Been messaging with Brendon and others. I thought I’d copy-paste the – hopefully – non-inflammatory / personal parts of the considerations I last wrote about last so we can continue having collaborative truth-seeking discussions on those here as well.
To Brendon
I would clearly keep stating that you’re focused on funding early start-ups in the pilot/testing stages who are working with clearly delineated minimum viable target groups.
That cuts out a bunch of a funding categories like funding AI safety researchers, funding biotech work, or funding entire established national EA groups, and I think that’s good! (actually [...], the [...] from EA Netherlands might not like me saying that...anyway)
Those are things people at EA Grants, EA Community Building Grants, EA Funds or OpenPhil (of course!) might be focused on right now.
The Community Building Grant has some definite problems in the limited time they have to assess and give feedback to national and regional EA organisers, and their restrictive career plan changes criteria. Harri from CEA and I had a productive conversation about [that] [...] But in my opinion funding by the Angel Group there should focus on specific projects for specific target groups by the organisers. I think national and local group members should play a more active role in sharing feedback on how much the organisers work has helped them come to better reflected decisions for doing good and stick to them – and offer funding to extend the organisers’ runway. Which I hope makes it clear what kind of area I see the crowdfunding platform Heroes & Friends come in.”
And in the WhatsApp group exploring that crowdfunding platform:
On specialisation between funders
@[...], I think it’s important for funding platforms and grantmakers to clearly communicate what they’re specialised in a few paragraphs.
Especially:
scope in terms of cause/skill intersections
brightspots (funding area where their batting rate is high)
blindspots (where they miss promising funding opportunities, i.e. false negatives)
traps (failure modes of how they conduct their processes)
[added later: To “traps”, I should also add failure modes that grantmakers could see other, less experienced funders running into (so a newcomer funder can plan e.g. a Skype call with the grantmaker around that)]
This is something most grantmakers in the EA community are doing a pisspoor job at right now IMO (e.g. see our earlier Messenger exchange on online communication of EA Funds).
There’s a lot of progress to be made there. I expect building consensus around funding scopes and specialisation will significantly reduce the distractions and fracturing of groups we might each add to with scaling up the Angel Group or [possibly] collaborating with Heroes & Friends.
I’ve tried to clearly delineate with you guys what EA RELEASE (for lack of a better name for now) would be about.
Regarding the Angel Group, here is the suggestion I just shared with Brendon: [...]
This is something most grantmakers in the EA community are doing a pisspoor job at right now IMO (e.g. see our earlier Messenger exchange on online communication of EA Funds).
Could you link to this exchange or expand on this point more?
Better description of grantmaker’s Scope: the ‘problem-skills intersections’ they focus on evaluating. Staff of funds should share these with other larger funders, and publish summaries of them on their websites.
Been messaging with Brendon and others. I thought I’d copy-paste the – hopefully – non-inflammatory / personal parts of the considerations I last wrote about last so we can continue having collaborative truth-seeking discussions on those here as well.
To Brendon
And in the WhatsApp group exploring that crowdfunding platform:
Could you link to this exchange or expand on this point more?
Better description of grantmaker’s Scope: the ‘problem-skills intersections’ they focus on evaluating. Staff of funds should share these with other larger funders, and publish summaries of them on their websites.