For what it’s worth my guess is that a key reason people aren’t giving as much to our GH&D fund is due to the influx of healthy competitors. Ie, it’s not offering much of a differentiated product from what people could get elsewhere. I haven’t interviewed our donors about this so I can’t be sure, but my impression is that when the GH&D fund first launched, there weren’t any plausible competitors for donors for the niche of “I want to figure out my own cause prioritization, but I want to defer to external experts to source and prioritize interventions and projects.” But these days GiveWell manages a number of their own funds (as opposed to “just” writing up public recommendations for charities to suggest people give to), Giving What We Can has their own Global Health&Wellbeing fund, etc.
In contrast, EA Funds’ other funds still retain an edge as arguably being the default place to donate to for those cause areas, for a reasonable subset of engaged donors.
Let its donors know that donating to GHDF in its current form has a similar effect to donating to AGF (if that is in fact the case).
Consider appointing additional fund managers independent from GiveWell.
Consider accepting applications.
In any case, the goal of this post is mostly about starting a discussion about the future of GHDF rather than providing super informed takes about it. So feel free to share your thoughts or vision below!
However, GiveWell’s All Grants Fundwas only launched in August 2022, GWWC’sGlobal Health and Wellbeing Fund was only launched in late 2023, and there might be some lag between decreased donations and decreased grants, so I do not think new competitors alone could explain GHDF’s 52 % (= 1 − 4.8/10) decrease in grants from 2021 to 2022 reported by Ricardo.
Importantly, GHDF has now updated the amounts they granted in 2022 and 2023. On December 20, in agreement with Ricardo’s analysis, the amounts granted in 2022 and 2023 were 4.8 and 0 M$, whereas now they are 11 and 3.4 M$. I wonder why the amount granted in 2022 took 1 year to be updated to the correct value.
(My own guesses only)
For what it’s worth my guess is that a key reason people aren’t giving as much to our GH&D fund is due to the influx of healthy competitors. Ie, it’s not offering much of a differentiated product from what people could get elsewhere. I haven’t interviewed our donors about this so I can’t be sure, but my impression is that when the GH&D fund first launched, there weren’t any plausible competitors for donors for the niche of “I want to figure out my own cause prioritization, but I want to defer to external experts to source and prioritize interventions and projects.” But these days GiveWell manages a number of their own funds (as opposed to “just” writing up public recommendations for charities to suggest people give to), Giving What We Can has their own Global Health&Wellbeing fund, etc.
In contrast, EA Funds’ other funds still retain an edge as arguably being the default place to donate to for those cause areas, for a reasonable subset of engaged donors.
Nice point, Linch! I have a post somewhat related to that:
However, GiveWell’s All Grants Fund was only launched in August 2022, GWWC’s Global Health and Wellbeing Fund was only launched in late 2023, and there might be some lag between decreased donations and decreased grants, so I do not think new competitors alone could explain GHDF’s 52 % (= 1 − 4.8/10) decrease in grants from 2021 to 2022 reported by Ricardo.
Importantly, GHDF has now updated the amounts they granted in 2022 and 2023. On December 20, in agreement with Ricardo’s analysis, the amounts granted in 2022 and 2023 were 4.8 and 0 M$, whereas now they are 11 and 3.4 M$. I wonder why the amount granted in 2022 took 1 year to be updated to the correct value.