This is from 2016, but worth looking into if you’re curious how this works:
“At least 50% of each program officer’s grantmaking should be such that Holden and Cari understand and are on board with the case for each grant.
At least 90% of the program officer’s grantmaking should be such that Holden and Cari could easily imagine being on board with the grant if they knew more, but may not be persuaded that the grant is a good idea. (When taking the previous bullet point into account, this leaves room for up to 40% of the portfolio to fall in this bucket.)
Up to 10% of the program officer’s grantmaking can be done without meeting either of the above two criteria, though there are some basic checks in place to avoid grantmaking that creates risks for Open Philanthropy. We call this “discretionary” grantmaking. Grants in this category generally follow a different, substantially abbreviated approval process. Some examples of discretionary grants are here and here.”
In general, I would still say Open Phil’s grantmaking process is very opaque, and I think it would be great to have more transparency about how grants are made, including the influence of Dustin and Cari, at least for big ones. Just to illustrate how little information is provided, here is the write-up of a grant of 10.7 M$ to Redwood Research in 2022:
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $10,700,000 over 18 months to Redwood Research for general support. Redwood Research is a nonprofit research institution focused on aligning advanced AI with human interests.
There was nothing else. Here is the write-up regarding the 2021 support, 9.42 M$, mentioned just above:
Open Philanthropy recommended four grants totaling $9,420,000 to Redwood Research for general support. Redwood Research is a new research institution that conducts research to better understand and make progress on AI alignment in order to reduce global catastrophic risks.
This is from 2016, but worth looking into if you’re curious how this works:
“At least 50% of each program officer’s grantmaking should be such that Holden and Cari understand and are on board with the case for each grant. At least 90% of the program officer’s grantmaking should be such that Holden and Cari could easily imagine being on board with the grant if they knew more, but may not be persuaded that the grant is a good idea. (When taking the previous bullet point into account, this leaves room for up to 40% of the portfolio to fall in this bucket.) Up to 10% of the program officer’s grantmaking can be done without meeting either of the above two criteria, though there are some basic checks in place to avoid grantmaking that creates risks for Open Philanthropy. We call this “discretionary” grantmaking. Grants in this category generally follow a different, substantially abbreviated approval process. Some examples of discretionary grants are here and here.”
(https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our-grantmaking-so-far-approach-and-process/)
Thanks for sharing, MvK!
In general, I would still say Open Phil’s grantmaking process is very opaque, and I think it would be great to have more transparency about how grants are made, including the influence of Dustin and Cari, at least for big ones. Just to illustrate how little information is provided, here is the write-up of a grant of 10.7 M$ to Redwood Research in 2022:
There was nothing else. Here is the write-up regarding the 2021 support, 9.42 M$, mentioned just above: