I like the idea of less centralized funding, and I think giving more influence to a diverse set ofmid-size funders is a critical part of reducing the risk of undue influence bya few megadonors. But the implementation may be complicated.
I feel that most people who are not “professional” EAs (for lack of a better word, and definitely including myself) would be pretty bad at playing grantmaker without devoting quite a bit of time to it. And most people who have enough income to be systematically important funders are spending a lot of time/energy at their day jobs and are unlikely to have bandwidth to do more than—at most -- evaluate others’ evaluations of funding candidates.
I can think of two possible ways to get some of what you’re looking for if the assumptions above are correct:
It may be plausible to have a centralized fund designed to accept donations from small-to-midsize EtGers set up in a way that minimizes the influence of “the people who control (most) of the money.” In other words, the fund would be independent of CEA/EV, would not invite anyone who has Open Phil’s ear to be a grantmaker, would not accept money from any potential megadonors, etc. That would at least create one “independent” funding stream.
It may be preferable to have an organization offering several funds in a specified area—e.g., separate pools of money for EA infrastructure managed separately by Jim, Pam, and Dwight. Presumably, the fund managers could talk to and cooperate with each other, but there would likely be more independence and diversity of approach than under a committee system. (I think that is true even if a committee almost always approves the lead grantmaker’s recommendation; the very existence of an approval requirement can significantly shape an individual’s exercise of initial discretion.) Perhaps there could be a mechanism for Jim and Pam to go to an oversight board if they felt Dwight was planning to fund something harmful or unusually silly.
Those ideas would have costs as well as benefits. In particular, I’ve always appreciated that the EA community tries to minimize the amount of time/resources organizations need to devote to fundraising as opposed to substantive work. I get the sense that top leadership in many “mainstream” charities spends a lot of its bandwidth on fundraising and donor management. Decentralization would require a step back from that. But I think either of the two ideas above might achieve some of your goals with significantly lower downsides than having (e.g.) several dozen different midsize EtGers evaluating grant proposals.
I feel that most people who are not “professional” EAs (for lack of a better word, and definitely including myself) would be pretty bad at playing grantmaker without devoting quite a bit of time to it.
I think you overestimate the difference between you and “professional” EAs. Good grant making both hard and time consuming for everyone.
If someone is doing grant evaluation as their full-time job, then they are probably better at it than you, because they can spend more time on it. But as far as I know, most EA grants are evaluated by people doing this as some side volunteering. They usually have an EA job, but that job is often something different than grant making.
I think OpenPhil is the only org that employ full time grant makers? But you can’t even apply to OpenPhil unless you either fitted into any of their pre-defined programs or if know the right people. The only time I asked OpenPhil for money (I went to their office hour at EA Global) they politely told me that they would not even evaluate my project, because it was too small to be worth their time. To be clear, I’m not writing this to complain. I’m not saying that they did the wrong judgment. Having paid professional evaluators looking at every small project is expensive.
I just hate that people like yourself think that there are some grant experts out there, looking at all the grant, making much better evaluations than you could have done. Because there isn’t. That’s not how things are currently run.
In particular, I’ve always appreciated that the EA community tries to minimize the amount of time/resources organizations need to devote to fundraising as opposed to substantive work. I get the sense that top leadership in many “mainstream” charities spends a lot of its bandwidth on fundraising and donor management.
I agree. I know some academics and have an idea of how much time and effort they spend on grant making. We don’t want to end up in that situation.
I think this can be solved by having an EA wide standard for grant applications. If I were in charge, it would be a google doc template. If I want funding, I can fill it in with my project, and then send it to all the relevant mid-sized funders.
By “professional EA,” I meant that—at least by and large—the fund managers have relevant professional expertise in the subject area of the fund. An investment banker, law firm partner, neurosurgeon, or corporate CEO is very unlikely to have that kind of experience. My assumption is that those folks will take significantly longer to adequately evaluate a grant proposal than someone with helpful background knowledge from professional experience. And given the requirements of most jobs that pay enough to make independent grantmaking viable, I don’t think most people would have enough time to devote to adequately evaluating grants without strong subject-matter background. In contrast, I imagine that I would do a better job evaluating grant proposals in my field of expertise (law) than the bulk of the EA Funds managers, even if the specific subject matter of the grant was a branch of law I hadn’t touched since law school.
I’m a public-sector lawyer, so no one has dissauded me from independent grantmaking. I don’t have nearly the money to have ever thought about it!
In case someone is interested in the idea of a “Donors Choose” type system: unless the proposed grantees had their own 501(c)(3)s, what you’re describing would need some degree of 501(c)(3) organizational oversight/control/overhead to keep the tax deduction in the US (which higher-income individuals definitely care about). A straight-up “EA GoFundMe” wouldn’t be any more tax-deductible than vanilla GoFundMe is. Certain types of grants—those that could be seen as closer to gifts to individuals rather than compensation for work to be performed—might need heightened scrutiny to avoid problems with private inurement (benefit).
501(c)(3)s can be acceded via fiscal sponsorship. There is already a network of agreement between EA orgs to re-grant to each other for tax reasons, mostly thanks to Rethink https://rethink.charity/donate
In order to tap into this, an individual needs to be paid by though an org that is tapped into this network. For AI Safety projects I think AI Safety Support would be willing to provide this service (I know they already done this for two projects and one person). I don’t know what the options are for other cause areas, but if this becomes a major bottleneck, then it seems like a good plan would be to set up orgs to financially host various projects.
I like the idea of less centralized funding, and I think giving more influence to a diverse set ofmid-size funders is a critical part of reducing the risk of undue influence bya few megadonors. But the implementation may be complicated.
I feel that most people who are not “professional” EAs (for lack of a better word, and definitely including myself) would be pretty bad at playing grantmaker without devoting quite a bit of time to it. And most people who have enough income to be systematically important funders are spending a lot of time/energy at their day jobs and are unlikely to have bandwidth to do more than—at most -- evaluate others’ evaluations of funding candidates.
I can think of two possible ways to get some of what you’re looking for if the assumptions above are correct:
It may be plausible to have a centralized fund designed to accept donations from small-to-midsize EtGers set up in a way that minimizes the influence of “the people who control (most) of the money.” In other words, the fund would be independent of CEA/EV, would not invite anyone who has Open Phil’s ear to be a grantmaker, would not accept money from any potential megadonors, etc. That would at least create one “independent” funding stream.
It may be preferable to have an organization offering several funds in a specified area—e.g., separate pools of money for EA infrastructure managed separately by Jim, Pam, and Dwight. Presumably, the fund managers could talk to and cooperate with each other, but there would likely be more independence and diversity of approach than under a committee system. (I think that is true even if a committee almost always approves the lead grantmaker’s recommendation; the very existence of an approval requirement can significantly shape an individual’s exercise of initial discretion.) Perhaps there could be a mechanism for Jim and Pam to go to an oversight board if they felt Dwight was planning to fund something harmful or unusually silly.
Those ideas would have costs as well as benefits. In particular, I’ve always appreciated that the EA community tries to minimize the amount of time/resources organizations need to devote to fundraising as opposed to substantive work. I get the sense that top leadership in many “mainstream” charities spends a lot of its bandwidth on fundraising and donor management. Decentralization would require a step back from that. But I think either of the two ideas above might achieve some of your goals with significantly lower downsides than having (e.g.) several dozen different midsize EtGers evaluating grant proposals.
I think you overestimate the difference between you and “professional” EAs. Good grant making both hard and time consuming for everyone.
If someone is doing grant evaluation as their full-time job, then they are probably better at it than you, because they can spend more time on it. But as far as I know, most EA grants are evaluated by people doing this as some side volunteering. They usually have an EA job, but that job is often something different than grant making.
I think OpenPhil is the only org that employ full time grant makers? But you can’t even apply to OpenPhil unless you either fitted into any of their pre-defined programs or if know the right people. The only time I asked OpenPhil for money (I went to their office hour at EA Global) they politely told me that they would not even evaluate my project, because it was too small to be worth their time. To be clear, I’m not writing this to complain. I’m not saying that they did the wrong judgment. Having paid professional evaluators looking at every small project is expensive.
I just hate that people like yourself think that there are some grant experts out there, looking at all the grant, making much better evaluations than you could have done. Because there isn’t. That’s not how things are currently run.
I agree. I know some academics and have an idea of how much time and effort they spend on grant making. We don’t want to end up in that situation.
I think this can be solved by having an EA wide standard for grant applications. If I were in charge, it would be a google doc template. If I want funding, I can fill it in with my project, and then send it to all the relevant mid-sized funders.
By “professional EA,” I meant that—at least by and large—the fund managers have relevant professional expertise in the subject area of the fund. An investment banker, law firm partner, neurosurgeon, or corporate CEO is very unlikely to have that kind of experience. My assumption is that those folks will take significantly longer to adequately evaluate a grant proposal than someone with helpful background knowledge from professional experience. And given the requirements of most jobs that pay enough to make independent grantmaking viable, I don’t think most people would have enough time to devote to adequately evaluating grants without strong subject-matter background. In contrast, I imagine that I would do a better job evaluating grant proposals in my field of expertise (law) than the bulk of the EA Funds managers, even if the specific subject matter of the grant was a branch of law I hadn’t touched since law school.
I’m a public-sector lawyer, so no one has dissauded me from independent grantmaking. I don’t have nearly the money to have ever thought about it!
In case someone is interested in the idea of a “Donors Choose” type system: unless the proposed grantees had their own 501(c)(3)s, what you’re describing would need some degree of 501(c)(3) organizational oversight/control/overhead to keep the tax deduction in the US (which higher-income individuals definitely care about). A straight-up “EA GoFundMe” wouldn’t be any more tax-deductible than vanilla GoFundMe is. Certain types of grants—those that could be seen as closer to gifts to individuals rather than compensation for work to be performed—might need heightened scrutiny to avoid problems with private inurement (benefit).
501(c)(3)s can be acceded via fiscal sponsorship. There is already a network of agreement between EA orgs to re-grant to each other for tax reasons, mostly thanks to Rethink
https://rethink.charity/donate
In order to tap into this, an individual needs to be paid by though an org that is tapped into this network. For AI Safety projects I think AI Safety Support would be willing to provide this service (I know they already done this for two projects and one person). I don’t know what the options are for other cause areas, but if this becomes a major bottleneck, then it seems like a good plan would be to set up orgs to financially host various projects.