How would having Claire on both boards instead of it being two different people obscure conflicts of interest? I would have expected that point to cut the other way?
(Ex: someone on OPâs board has a COI with someone EVF is considering granting to, and pressure is passed along.)
Iâm thinking in terms of combinatorics. Each organisation someone is involved with is one more interest to conflict, and one more place where you can influence an interest you have elsewhere. Anyone trying to audit you has to do exponentially more work.
I think it could go either way. If you think the limiting factor on auditing is the number of people you have to audit, then having the same N people be the board of trustees of all EA charities is maximally efficient. If you think itâs the number of connections between sources of potential CoI, then having completely nonoverlapping groups seem optimal.
I guess Iâm imagining from either Open Philâs perspective, or that of other large funders, the risk of value misalignment or incompetence of Open Phil staff is already priced in, and theyâve already paid the cost of evaluating Claire.
Itâs hard to imagine that (purely from the perspective of reducing costs of auditing)Holden or Cari or Dustin preferring an unknown quantity to Claire. There might be other good reasons to prefer having a more decentralized board[1], but this particular reason seems wrong.
Likewise, from the perspective of future employees or donors to EVF, the risk of value misalignment or incompetence of EVFâs largest donor is already a cost they necessarily have to pay if they want to work for or fund EVF. So adding a board member (and another source of COI) thatâs not associated with Open Phil can only increase the number of COIs, not decrease it.
for example, a) you want a diversity of perspectives, b) you want to reduce the risks of being beholden to specific entities c) you want to increase the number of potential whistleblowers
Nonoverlapping doesnât mean no COI. Imagine Org1 grants to Org2, which grants to many orgs:
Org1 board: A, B, C
Org2 board: D, E, F
Grantees: lots of people
Imagine there are COIs between each person with probably X.
Each grantee org has a 3X chance of COI with Org2, and 3X with Org1. You care more about the ones with Org2, but Org1 matters too.
Now imagine C and F are the same person. The chance of COI is unchanged: 3X with each org.
And if youâre worried about auditing you have 6 connections to audit per grantee in the first case, and five in the second. Itâs true that auditing a single C=F board member is more work then auditing just C or F, but itâs probably less work than auditing both C and F. (And there definitely isnât exponentially more total work.)
Sure, thatâs one way of modelling it. Another is something like COIs between entities in which youâre invested. That means a trustee of a single org has one possible COI vectorâlooking after themselves when they should be looking after their org. Two trustees of one org each have two vectors between them. One trustee of two orgs has four vectorsâlooking after themselves when they should be looking after either org, or looking after either org at the expense of the other.
Generalising, it seems like on this way of thinking youâd get (n^2 - n) more COI vectors, where n is number of affiliations, than you would with single-affiliation trustees doing the same set of roles. I have the sense that senior EAs can be affiliated with maybe as many as 4 or 5 legally distinct organisationsâand if you count the subsidiaries of EVF as effectively different organisations with shared trustees, those numbers get pretty big.
I think this way of thinking about it more congruent to the concerns many (including me) had around eg EVF buying Wytham Abbey, or grantmakers from one nonprofit giving money to another with which theyâre closely involved.
I see, you are thinking about conflicts between the interest of being âperson X in their role at org Yâ vs âperson X in their role at org Zâ. I agree that this goes up quadratically as people have roles at more organizations: in the extreme where everyone had at most one organizational role you couldnât have any of that kind of CoI.
I had thought, though, we were talking about interpersonal conflicts of interest. Things like âperson X in their role at org Yâ vs âperson X in their role as someone dating person W at org Zâ. This is the kind of CoI that I think doesnât increase if you have fewer people across the same number of organization roles.
I think this way of thinking about it more congruent to the concerns many (including me) had around eg EVF buying Wytham Abbey
I thought the issue with the purchase was people thinking it was not cost effective, or should have been better disclosed? Whatâs the CoI argument here?
Letâs distinguish some legal conflict of interest moral conflict of interest
I think that what I described was not a legal conflict of interest, which would be where a senior staff member is faced with a decision that could benefit them.[1] IMO EAs should consider it necessary but not sufficient to avoid these.
I would call a moral conflict of interest any situation in which a senior member is faced with a decision where they have an incentive to do something that isnât in the best interest of the organisation for which they work. IMO these should also be avoided, or at least recognised as a serious cost to weigh against the upsides. Such situations put the staff in situations where itâs extremely difficult to recognise from the outside whether the decision process was really for the greater good, or a rationalisation. They seem at high risk of biasing support strongly towards the pet projects of the decisionmakers at the expense of many smaller projects that continually struggle for funding.
Wytham Abbey seems like an example of this, if as I understand members of the EVF board were involved in the decision making on OPâs behalf. Asterisk is perhaps a similar example. If anyone else in the community had suggested âan EA magazine sponsored webzineâ I suspect it would have really struggled to get traction.
faced with a decision where they have an incentive to do something that isnât in the best interest of the organisation for which they work.
Thatâs already how I was using the term, fwiw.
Wytham Abbey seems like an example of this, if as I understand members of the EVF board were involved in the decision making on OPâs behalf.
It sounds like maybe youâre saying you think thereâs fundamentally a conflict of interest in having someone from OP on the EVF board, because OP is the
funds a lot of things at EVF and whatâs best for EVF could be different from what OP wants?
This misses why OP would want to have one of their employees on the EVF board: they are providing so much funding to EVF I expect they want someone to formally represent them internally. It would be bad for OP if they granted money to EVF which then went to do things that OP didnât want to be supporting, and having board representation is a way to make that less likely.
It sounds like maybe youâre saying you think thereâs fundamentally a conflict of interest in having someone from OP on the EVF board, because OP is the funds a lot of things at EVF and whatâs best for EVF could be different from what OP wants?
Yeah, that sounds right. When youâre a senior staff member at an organisation you are, in some sense, supposed to be optimising for the health of that org. On this understanding youâre the senior staff member at multiple orgs youâre then supposed to be optimising for multiple variables, which isnât logically possible.
Obviously you can optimise for some function of the two, but this involves a lot more subjective judgement, so a) could more easily go wrong without any bad faith, and b) it can obfuscate genuinely bad faith decisions (such as prioritising support for an org with which youâre associated because it gives you greater social status) - even to the people making them.
I donât assert (or think) anyone at EVF is acting in seriously bad faith, but as Iâve said elsewhere, I think we should assume a) non-0 probability that they sometimes do so in minor ways and b) that if they continue to stay in a position that incentivises them to do so the risk will continue to increase.
This misses why OP would want to have one of their employees on the EVF board: they are providing so much funding to EVF I expect they want someone to formally represent them internally.
It doesnât âmissâ it. I understand there are other considerationsâtheyâre discussed everywhere; Iâm just stating that there exists this downside which isnât discussed nearly as much, and doesnât seem to be acknowledged by the people it applies to.
I guess I could see it that way, but this is a pretty non-central CoI. My understanding is EVF took on an OP staff member as a board member because both EVF and OP wanted to be more closely aligned. They understand that the orgs have somewhat different interests, and by putting someone in a position to embody both theyâre pulling the two orgs closer together.
How would having Claire on both boards instead of it being two different people obscure conflicts of interest? I would have expected that point to cut the other way?
(Ex: someone on OPâs board has a COI with someone EVF is considering granting to, and pressure is passed along.)
Iâm thinking in terms of combinatorics. Each organisation someone is involved with is one more interest to conflict, and one more place where you can influence an interest you have elsewhere. Anyone trying to audit you has to do exponentially more work.
Your argument here cuts against your prior comment.
I think it could go either way. If you think the limiting factor on auditing is the number of people you have to audit, then having the same N people be the board of trustees of all EA charities is maximally efficient. If you think itâs the number of connections between sources of potential CoI, then having completely nonoverlapping groups seem optimal.
I guess Iâm imagining from either Open Philâs perspective, or that of other large funders, the risk of value misalignment or incompetence of Open Phil staff is already priced in, and theyâve already paid the cost of evaluating Claire.
Itâs hard to imagine that (purely from the perspective of reducing costs of auditing)Holden or Cari or Dustin preferring an unknown quantity to Claire. There might be other good reasons to prefer having a more decentralized board[1], but this particular reason seems wrong.
Likewise, from the perspective of future employees or donors to EVF, the risk of value misalignment or incompetence of EVFâs largest donor is already a cost they necessarily have to pay if they want to work for or fund EVF. So adding a board member (and another source of COI) thatâs not associated with Open Phil can only increase the number of COIs, not decrease it.
for example, a) you want a diversity of perspectives, b) you want to reduce the risks of being beholden to specific entities c) you want to increase the number of potential whistleblowers
Nonoverlapping doesnât mean no COI. Imagine Org1 grants to Org2, which grants to many orgs:
Org1 board: A, B, C
Org2 board: D, E, F
Grantees: lots of people
Imagine there are COIs between each person with probably X.
Each grantee org has a 3X chance of COI with Org2, and 3X with Org1. You care more about the ones with Org2, but Org1 matters too.
Now imagine C and F are the same person. The chance of COI is unchanged: 3X with each org.
And if youâre worried about auditing you have 6 connections to audit per grantee in the first case, and five in the second. Itâs true that auditing a single C=F board member is more work then auditing just C or F, but itâs probably less work than auditing both C and F. (And there definitely isnât exponentially more total work.)
Sure, thatâs one way of modelling it. Another is something like COIs between entities in which youâre invested. That means a trustee of a single org has one possible COI vectorâlooking after themselves when they should be looking after their org. Two trustees of one org each have two vectors between them. One trustee of two orgs has four vectorsâlooking after themselves when they should be looking after either org, or looking after either org at the expense of the other.
Generalising, it seems like on this way of thinking youâd get (n^2 - n) more COI vectors, where n is number of affiliations, than you would with single-affiliation trustees doing the same set of roles. I have the sense that senior EAs can be affiliated with maybe as many as 4 or 5 legally distinct organisationsâand if you count the subsidiaries of EVF as effectively different organisations with shared trustees, those numbers get pretty big.
I think this way of thinking about it more congruent to the concerns many (including me) had around eg EVF buying Wytham Abbey, or grantmakers from one nonprofit giving money to another with which theyâre closely involved.
I see, you are thinking about conflicts between the interest of being âperson X in their role at org Yâ vs âperson X in their role at org Zâ. I agree that this goes up quadratically as people have roles at more organizations: in the extreme where everyone had at most one organizational role you couldnât have any of that kind of CoI.
I had thought, though, we were talking about interpersonal conflicts of interest. Things like âperson X in their role at org Yâ vs âperson X in their role as someone dating person W at org Zâ. This is the kind of CoI that I think doesnât increase if you have fewer people across the same number of organization roles.
I thought the issue with the purchase was people thinking it was not cost effective, or should have been better disclosed? Whatâs the CoI argument here?
Letâs distinguish some legal conflict of interest moral conflict of interest
I think that what I described was not a legal conflict of interest, which would be where a senior staff member is faced with a decision that could benefit them.[1] IMO EAs should consider it necessary but not sufficient to avoid these.
I would call a moral conflict of interest any situation in which a senior member is faced with a decision where they have an incentive to do something that isnât in the best interest of the organisation for which they work. IMO these should also be avoided, or at least recognised as a serious cost to weigh against the upsides. Such situations put the staff in situations where itâs extremely difficult to recognise from the outside whether the decision process was really for the greater good, or a rationalisation. They seem at high risk of biasing support strongly towards the pet projects of the decisionmakers at the expense of many smaller projects that continually struggle for funding.
Wytham Abbey seems like an example of this, if as I understand members of the EVF board were involved in the decision making on OPâs behalf. Asterisk is perhaps a similar example. If anyone else in the community had suggested âan EA magazine sponsored webzineâ I suspect it would have really struggled to get traction.
Possibly this is a âconflict of loyaltyâ? I havenât found much around the legal term.
Thatâs already how I was using the term, fwiw.
It sounds like maybe youâre saying you think thereâs fundamentally a conflict of interest in having someone from OP on the EVF board, because OP is the funds a lot of things at EVF and whatâs best for EVF could be different from what OP wants?
This misses why OP would want to have one of their employees on the EVF board: they are providing so much funding to EVF I expect they want someone to formally represent them internally. It would be bad for OP if they granted money to EVF which then went to do things that OP didnât want to be supporting, and having board representation is a way to make that less likely.
Yeah, that sounds right. When youâre a senior staff member at an organisation you are, in some sense, supposed to be optimising for the health of that org. On this understanding youâre the senior staff member at multiple orgs youâre then supposed to be optimising for multiple variables, which isnât logically possible.
Obviously you can optimise for some function of the two, but this involves a lot more subjective judgement, so a) could more easily go wrong without any bad faith, and b) it can obfuscate genuinely bad faith decisions (such as prioritising support for an org with which youâre associated because it gives you greater social status) - even to the people making them.
I donât assert (or think) anyone at EVF is acting in seriously bad faith, but as Iâve said elsewhere, I think we should assume a) non-0 probability that they sometimes do so in minor ways and b) that if they continue to stay in a position that incentivises them to do so the risk will continue to increase.
It doesnât âmissâ it. I understand there are other considerationsâtheyâre discussed everywhere; Iâm just stating that there exists this downside which isnât discussed nearly as much, and doesnât seem to be acknowledged by the people it applies to.
I guess I could see it that way, but this is a pretty non-central CoI. My understanding is EVF took on an OP staff member as a board member because both EVF and OP wanted to be more closely aligned. They understand that the orgs have somewhat different interests, and by putting someone in a position to embody both theyâre pulling the two orgs closer together.