I would guess that $300k simply isn’t worth Elie’s time to distribute in small grants, given the enormous funds available via GoodVentures and even GiveWell direct and directed donations.
This is consistent with the optionality story in the beta launch post:
If the EA Funds raises little money, they can spend little additional time allocating the EA Funds’ money but still utilize their deep subject-matter expertise in making the allocation. This reduces the chance that the EA Funds causes fund managers to use their time ineffectively and it means that the lower bound of the quality of the donations is likely to be high enough to justify donations even without knowing the eventual size of the fund.
However, I do think this suggests that—to the extent to which GiveWell is already a known and trusted institution—for global poverty in particular it’s more important to get the fund manager with the most unique relevant expertise than a fund manager with the most expertise.
This is consistent with the optionality story in the beta launch post:
However, I do think this suggests that—to the extent to which GiveWell is already a known and trusted institution—for global poverty in particular it’s more important to get the fund manager with the most unique relevant expertise than a fund manager with the most expertise.