It seems plausible to me that $1bn in a foundation independent from OP could be worth several times that amount added to OP.
How can $1B to a foundation other than OP be worth more than $2B to OP, unless OP is allocating grants very inefficiently? You would have to believe they are misjudging the EV of all their grants, or poorly diversifying against other possible futures, for this to be true.
Intellectual diversity seems very important to figuring out the best grants in the long term.
If atm the community, has, say $20bn to allocate, you only need a 10% improvement to future decisions to be worth +$2bn.
Funder diversity also seems very important for community health, and therefore our ability to attract & retain talent. Itâs not attractive to have your org & career depend on such a small group of decision-makers.
I might quantify the value of the talent pool around another $10bn, so again, you only need a ~10% increase here to be worth a billion, and over centralisation seems like one of the bigger problems.
The current situation also creates a single point of failure for the whole community.
Finally it still seems like OP has various kinds of institutional bottlenecks that mean they canât obviously fund everything that would be âworthâ funding in abstract (and even moreso to do all the active grantmaking that would be worth doing). They also have PR constraints that might make some grants difficult. And it seems unrealistic to expect any single team (however good they are) not to have some blindspots.
$1bn is only 5% of the capital that OP has, so youâd only need to find a 1 grant for every 20 that OP makes that theyâve missed with only 2x the effectiveness of marginal OP grants in order to get 2x the value.
One background piece of context is that I think grants often vary by more than 10x in cost-effectiveness.
I might quantify the value of the talent pool around another $10bn, so again, you only need a ~10% increase here to be worth a billion, and over centralisation seems like one of the bigger problems.
I find it plausible that a strong fix to the funder-diversity problem could increase the value of the talent pool by 10% or even more. However, having a new independent funder with $1B in assets (spending much less than that per year) feels more like an incremental improvement.
$1bn is only 5% of the capital that OP has, so youâd only need to find a 1 grant for every 20 that OP makes that theyâve missed with only 2x the effectiveness of marginal OP grants in order to get 2x the value.
Youâd need to do that consistently (no misses, unless counteracted by >2x grants) and efficiently (as incurring similar overhead as OP with $1B of assets would consume much of the available cash flow). That seems like a tall order.
Moreover, Iâm not sure if a model in which the new major funder always gets to act âlastâ would track reality very well. Itâs likely that OP would change its decisions, at least to some extent, based on what it expected the other funder to do. In this case, the new funder would end up funding a significant amount of stuff that OP would have counterfactually funded.
It might take more than $1bn, but around that level, you could become a major funder of one of the causes like AI safety, so youâd already be getting significant benefits within a cause.
Agree youâd need to average 2x for the last point to work.
Though note the three pathways to impactâtalent, intellectual diversity, OP gapsâare mostly independent, so youâd only need one of them to work.
Also agree in practice there would be some funging between the two, which would limit the differences, thatâs a good point.
How can $1B to a foundation other than OP be worth more than $2B to OP, unless OP is allocating grants very inefficiently? You would have to believe they are misjudging the EV of all their grants, or poorly diversifying against other possible futures, for this to be true.
Intellectual diversity seems very important to figuring out the best grants in the long term.
If atm the community, has, say $20bn to allocate, you only need a 10% improvement to future decisions to be worth +$2bn.
Funder diversity also seems very important for community health, and therefore our ability to attract & retain talent. Itâs not attractive to have your org & career depend on such a small group of decision-makers.
I might quantify the value of the talent pool around another $10bn, so again, you only need a ~10% increase here to be worth a billion, and over centralisation seems like one of the bigger problems.
The current situation also creates a single point of failure for the whole community.
Finally it still seems like OP has various kinds of institutional bottlenecks that mean they canât obviously fund everything that would be âworthâ funding in abstract (and even moreso to do all the active grantmaking that would be worth doing). They also have PR constraints that might make some grants difficult. And it seems unrealistic to expect any single team (however good they are) not to have some blindspots.
$1bn is only 5% of the capital that OP has, so youâd only need to find a 1 grant for every 20 that OP makes that theyâve missed with only 2x the effectiveness of marginal OP grants in order to get 2x the value.
One background piece of context is that I think grants often vary by more than 10x in cost-effectiveness.
I find it plausible that a strong fix to the funder-diversity problem could increase the value of the talent pool by 10% or even more. However, having a new independent funder with $1B in assets (spending much less than that per year) feels more like an incremental improvement.
Youâd need to do that consistently (no misses, unless counteracted by >2x grants) and efficiently (as incurring similar overhead as OP with $1B of assets would consume much of the available cash flow). That seems like a tall order.
Moreover, Iâm not sure if a model in which the new major funder always gets to act âlastâ would track reality very well. Itâs likely that OP would change its decisions, at least to some extent, based on what it expected the other funder to do. In this case, the new funder would end up funding a significant amount of stuff that OP would have counterfactually funded.
It might take more than $1bn, but around that level, you could become a major funder of one of the causes like AI safety, so youâd already be getting significant benefits within a cause.
Agree youâd need to average 2x for the last point to work.
Though note the three pathways to impactâtalent, intellectual diversity, OP gapsâare mostly independent, so youâd only need one of them to work.
Also agree in practice there would be some funging between the two, which would limit the differences, thatâs a good point.