It’s very hard/confusing for me to think of an exact number, in part because the very existence of this public announcement and public comments probably changes the relevant numbers.
Suppose the counterfactual for this post is that we wait for November to make a “normal” end-of-year fundraising post, and during that time we make do with an income stream similar to donations to us in the past few months (~100k/month). If we are honest about our funding needs in November (likely still very high), I expect say ~1-2m of donations to us from people’s end-of-year donation budgets (3-5.5m including Open Phil matching). In that world, because of sharply diminishing returns, I’d likely prefer 10k additional now (30k including Open Phil matching), to 20k additional in December (60k including OP matching).
But the very existence of this post means we aren’t living in that world, as (hopefully) donors with far lower opportunity cost of money will generously donate to us now to ameliorate such gaps. So the whole thing leaves me pretty confused.
Anyway, I will not encourage giving money to us now if the urgency imposes significant hardship on your end (beyond the level you reflectively endorse for donations in general).
If you are a large (>50k?) donor faced very concretely with an option of giving us $X now vs $X * Y later (I gave the example of tax reasons below), feel free to ping Caleb or I. We can discuss together what makes the most sense, and also (if necessary, I also need to check with ops) EA Funds can borrow against such promises and/or make conditional grants to grantees.
If you expect to take in $3-6M by the end of this year, borrowing say $300k against that already seems totally reasonable.
Not sure if this is possible, but I for one would be happy to donate to LTFF today in exchange for a 120% regrant to the Animal Welfare Fund in December[1]
Thanks so much for your offer! That’d be a great option to have on the table! Hopefully enough donors will ameliorate our gaps in the next month, but I might check in with you against later this month if a) we have some more firm commitments for donations by end-of-year[1], and b) we’re still quite severely funding constrained as of Sept 20th, and c) we can’t find lower bids.
One issue with the straightforward “expect to get $3-6M by the end of this year” logic is that a model that spits out that sentence would also predict that this fundraising post + associated public and private comms should also work as fundraising for us; if we turn out to receive neither donations in the near future nor promises after our posts now, I should also strongly update against my original estimate of getting 3-6M by EOY.
It’s very hard/confusing for me to think of an exact number, in part because the very existence of this public announcement and public comments probably changes the relevant numbers.
Suppose the counterfactual for this post is that we wait for November to make a “normal” end-of-year fundraising post, and during that time we make do with an income stream similar to donations to us in the past few months (~100k/month). If we are honest about our funding needs in November (likely still very high), I expect say ~1-2m of donations to us from people’s end-of-year donation budgets (3-5.5m including Open Phil matching). In that world, because of sharply diminishing returns, I’d likely prefer 10k additional now (30k including Open Phil matching), to 20k additional in December (60k including OP matching).
But the very existence of this post means we aren’t living in that world, as (hopefully) donors with far lower opportunity cost of money will generously donate to us now to ameliorate such gaps. So the whole thing leaves me pretty confused.
Anyway, I will not encourage giving money to us now if the urgency imposes significant hardship on your end (beyond the level you reflectively endorse for donations in general).
If you are a large (>50k?) donor faced very concretely with an option of giving us $X now vs $X * Y later (I gave the example of tax reasons below), feel free to ping Caleb or I. We can discuss together what makes the most sense, and also (if necessary, I also need to check with ops) EA Funds can borrow against such promises and/or make conditional grants to grantees.
If you expect to take in $3-6M by the end of this year, borrowing say $300k against that already seems totally reasonable.
Not sure if this is possible, but I for one would be happy to donate to LTFF today in exchange for a 120% regrant to the Animal Welfare Fund in December[1]
This would seem to be an abuse of the Open Phil matching, but perhaps that chunk can be exempt
Thanks so much for your offer! That’d be a great option to have on the table! Hopefully enough donors will ameliorate our gaps in the next month, but I might check in with you against later this month if a) we have some more firm commitments for donations by end-of-year[1], and b) we’re still quite severely funding constrained as of Sept 20th, and c) we can’t find lower bids.
One issue with the straightforward “expect to get $3-6M by the end of this year” logic is that a model that spits out that sentence would also predict that this fundraising post + associated public and private comms should also work as fundraising for us; if we turn out to receive neither donations in the near future nor promises after our posts now, I should also strongly update against my original estimate of getting 3-6M by EOY.