.
GWWCâs effective charity recommendations page states, âFor most people, we recommend donating through a reputable fund thatâs focused on effectiveness.â There follows a list of 8 funds, of which the first 4 are EA funds.
If your view as EA funds lead is that EA funds are only suitable for donors who personally trust the judgment of your fund managers, then something seems to have gone wrong with the messaging, because âmost peopleâ wonât be in a position to form a view on that.
I also note that none of the funds list under âWhy you might choose not to donate to this Fundâ that the fund may not account for its donations, which I suspect (as your comment implies) would be a highly material factor to at least some donors. The EA Infrastructure Fund does indicate that a potential donor might not donate if they have concerns about grantmaker independence, but thatâs not quite the same point, and thereâs no similar warning for the other funds.
The difficulty here is that you understand EA Funds as existing for a narrow set of donors (those who are in a position to assess the trustworthiness of individual fund managers). That may well be a sensible thing to exist, but the funds are being marketed as suitable for a much wider class of donors (âmost peopleâ).
Now that the whole FTX thing has happened, have you reconsidered your position about the trust the public should have in organizations that donât share the distribution of funds?
+1. I always assumed that the âOpenâ in âOpen Philanthropyâ referred to an aspiration for a greater degree of transparency than is typically seen in philanthropy, and I generally support this aspiration being shared in the wider effective altruism philanthropic space. The EA Funds are an amazingly flexible way of funding extremely valuable work â but it seems to me that this flexibility would still benefit from the scrutiny and crowd-input that becomes possible through measures like public reports.
I find the lack of transparency that comes along with this problematic. Is there a place where I can read about the reasons for the chance or can you elaborate here so that I can understand the trade-off?
We got feedback from several people that they werenât applying to the funds because they didnât want to have a public report. There are lots of reasons that I sympathize with for not wanting a public report, especially as an individual (e.g. youâre worried about it affecting future job prospects, youâre asking for money for mental health support and donât want that to be widely known, etc.). My vision (at least for the Long-Term Future Fund) is to become a good default funding source for individuals and new organizations, and I think that vision is compromised if some people donât want to apply for publicity reasons.
Broadly, I think the benefits to funding more people outweigh the costs to transparency.
Thanks for the response.
Is there a way to make things pseudo-anonymous, revealing the type of grants being made privately but preserving the anonymity of the grant recipient? It seems like that preserves a lot of the value of what you want to protect without much downside.
For example, Iâd be personally very skeptical that giving grants for personal mental support would be the best way to improve the long-term future and would make me less likely to support the LTFF and if all such grants werenât public, I wouldnât know that. There might also be people for whom the opposite is true and they wouldnât donate to LTFF because they didnât know such grants were being made. If you said e.g. â$100K was given out last quarter to support the mental health of individualsâ weâd get what we want, but weâd still have no idea who the recipients are.
I like this idea; Iâll think about it and discuss with others. I think I want grantees to be able to preserve as much privacy as they want (including not being listed in even really broad pseudo-anonymous classifications), but Iâm guessing most would be happy to opt-in to something like this.
(Weâve done anonymous grant reports before but I think they were still more detailed than people would like.)
Any updates here? I share Devonâs concern: this news also makes me less likely to want to donate via EA Funds. At worst, the fear would be this: so much transparency is lost that donations go into mysterious black holes rather than funding effective organizations. What steps can be taken to convince donors that thatâs not whatâs happening?
(I am the new interim project lead for EA funds and will be running EA funds going forward.)
I completely understand that you want to know that your donations are used in a way that you think is good for the world. We refer private grants to private funders so that you know that your money is not being used for projects that you get little or no visibility on.
I think that EA Funds is mostly for donors that are happy to lean on the judgment of our fund managers. Sometimes our fund managers may well fund things like mental health support if they think is one of the best ways to improve the world. LTFF and EAIF in particular, fund a variety of projects that are often unusual. If you donât trust the judgment of our fund managers or donât agree with the scope of our funds there are probably donation opportunities that might be a better fit for you than EA Funds.
We try hard to optimise the service for the grantees and this means that we may fall short of building the best service for our donors. We are exploring more donor-focused products with GWWC, that we will hopefully be able to offer soon.
GWWCâs effective charity recommendations page states, âFor most people, we recommend donating through a reputable fund thatâs focused on effectiveness.â There follows a list of 8 funds, of which the first 4 are EA funds.
If your view as EA funds lead is that EA funds are only suitable for donors who personally trust the judgment of your fund managers, then something seems to have gone wrong with the messaging, because âmost peopleâ wonât be in a position to form a view on that.
I also note that none of the funds list under âWhy you might choose not to donate to this Fundâ that the fund may not account for its donations, which I suspect (as your comment implies) would be a highly material factor to at least some donors. The EA Infrastructure Fund does indicate that a potential donor might not donate if they have concerns about grantmaker independence, but thatâs not quite the same point, and thereâs no similar warning for the other funds.
The difficulty here is that you understand EA Funds as existing for a narrow set of donors (those who are in a position to assess the trustworthiness of individual fund managers). That may well be a sensible thing to exist, but the funds are being marketed as suitable for a much wider class of donors (âmost peopleâ).
I agree with the last paragraph above, and want to point out that the funds, including LTFF, are still being marketed this way at GWWC: https://ââweb.archive.org/ââweb/ââ20240409182610/ââhttps://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââdonate/ââorganizations
Huh, there does seem to be a communication mismatch. Though I do think the Animal Welfare fund and the Global Health fund are more legible than LTFF.
Now that the whole FTX thing has happened, have you reconsidered your position about the trust the public should have in organizations that donât share the distribution of funds?
+1. I always assumed that the âOpenâ in âOpen Philanthropyâ referred to an aspiration for a greater degree of transparency than is typically seen in philanthropy, and I generally support this aspiration being shared in the wider effective altruism philanthropic space. The EA Funds are an amazingly flexible way of funding extremely valuable work â but it seems to me that this flexibility would still benefit from the scrutiny and crowd-input that becomes possible through measures like public reports.