I would prefer more people give through donor lotteries rather than deferring to EA funds or some vague EA vibe. Right now I think EA funds do like $10M / year vs $1M / year through lotteries, and probably in my ideal world the lottery number would be at least 10x higher.
I think that EAs are consistently underrating the value of this kind of decentralization. With all due respect to EA funds I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “thinking more about how to donate wouldn’t help because obviously I should just donate 100% to EA funds.” (That said, I don’t have a take about whether EA funds should shut down. I would have guessed not.)
I think that’s probably the lowest hanging fruit, though it might only help modestly. The effect size depends on how much the problem is lacking diverse sources of money vs lacking diverse sources of attention.
Personally the FTX regrantor system felt like a nice middle ground between EA Funds and donor lotteries in terms of (de)centralization. I’d be excited to donate to something less centralized than EA Funds but more centralized than a donor lottery.
It would be cool to have a grant system where anyone can list them selves as fund manager, and donors can pick which fund managers decisions they want to back with their donations. If I remember correctly, the s-process could facilitate something like that.
At present, the Funds evaluate hundreds of grant applications a year, generally seeking high four to low six figures in funding (median seems to be mid-five). In a world where the Funds were largely replaced by lotteries, where would those applicants go? Do we predict that the lottery winners would largely take over the funding niche currently filled by the Funds? If so, how would this change affect the likelihood of funding for smaller grant applicants?
Strong agree, and note that it’s not obvious after browsing both GWWC and EAF how to donate to lotteries currently, or when they’ll be running next. I’d like to see them run more regularly and placed prominently on the websites.
I would prefer more people give through donor lotteries rather than deferring to EA funds or some vague EA vibe. Right now I think EA funds do like $10M / year vs $1M / year through lotteries, and probably in my ideal world the lottery number would be at least 10x higher.
I think that EAs are consistently underrating the value of this kind of decentralization. With all due respect to EA funds I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “thinking more about how to donate wouldn’t help because obviously I should just donate 100% to EA funds.” (That said, I don’t have a take about whether EA funds should shut down. I would have guessed not.)
I think that’s probably the lowest hanging fruit, though it might only help modestly. The effect size depends on how much the problem is lacking diverse sources of money vs lacking diverse sources of attention.
Personally the FTX regrantor system felt like a nice middle ground between EA Funds and donor lotteries in terms of (de)centralization. I’d be excited to donate to something less centralized than EA Funds but more centralized than a donor lottery.
Maybe something like the S-process used by SFF?
https://survivalandflourishing.fund/s-process
It would be cool to have a grant system where anyone can list them selves as fund manager, and donors can pick which fund managers decisions they want to back with their donations. If I remember correctly, the s-process could facilitate something like that.
At present, the Funds evaluate hundreds of grant applications a year, generally seeking high four to low six figures in funding (median seems to be mid-five). In a world where the Funds were largely replaced by lotteries, where would those applicants go? Do we predict that the lottery winners would largely take over the funding niche currently filled by the Funds? If so, how would this change affect the likelihood of funding for smaller grant applicants?
Strong agree, and note that it’s not obvious after browsing both GWWC and EAF how to donate to lotteries currently, or when they’ll be running next. I’d like to see them run more regularly and placed prominently on the websites.
Ideally, EigenTrust or something similar should be able to help with regranting once it takes off, no? : )
Is there somewhere we can see how the winners of donor lotteries have been donating their winnings?