1. Kudos for donating that much, even with a direct work position.
2. I’ve been helping out Patrick a bit, and wound up deciding between Longview and EA Funds. Both seem pretty strong and like they could absorb more money. If you don’t want to spend too much time on deciding, these seem pretty safe. (Note that longview is longtermist)
3. EA is vetting constrained, and I’d guess you would be better than many at vetting (particularly those who aren’t currently funders). I’d be curious what you’d come up with if you were to spend time on this. I could easily see your work doing research being valuable at $400-1k/hr or so. That said, you could also do this without money attached, and just post your thoughts to the EA Forum (sort of like Larks does)
4. After spending some time around the funding space… I don’t see any really amazing wins that the existing funders aren’t doing. I’d love to see more strong full-time funders (which would lessen the vetting constraints), but it’s tough to donate to this as a cause itself.
5. Microgrants in areas that EA Funds covers seem unnecessary; I think they’ll be hard to beat for longtermism+infrastructure at least. Maybe they could be useful in other areas.
6. I think long-standing programs are much more exciting than 1-time efforts, at this point, even if the rates of donations are lower. (Donating to a fund, lump-sum is fine though)
I could take a bet on less trusted/proven people as grantmakers
I’d really like to see more work here. The real bet is betting them as future grantmakers. We could probably use more solid people doing grantmaking work, especially because that will build up skills and evidence for them to do future, larger grantmaking work. That said, it’s not clear who exactly is both good enough, and interested in spending a lot of time on this. Finding the person/group might be pretty challenging. (Note that if you do find them, and they seem good, others might also be likely to fund them as well).
Some quick thoughts:
1. Kudos for donating that much, even with a direct work position.
2. I’ve been helping out Patrick a bit, and wound up deciding between Longview and EA Funds. Both seem pretty strong and like they could absorb more money. If you don’t want to spend too much time on deciding, these seem pretty safe. (Note that longview is longtermist)
3. EA is vetting constrained, and I’d guess you would be better than many at vetting (particularly those who aren’t currently funders). I’d be curious what you’d come up with if you were to spend time on this. I could easily see your work doing research being valuable at $400-1k/hr or so. That said, you could also do this without money attached, and just post your thoughts to the EA Forum (sort of like Larks does)
4. After spending some time around the funding space… I don’t see any really amazing wins that the existing funders aren’t doing. I’d love to see more strong full-time funders (which would lessen the vetting constraints), but it’s tough to donate to this as a cause itself.
5. Microgrants in areas that EA Funds covers seem unnecessary; I think they’ll be hard to beat for longtermism+infrastructure at least. Maybe they could be useful in other areas.
6. I think long-standing programs are much more exciting than 1-time efforts, at this point, even if the rates of donations are lower. (Donating to a fund, lump-sum is fine though)
I’d really like to see more work here. The real bet is betting them as future grantmakers. We could probably use more solid people doing grantmaking work, especially because that will build up skills and evidence for them to do future, larger grantmaking work. That said, it’s not clear who exactly is both good enough, and interested in spending a lot of time on this. Finding the person/group might be pretty challenging. (Note that if you do find them, and they seem good, others might also be likely to fund them as well).
I agree with this!