I previously tried to think of “active grantmaking” ideas (here), i.e. things I might want EA funders to fund but for which no application has yet been made. Some of these were people/orgs I thought do cool work and so might be worth funding for something, and some of these were potentially cool ideas I might want some person/org to do.
Here’s one of the (rough and vague!) ideas I had:
Fund OWID for something
What sort of things might I want them to use money for?
Just expand/scale in general?
Do something analogous to how Vox made a new “vertical” for Future Perfect?
Like a new department or focus area
Sketch of what this could look like:
One of the buttons on the bar at the top of the OWID that says the name of some broad topic area relevant to EA, or something vaguer like Future Perfect
The stuff in that area is more EA-relevant than average, and has a similar theme or angle or something. e.g., maybe it’s all focused on things relevant to x-risks
At least one OWID staff member is primarily focused on producing that sort of content.
It’s still the same sort of content as OWID’s regular stuff.
E.g., they don’t have a finished page on nuclear weapons, and I don’t think they have ones on bioweapons or AI. I want them to have that.
We could either ask them to make those things specifically, or ask them to set up something like how Future Perfect works within Vox that will regularly produce that sort of thing.
Another idea I had was funding the creation of “new things kind-of like Our World in Data”. (This is discussed briefly in this comment thread.)
I think the key bottlenecks to this are (1) a clearer sense of precisely what kind of org/project we’d want and (2) people who are willing and suited to making that happen.
I guess OWID could help facilitate that by suggesting types of OWID-like projects that would be great but for whatever reason might be better done elsewhere instead/as well, suggesting people who might be great at doing that, and/or agreeing to provide some advice/mentorship to whoever sets up this other thing.
I previously tried to think of “active grantmaking” ideas (here), i.e. things I might want EA funders to fund but for which no application has yet been made. Some of these were people/orgs I thought do cool work and so might be worth funding for something, and some of these were potentially cool ideas I might want some person/org to do.
Here’s one of the (rough and vague!) ideas I had:
Fund OWID for something
What sort of things might I want them to use money for?
Just expand/scale in general?
Do something analogous to how Vox made a new “vertical” for Future Perfect?
Like a new department or focus area
Sketch of what this could look like:
One of the buttons on the bar at the top of the OWID that says the name of some broad topic area relevant to EA, or something vaguer like Future Perfect
The stuff in that area is more EA-relevant than average, and has a similar theme or angle or something. e.g., maybe it’s all focused on things relevant to x-risks
At least one OWID staff member is primarily focused on producing that sort of content.
It’s still the same sort of content as OWID’s regular stuff.
E.g., they don’t have a finished page on nuclear weapons, and I don’t think they have ones on bioweapons or AI. I want them to have that.
We could either ask them to make those things specifically, or ask them to set up something like how Future Perfect works within Vox that will regularly produce that sort of thing.
Do work on specific topics?
Examples:
AI
Nuclear weapons
They they only have “a preliminary collection of materials” on nuclear weapons
Open questions:
What sorts of restricted funding, advice, or encouragement would they be open to?
On the 80k podcast, Roser indicated they much preferred people to give OWID unrestricted funding and let OWID use their own judgement
And I got the impression that maybe in general they might not be open to restricted funding
But maybe they’d be more open to it from EA sources when we do have a really good rationale and it roughly aligns with OWID’s own vision?
Is this better than trying to facilitate the creation of new things kind-of like our world in data?
Another idea I had was funding the creation of “new things kind-of like Our World in Data”. (This is discussed briefly in this comment thread.)
I think the key bottlenecks to this are (1) a clearer sense of precisely what kind of org/project we’d want and (2) people who are willing and suited to making that happen.
I guess OWID could help facilitate that by suggesting types of OWID-like projects that would be great but for whatever reason might be better done elsewhere instead/as well, suggesting people who might be great at doing that, and/or agreeing to provide some advice/mentorship to whoever sets up this other thing.