Thank you! Great question. I can’t speak on behalf of EA Funds and their plans going forward, but I can say our new GWWC cause area funds are meaningfully different from their funds (at least as they’ve been operating so far).
The biggest differences IMO are
The EA Funds generally (with the exception of the GHD Fund) only make grants to organisations that apply for funding with them.
The EA Funds are managed by a limited set of expert grantmakers.
Our GWWC cause area funds, on the other hand, ultimately aim to cover recommendations and grantmaking by nearly all impact-focused evaluators and grantmakers, based on our evaluations of these evaluators, but we don’t accept any grant applications ourselves.
For instance, EA Funds currently doesn’t consider any of Founders Pledge’s or Longview’s evaluations or active search for high-impact opportunities to inform their grantmaking, whereas our GWWC Funds do (or will do in the case of Founders Pledge) and additionally consider EA Funds as a grantmaker/evaluator.
For the EA GHD Fund and the GWWC GH&W Fund in particular, the difference is currently less pronounced. This is because we ended up working with GiveWell based on our initial evaluations, and EA Funds has historically asked them to advise their fund as well. However, this could easily change in the short- to medium-term, e.g. we hope to evaluate both Happier Lives Institute and Founders Pledge next year as candidates for evaluators informing our GH&W Fund grantmaking in addition to GiveWell.
Hope that clarifies a bit! Happy to elaborate further on the differences if helpful.
Thanks Sjir! That helps me understand the circumstances better, and I do see why the GWWC funds might serve a useful role in today’s funding ecosystem. If I could wave a magic wand and reorganize EV, I might still be tempted to think that the best course of action would be to change the EA funds’ processes rather than adding new funds entirely (e.g. having AWF/LTFF make unsolicited grants in addition to the application process), but what you’re saying makes a fair amount sense given how EV is structured.
Thank you! Great question. I can’t speak on behalf of EA Funds and their plans going forward, but I can say our new GWWC cause area funds are meaningfully different from their funds (at least as they’ve been operating so far).
The biggest differences IMO are
The EA Funds generally (with the exception of the GHD Fund) only make grants to organisations that apply for funding with them.
The EA Funds are managed by a limited set of expert grantmakers.
Our GWWC cause area funds, on the other hand, ultimately aim to cover recommendations and grantmaking by nearly all impact-focused evaluators and grantmakers, based on our evaluations of these evaluators, but we don’t accept any grant applications ourselves.
For instance, EA Funds currently doesn’t consider any of Founders Pledge’s or Longview’s evaluations or active search for high-impact opportunities to inform their grantmaking, whereas our GWWC Funds do (or will do in the case of Founders Pledge) and additionally consider EA Funds as a grantmaker/evaluator.
For the EA GHD Fund and the GWWC GH&W Fund in particular, the difference is currently less pronounced. This is because we ended up working with GiveWell based on our initial evaluations, and EA Funds has historically asked them to advise their fund as well. However, this could easily change in the short- to medium-term, e.g. we hope to evaluate both Happier Lives Institute and Founders Pledge next year as candidates for evaluators informing our GH&W Fund grantmaking in addition to GiveWell.
Hope that clarifies a bit! Happy to elaborate further on the differences if helpful.
Thanks Sjir! That helps me understand the circumstances better, and I do see why the GWWC funds might serve a useful role in today’s funding ecosystem. If I could wave a magic wand and reorganize EV, I might still be tempted to think that the best course of action would be to change the EA funds’ processes rather than adding new funds entirely (e.g. having AWF/LTFF make unsolicited grants in addition to the application process), but what you’re saying makes a fair amount sense given how EV is structured.