Re patient philanthropy funds: Spending money on research rather than giving money to a fund does seem more focused and efficient. I think there are limits to how much progress you can make with research (assuming that research hasn’t ruled the idea out), so it does make sense to try creating such a fund at some point. Some issues would become apparent with even a toy fund (one with a minimal amount of capital produced as an exercise). A real fund that has millions of dollars would be a better test of the idea, but whether contributing to such a fund is a good use of money is less clear to me now.
Yes, I was definitely thinking of stuff along the lines of “help fund the creation of a toy fund and work out the legal kinks, portfolio design, governance mechanisms, etc”, in addition to pure blog-post-style research into the idea of investing-to-give.
Admittedly it’s an odd position for me to be pessimistic about patient philanthropy itself but still pretty psyched about setting up the experiment. I guess for the argument to go through that funding the creation of the PPF is a great idea, it relies on one or more of the following being true:
Actually doing patient philanthropy turns out to be, in fact, extremely effective. However, we won’t definitively know this for decades! A leading indicator might be if the perceived problems/drawbacks of PPF turn out to be more easily solved than we thought. (Perhaps everyone looks at the legal mechanisms of the newly-launched toy fund and thinks, “Wow, this is actually a really innovative and promising structure!”)
If the PPF draws in lots more EA donations that wouldn’t have otherwise happened, it could be a great idea even if it’s not as competitive on effectiveness.
Designing the PPF might somehow have positive spillover effects. (Are there other areas in EA calling for weird long-term institution design or complex financial products? Surely a few...)
Re patient philanthropy funds: Spending money on research rather than giving money to a fund does seem more focused and efficient. I think there are limits to how much progress you can make with research (assuming that research hasn’t ruled the idea out), so it does make sense to try creating such a fund at some point. Some issues would become apparent with even a toy fund (one with a minimal amount of capital produced as an exercise). A real fund that has millions of dollars would be a better test of the idea, but whether contributing to such a fund is a good use of money is less clear to me now.
Yes, I was definitely thinking of stuff along the lines of “help fund the creation of a toy fund and work out the legal kinks, portfolio design, governance mechanisms, etc”, in addition to pure blog-post-style research into the idea of investing-to-give.
Admittedly it’s an odd position for me to be pessimistic about patient philanthropy itself but still pretty psyched about setting up the experiment. I guess for the argument to go through that funding the creation of the PPF is a great idea, it relies on one or more of the following being true:
Actually doing patient philanthropy turns out to be, in fact, extremely effective. However, we won’t definitively know this for decades! A leading indicator might be if the perceived problems/drawbacks of PPF turn out to be more easily solved than we thought. (Perhaps everyone looks at the legal mechanisms of the newly-launched toy fund and thinks, “Wow, this is actually a really innovative and promising structure!”)
If the PPF draws in lots more EA donations that wouldn’t have otherwise happened, it could be a great idea even if it’s not as competitive on effectiveness.
Designing the PPF might somehow have positive spillover effects. (Are there other areas in EA calling for weird long-term institution design or complex financial products? Surely a few...)