Oh wow, thatâs a fairly chunky prize! (For readers who donât follow the link to the festival announcement post, it seems worth noting that these prizes are âIn the form of donations to an EA Funds-eligible charity of your choiceâ, rather than e.g. deposits to my own bank account)
This seems like a good prompt to revisit and share my rough, interim notes-to-self on where I might donate in 2021 and why. (I plan to do more thinking and share more details around November, like I did last year.)
As of April 2021, I have a positive impression of their fund managers
In April 2021, I skimmed through the LTFFâs grants to date to see if there were any that I knew had later turned out quite well, and how this compares to what wouldâve happened if Iâd donated directly to things Iâd heard of and thought were good
I felt unsure how to update on the results of that skimming and thinking
There were many cases where I do have a positive impression of the person or project that was funded, but where it wasnât obvious that (a) LTFF was especially early in identifying this as good, or that (b) the LTFF money allowed the project to go much better than it wouldâve gone otherwise
E.g., HIPE, All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations, stuff Ozzie Gooen has done
In these cases, LTFF should get âpointsâ for funding this, but itâs unclear that theyâre choosing better funding opportunities than Iâd choose if making decisions myself directly
(But note that Iâm just saying this in relation to me, and things like work tests suggest that I may be a fairly good fit for grantmaking. Analogously, I should defer to others regarding good career pathways in the EU, but some other EAs need not defer much on that.)
But there was also at least 1-3 cases where the project seems to have gone really well or to still be early stage but have really good expected impact per dollar spent, and where I wasnât aware of the project/âplan at all when the grant was made
A grant to Nick Hollman to support the Legal Priorities Project
Pabloâs wiki work might count
(Note that Iâm currently unsure how to think about the expected impact of this; Iâll write another comment about that)
Nuno Sempereâs work might count
There was a perhaps surprising number of cases where, as of April 2021, I still hadnât heard of the person or project at all, or where I knew the person but hadnât seen any outputs of the project yet
But itâs hard to say what I shouldâve expected here, since I of course shouldnât expect to know about every nook and cranny of longtermism, and itâs good if LTFF finds good-but-obscure funding opportunities, and all of the grants were within the last couple years
Iâd really like it if LTFF at least sometimes set or shared proxies of the impact they hope to see, made forecasts, and shared retrospectives
I read LTFFâs May 2021 payout report yesterday, and I donât think it was a positive or negative update for me (i.e., still seems basically quite good, but not obviously better than my donating directly, at least after accounting for the âdiversity of viewpointsâ benefit of me making my own, direct donation choices)
My current, tentative impression is that theyâre filling a really important niche, and that itâs really odd they havenât received funding at a somewhat higher level and with more stability
This is one of the places I gave to in 2020, for the reasons explained here, and I still have roughly the views expressed there
Funding work on âCreating a central, editable database to help people choose and do research projectsâ, of the kind Iâll discuss in an upcoming post
This funding could be paying for contractors, for someone to âownâ this project, for hosting fees, etc.
[I had some notes to self explaining why this stands out to me as one option, but will leave those of this comment. If I end up thinking more about whether to donate to them, Iâll say more on this later, probably around November.]
It seems that Effective Thesis and APPGFG arenât available via the EA Funds platform, even though both have been funded by EA Funds before? Can they be added to the platform relatively easily? (That isnât a super big deal just for this particularly $2000 donationâIâm ok just picking between LTFF, GCRI, and ALLFEDâbut it seems like thatâd be good for other donors too.)
Once I find out whether Effective Thesis and APPGFG can be options for me for this $2k, Iâll decide on the resulting shortlist.
(For people who donât follow the link to the festival announcement post, it seems worth noting that these prizes are âIn the form of donations to an EA Funds-eligible charity of your choice.â)
Iâve added this detail to the post for clarity. Thanks!
Iâll check in with EA Funds about whether they have any plans to add those options.
Oh wow, thatâs a fairly chunky prize! (For readers who donât follow the link to the festival announcement post, it seems worth noting that these prizes are âIn the form of donations to an EA Funds-eligible charity of your choiceâ, rather than e.g. deposits to my own bank account)
This seems like a good prompt to revisit and share my rough, interim notes-to-self on where I might donate in 2021 and why. (I plan to do more thinking and share more details around November, like I did last year.)
The EA Long-Term Future Fund
See also The Long-Term Future Fund has room for more funding, right now
As of April 2021, I have a positive impression of their fund managers
In April 2021, I skimmed through the LTFFâs grants to date to see if there were any that I knew had later turned out quite well, and how this compares to what wouldâve happened if Iâd donated directly to things Iâd heard of and thought were good
I felt unsure how to update on the results of that skimming and thinking
There were many cases where I do have a positive impression of the person or project that was funded, but where it wasnât obvious that (a) LTFF was especially early in identifying this as good, or that (b) the LTFF money allowed the project to go much better than it wouldâve gone otherwise
E.g., HIPE, All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations, stuff Ozzie Gooen has done
In these cases, LTFF should get âpointsâ for funding this, but itâs unclear that theyâre choosing better funding opportunities than Iâd choose if making decisions myself directly
(But note that Iâm just saying this in relation to me, and things like work tests suggest that I may be a fairly good fit for grantmaking. Analogously, I should defer to others regarding good career pathways in the EU, but some other EAs need not defer much on that.)
But there was also at least 1-3 cases where the project seems to have gone really well or to still be early stage but have really good expected impact per dollar spent, and where I wasnât aware of the project/âplan at all when the grant was made
A grant to Nick Hollman to support the Legal Priorities Project
Pabloâs wiki work might count
(Note that Iâm currently unsure how to think about the expected impact of this; Iâll write another comment about that)
Nuno Sempereâs work might count
There was a perhaps surprising number of cases where, as of April 2021, I still hadnât heard of the person or project at all, or where I knew the person but hadnât seen any outputs of the project yet
But itâs hard to say what I shouldâve expected here, since I of course shouldnât expect to know about every nook and cranny of longtermism, and itâs good if LTFF finds good-but-obscure funding opportunities, and all of the grants were within the last couple years
Iâd really like it if LTFF at least sometimes set or shared proxies of the impact they hope to see, made forecasts, and shared retrospectives
I feel the same way about the other EA Funds too
See discussion of this here and here
I will probably write more about this soon
I read LTFFâs May 2021 payout report yesterday, and I donât think it was a positive or negative update for me (i.e., still seems basically quite good, but not obviously better than my donating directly, at least after accounting for the âdiversity of viewpointsâ benefit of me making my own, direct donation choices)
Effective Thesis
My current, tentative impression is that theyâre filling a really important niche, and that itâs really odd they havenât received funding at a somewhat higher level and with more stability
See also
I may think and write more about this in future
But I havenât yet tried to look closely at or make quantitative cost-effectiveness models or Fermi estimates or the link
GCRI
This is one of the places I gave to in 2020, for the reasons explained here, and I still have roughly the views expressed there
ALLFED
This is one of the places I gave to in 2020, for the reasons explained here, and I still have roughly the views expressed there
Funding work on âCreating a central, editable database to help people choose and do research projectsâ, of the kind Iâll discuss in an upcoming post
This funding could be paying for contractors, for someone to âownâ this project, for hosting fees, etc.
All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations
[I had some notes to self explaining why this stands out to me as one option, but will leave those of this comment. If I end up thinking more about whether to donate to them, Iâll say more on this later, probably around November.]
It seems that Effective Thesis and APPGFG arenât available via the EA Funds platform, even though both have been funded by EA Funds before? Can they be added to the platform relatively easily? (That isnât a super big deal just for this particularly $2000 donationâIâm ok just picking between LTFF, GCRI, and ALLFEDâbut it seems like thatâd be good for other donors too.)
Once I find out whether Effective Thesis and APPGFG can be options for me for this $2k, Iâll decide on the resulting shortlist.
Iâve added this detail to the post for clarity. Thanks!
Iâll check in with EA Funds about whether they have any plans to add those options.
Thanks! (On both parts, but especially the latter.)
I havenât read this post and comment in full, but here are our criteria for adding charities to EA Funds.