Are re-granters vetting applicants to the fund (or at least get to see them), or do they just reach out to individuals/projects they’ve come across elsewhere?
I mean, you made pretty specific arguments about the information theory of centralized grants. Once you break up across even 20 regranters, these effects you are arguing for—the effects of also knowing about all the other applications—become turbo diminished.
Yes, that’s true. Still, grantmakers, including re-granters with experience or who get to see a lot of applicants (not necessarily all applicants), should—in expectation -
have a better idea of the distribution of opportunities, including of those outside the ones they’ve personally vetted, and
be better judges of the different opportunities.
I’d say this is true even compared to a highly engaged EA who doesn’t individually vet a lot of opportunities, let alone get real world feedback on many grants. Grantmakers are highly engaged EAs, anyway, so the difference comes from experience with grantmaking and seeing more opportunities to compare.
I think re-granters make more sense when an area is really vetting-constrained or taking a number of applicants that would be unmanageable without re-granters, and I agree my argument is weaker in that case. I would guess animal welfare is not that vetting-constrained. The FTX Future Fund is a new fund aiming to grant a lot of money, the scope of “improve the far future” seems wider than near-term animal welfare, and because of less feedback on the outcomes of interest, priors for types of interventions should be much weaker than for animal welfare. Animal advocates (including outside EA) have been trying lots of things with little success and a few types of things with substantial success, so the track record for a type of intervention can be used as a pretty strong prior.
Are re-granters vetting applicants to the fund (or at least get to see them), or do they just reach out to individuals/projects they’ve come across elsewhere?
I don’t think that their process is so defined. Some of them may solicit applications, I have no idea. In my case, we were writing an application for the main fund, solicited notes from somebody who happened to be a re-granter without us knowing (or at least without me knowing), and he ended up opting to fund it directly.
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Still, grantmakers, including re-granters [...]
No need to restate
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Animal advocates (including outside EA) have been trying lots of things with little success and a few types of things with substantial success, so the track record for a type of intervention can be used as a pretty strong prior.
It’s definitely true that in a pre-paradigmatic context vetting is at its least valuable. Animal welfare does seem a bit pre-paradigmatic to me as well, relative to for example global health. But not as much as longtermism.
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concretely:
It seems relevant whether regranters would echo your advice, as applied to highly engaged EA aware of a great-seeming opportunity to disburse a small amount of funds (for example, a laptop’s worth of funds). I highly doubt that they would. This post by Linch https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vPMo5dRrgubTQGj9g/some-unfun-lessons-i-learned-as-a-junior-grantmaker does not strike me as writing by somebody who would like to be asked to micro manage <20k sums of money more than status quo.
Are re-granters vetting applicants to the fund (or at least get to see them), or do they just reach out to individuals/projects they’ve come across elsewhere?
Yes, that’s true. Still, grantmakers, including re-granters with experience or who get to see a lot of applicants (not necessarily all applicants), should—in expectation -
have a better idea of the distribution of opportunities, including of those outside the ones they’ve personally vetted, and
be better judges of the different opportunities.
I’d say this is true even compared to a highly engaged EA who doesn’t individually vet a lot of opportunities, let alone get real world feedback on many grants. Grantmakers are highly engaged EAs, anyway, so the difference comes from experience with grantmaking and seeing more opportunities to compare.
I think re-granters make more sense when an area is really vetting-constrained or taking a number of applicants that would be unmanageable without re-granters, and I agree my argument is weaker in that case. I would guess animal welfare is not that vetting-constrained. The FTX Future Fund is a new fund aiming to grant a lot of money, the scope of “improve the far future” seems wider than near-term animal welfare, and because of less feedback on the outcomes of interest, priors for types of interventions should be much weaker than for animal welfare. Animal advocates (including outside EA) have been trying lots of things with little success and a few types of things with substantial success, so the track record for a type of intervention can be used as a pretty strong prior.
I don’t think that their process is so defined. Some of them may solicit applications, I have no idea. In my case, we were writing an application for the main fund, solicited notes from somebody who happened to be a re-granter without us knowing (or at least without me knowing), and he ended up opting to fund it directly.
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No need to restate
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It’s definitely true that in a pre-paradigmatic context vetting is at its least valuable. Animal welfare does seem a bit pre-paradigmatic to me as well, relative to for example global health. But not as much as longtermism.
--
concretely:
It seems relevant whether regranters would echo your advice, as applied to highly engaged EA aware of a great-seeming opportunity to disburse a small amount of funds (for example, a laptop’s worth of funds). I highly doubt that they would. This post by Linch https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vPMo5dRrgubTQGj9g/some-unfun-lessons-i-learned-as-a-junior-grantmaker does not strike me as writing by somebody who would like to be asked to micro manage <20k sums of money more than status quo.