I have to say I’m pretty glad you won the lottery as I like the way you’re thinking! I have a few thoughts which I put below. I’m posting here so others can respond, but I will also fill out your survey to provide my details as I would be happy to help further if you are interested in having my assistance!
TLDR: I think LTFF and PPF are the best options, but it’s very hard to say which is the better of the two.
Longview Philanthropy: it’s hard to judge this option without knowing more about their general-purpose fund—I didn’t see anything on this on their website at first glance. With my current knowledge, I would say this option isn’t as good as giving to LTFF. Longview is trying to attract existing philanthropists who may not identify as Effective Altruists, which will to some extent constrain what they can grant to as granting to something too “weird” might put off philanthropists. Meanwhile LTFF isn’t as constrained in this way, so in theory giving to LTFF should be better as LTFF can grant to really great opportunities that Longview would be afraid to. Also, LTFF appears to have more vetting resource than Longview and a very clear funding gap.
Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund: it seems to me that if your goal is to maximise your positive impact on the long-term future then giving to LTFF would be better. This is simply because EA is wider in scope than longtermism so naturally the Infrastructure Fund will fund things that will be somewhat targeted to ‘global health and wellbeing’ opportunities which don’t have a long-term focus. If you look at LTFF’s Fund Scope you will see that LTFF funds opportunities to directly reduce existential risks, but also opportunities to build infrastructure for people working on longtermist projects and promoting long-term thinking—so LTFF also has a “growth” mindset if that’s what you’re interested in.
Patient Philanthropy Fund: personally I’m super excited about this but it’s very difficult to say which is better out of PPF or LTFF. Founders Pledge’s report is very positive about investing to give, but even they say in their report that “giving to investment-like giving opportunities could be a good alternative to investing to give”. I think that which is better of investment-like giving opportunities or investing to give is very much an open, and difficult, question. You do say that “even if the general idea of investing to give later isn’t the best use of these funds, donating to help get the PPF off the ground could still be”. I agree with this and like your idea of “supporting it with at least a portion of the donor-lottery funds”. How much exactly to give is hard to say.
Invest the money and wait a few years: do you have good reason to believe that you/the EA community will be in a much better position in a few years? Why? If it’s just generally “we learn more over time” then why would ‘in a few years’ be the golden period? If ‘learning over time’ is your motivation, PPF would perhaps be a better option as the fund managers will very carefully think about when this golden period is, as well as probably invest better than CEA.
Pay someone to help me decide: doubtful this would be the best option. LTFF basically does this for free. If you find someone / a team who you think is better than the LTFF grant team then fine, but I’m sceptical you will. LTFF has been doing this for a while which has let them develop a track record, develop processes, learn from mistakes etc. so I would think LTFF is a safer and better option.
So overall my view would be that LTFF and PPF are the best options, but it’s very hard to say which is the better of the two. I like the idea of giving a portion to each—but I don’t really think diversification like this has much philosophical backing so if you do have a hunch one option is better than the other, and won’t be subject to significant diminishing returns, then you may want to just give it all to that option.
I would take a close look at who the grantmakers are and whether their reasoning seems good to you. Because there is significant fungibility and many of these funding pools have broad scopes, I personally expect the competence of the grantmakers to matter at least as much as the specific missions of the funds.
I don’t think it’s quite as clear that the LTFF is better than the EA Infrastructure Fund; I agree with your argument but think this could be counterbalanced by the EA Infrastructure Fund’s greater focus on talent recruitment, or other factors.
I don’t know to what degree it is hard for Longview to get fully unrestricted funding, but if that’s hard for Longview, giving it unrestricted funding may be a great idea. They may run across promising opportunities that aren’t palatable to their donors, and handing them over to EA Funds or Open Philanthropy may not be straightforwardly easy in some cases.
(Disclosure: I run EA Funds, which hosts the LTFF and EA Infrastructure Fund. Opinions my own, as always.)
Thanks for the comment, this raises a few good points.
Longview is trying to attract existing philanthropists who may not identify as Effective Altruists, which will to some extent constrain what they can grant to as granting to something too “weird” might put off philanthropists.
Good point. I got the impression that their new, general-purpose pool would still be fairly longtermist, but it’s possible they will have to make sacrifices. We’ll ping them about them (or if any of them are reading this, please do reply directly!)
> If you find someone / a team who you think is better than the LTFF grant team then fine, but I’m sceptical you will.
To be clear, one of the the outcomes could be that this person decides to give to the LTFF. These options aren’t exclusive. But I imagine in this case, they shouldn’t have that much work to do, they would essentially be making a choice from the options we list above.
I got the impression that their new, general-purpose pool would still be fairly longtermist, but it’s possible they will have to make sacrifices.
To clarify it’s not that I don’t think they would be “longtermist” it’s more that I think they may have to give to longtermist options that “seem intuitively good to a non-EA”, e.g. giving to an established organisation like MIRI or CHAI, rather than give to longtermist options that may be better on the margin but seem a bit weirder at first glance like “buying out some clever person so they have more time to do some research”.
That pretty much gets to the heart of my suspected difference between Longview and LTFF—I think LTFF funds a lot of individuals that may struggle to get funding from elsewhere whereas Longview tends to fund organisations that may struggle a lot less—although I do see on their website that they funded Paul Slovic (but he seems a distinguished academic so may have been able to get funding elsewhere).
I think that looking at their track record is only partially representative. They used to follow a structure where they would recommend donation opportunities to particular clients. Recently they’ve set up a fund that works differently; people would donate to the fund, then the fund will make donations at their will. My guess is that this will help a bit around this issue, but not completely. (Maybe they’ll even be extra conservative, to prove to donors that they will match their preferences.)
Another (minor) point is that Longview’s donations can be fungible with LTFF. If they spend $300K on something that LTFF would have otherwise spent money on, then the LTFF would have $300K more to spend on whatever it wants. So if Longview can donate to, say, only 90% of interesting causes, up to $10Mil per year, the last 10% might not be that big of a deal.
I have to say I’m pretty glad you won the lottery as I like the way you’re thinking! I have a few thoughts which I put below. I’m posting here so others can respond, but I will also fill out your survey to provide my details as I would be happy to help further if you are interested in having my assistance!
TLDR: I think LTFF and PPF are the best options, but it’s very hard to say which is the better of the two.
Longview Philanthropy: it’s hard to judge this option without knowing more about their general-purpose fund—I didn’t see anything on this on their website at first glance. With my current knowledge, I would say this option isn’t as good as giving to LTFF. Longview is trying to attract existing philanthropists who may not identify as Effective Altruists, which will to some extent constrain what they can grant to as granting to something too “weird” might put off philanthropists. Meanwhile LTFF isn’t as constrained in this way, so in theory giving to LTFF should be better as LTFF can grant to really great opportunities that Longview would be afraid to. Also, LTFF appears to have more vetting resource than Longview and a very clear funding gap.
Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund: it seems to me that if your goal is to maximise your positive impact on the long-term future then giving to LTFF would be better. This is simply because EA is wider in scope than longtermism so naturally the Infrastructure Fund will fund things that will be somewhat targeted to ‘global health and wellbeing’ opportunities which don’t have a long-term focus. If you look at LTFF’s Fund Scope you will see that LTFF funds opportunities to directly reduce existential risks, but also opportunities to build infrastructure for people working on longtermist projects and promoting long-term thinking—so LTFF also has a “growth” mindset if that’s what you’re interested in.
Patient Philanthropy Fund: personally I’m super excited about this but it’s very difficult to say which is better out of PPF or LTFF. Founders Pledge’s report is very positive about investing to give, but even they say in their report that “giving to investment-like giving opportunities could be a good alternative to investing to give”. I think that which is better of investment-like giving opportunities or investing to give is very much an open, and difficult, question. You do say that “even if the general idea of investing to give later isn’t the best use of these funds, donating to help get the PPF off the ground could still be”. I agree with this and like your idea of “supporting it with at least a portion of the donor-lottery funds”. How much exactly to give is hard to say.
Invest the money and wait a few years: do you have good reason to believe that you/the EA community will be in a much better position in a few years? Why? If it’s just generally “we learn more over time” then why would ‘in a few years’ be the golden period? If ‘learning over time’ is your motivation, PPF would perhaps be a better option as the fund managers will very carefully think about when this golden period is, as well as probably invest better than CEA.
Pay someone to help me decide: doubtful this would be the best option. LTFF basically does this for free. If you find someone / a team who you think is better than the LTFF grant team then fine, but I’m sceptical you will. LTFF has been doing this for a while which has let them develop a track record, develop processes, learn from mistakes etc. so I would think LTFF is a safer and better option.
So overall my view would be that LTFF and PPF are the best options, but it’s very hard to say which is the better of the two. I like the idea of giving a portion to each—but I don’t really think diversification like this has much philosophical backing so if you do have a hunch one option is better than the other, and won’t be subject to significant diminishing returns, then you may want to just give it all to that option.
I really liked this comment. Three additions:
I would take a close look at who the grantmakers are and whether their reasoning seems good to you. Because there is significant fungibility and many of these funding pools have broad scopes, I personally expect the competence of the grantmakers to matter at least as much as the specific missions of the funds.
I don’t think it’s quite as clear that the LTFF is better than the EA Infrastructure Fund; I agree with your argument but think this could be counterbalanced by the EA Infrastructure Fund’s greater focus on talent recruitment, or other factors.
I don’t know to what degree it is hard for Longview to get fully unrestricted funding, but if that’s hard for Longview, giving it unrestricted funding may be a great idea. They may run across promising opportunities that aren’t palatable to their donors, and handing them over to EA Funds or Open Philanthropy may not be straightforwardly easy in some cases.
(Disclosure: I run EA Funds, which hosts the LTFF and EA Infrastructure Fund. Opinions my own, as always.)
Thanks for the comment, this raises a few good points.
Good point. I got the impression that their new, general-purpose pool would still be fairly longtermist, but it’s possible they will have to make sacrifices. We’ll ping them about them (or if any of them are reading this, please do reply directly!)
> If you find someone / a team who you think is better than the LTFF grant team then fine, but I’m sceptical you will.
To be clear, one of the the outcomes could be that this person decides to give to the LTFF. These options aren’t exclusive. But I imagine in this case, they shouldn’t have that much work to do, they would essentially be making a choice from the options we list above.
To clarify it’s not that I don’t think they would be “longtermist” it’s more that I think they may have to give to longtermist options that “seem intuitively good to a non-EA”, e.g. giving to an established organisation like MIRI or CHAI, rather than give to longtermist options that may be better on the margin but seem a bit weirder at first glance like “buying out some clever person so they have more time to do some research”.
That pretty much gets to the heart of my suspected difference between Longview and LTFF—I think LTFF funds a lot of individuals that may struggle to get funding from elsewhere whereas Longview tends to fund organisations that may struggle a lot less—although I do see on their website that they funded Paul Slovic (but he seems a distinguished academic so may have been able to get funding elsewhere).
I think that looking at their track record is only partially representative. They used to follow a structure where they would recommend donation opportunities to particular clients. Recently they’ve set up a fund that works differently; people would donate to the fund, then the fund will make donations at their will. My guess is that this will help a bit around this issue, but not completely. (Maybe they’ll even be extra conservative, to prove to donors that they will match their preferences.)
Another (minor) point is that Longview’s donations can be fungible with LTFF. If they spend $300K on something that LTFF would have otherwise spent money on, then the LTFF would have $300K more to spend on whatever it wants. So if Longview can donate to, say, only 90% of interesting causes, up to $10Mil per year, the last 10% might not be that big of a deal.