If a reader wants to help GPP, what should they do?
At the moment GPP is funding constrained. We have an enormous pipeline of work—at one end we have literally hundreds of ideas we would love to pursue, but we also have several person-years of work on the table which is simply adapting our existing research to a particular audience to have impact. Anyone who is either able to donate or knows someone who might be able to would be enormously helpful. Based on the experience of other EA organisations, it is possible that we will become talent-constrained within the next year or two.
Beyond that, we continue to value introductions to individuals in governments or foundations. We also have more of these introductions available than we can currently pursue all of, but this is something where variety and quality of the lead is important. Knowing we could access a particular type of individual is useful, even when we do not pursue the lead immediately. We have a good system for tracking these opportunities to pursue later. We would also love to be able to help academics focus their research directions with an eye to impact. Introductions to academics who may be receptive and are in a position to choose their research direction would therefore be great.
Lastly, we really value challenge to our ideas. This AMA has already thrown up some questions that will change how we plan and think about our work. Anyone is welcome to send me critiques either as a PM or emailing seb[at]prioritisation-dot-org. I have had some extremely productive follow-on conversations with EAs who sent me feedback like that.
What would you do with a) £2,000 b) £10,000 c) £20,000?
At the moment, additional funding goes towards making sure we have a sustainable foundation for the organisation. Best-practice is to have 12 months of reserves, which at this point means raising an additional £20-25k (this is a rough number and does not include some pledged donations not yet received). Once we have raised that level, we would like to hire an additional member of staff. We expect, counting overhead costs like office space, HR, finance etc. that an additional staff member would cost us £35-40k. In order to offer credible job-security to a new hire, we would like to have at least a full year of reserves set aside to fund that hire.
All this means that, in order to comfortably hire a new staff member in the next CEA recruitment cycle we are raising towards a target of £100,000.
A picture of the historical unit costs of some of our outputs (to be distinguished from outcomes) is available in our strategy document, although these are very rough estimates. You can also find more details of our funding needs.
What do you think your room-for-more-funding is?
I think we could comfortably absorb £150,000 (which would build 12 months of reserves and allow us to hire two researchers, and possibly an intern). Funds beyond that could be put to creative use (for example, hiring researchers qua the University is more expensive, but might let us get better talent) but might be better directed at other organisations.
You’re based in the UK—there’s about to be an election, then five years of a new government. How does that affect your plans?
At the moment, individuals in government are largely distracted by the upcoming elections, so we have deprioritised outreach to UK policy-makers. We plan to spend the time until the election (May 7th) preparing policy briefs and fundraising so that we can focus on policy outreach in the months following the election. Conventional wisdom is that this is the best time to pursue policy objectives.
We have probably not devoted enough resources to developing contacts in the Opposition. The election is too close to call, so this may not end up being a problem, but we are open to pursuing strong leads in this period despite the attention of politicians being elsewhere.
Who are the key decision-makers/stakeholders in your area? Have you mapped them out—how they relate, what their responsibilities are?
What Government Departments are you mainly interested in? Which are you monitoring? Are there any consultations open at the moment that you are submitting to? Same question for Parliamentary Committees.
Because we are trying to appeal to such a broad range of communities and enable comparison between them, there are a very large number of stakeholders. Within the UK government, we have the most to say to similarly broad organisations (Cabinet Office and Treasury) as well as departments like DFID or DoH (similarly PHE) where we have specific interests that overlap. Similarly, within foundations, we see many existing metacharity organisations as stakeholders to engage with (including GiveWell, Copenhagen Consensus, DCP, WHO and others).
Consultations and parliamentary committees are an excellent point—this is something that I’ve been monitoring since I joined the team. In that period (just under two months) we have not seen any for which we felt we had sufficiently valuable things to contribute (which were also a priority for us). It is too early to say, though, whether that avenue will prove effective in the long run.
At the moment GPP is funding constrained. We have an enormous pipeline of work—at one end we have literally hundreds of ideas we would love to pursue, but we also have several person-years of work on the table which is simply adapting our existing research to a particular audience to have impact. Anyone who is either able to donate or knows someone who might be able to would be enormously helpful. Based on the experience of other EA organisations, it is possible that we will become talent-constrained within the next year or two.
Beyond that, we continue to value introductions to individuals in governments or foundations. We also have more of these introductions available than we can currently pursue all of, but this is something where variety and quality of the lead is important. Knowing we could access a particular type of individual is useful, even when we do not pursue the lead immediately. We have a good system for tracking these opportunities to pursue later. We would also love to be able to help academics focus their research directions with an eye to impact. Introductions to academics who may be receptive and are in a position to choose their research direction would therefore be great.
Lastly, we really value challenge to our ideas. This AMA has already thrown up some questions that will change how we plan and think about our work. Anyone is welcome to send me critiques either as a PM or emailing seb[at]prioritisation-dot-org. I have had some extremely productive follow-on conversations with EAs who sent me feedback like that.
At the moment, additional funding goes towards making sure we have a sustainable foundation for the organisation. Best-practice is to have 12 months of reserves, which at this point means raising an additional £20-25k (this is a rough number and does not include some pledged donations not yet received). Once we have raised that level, we would like to hire an additional member of staff. We expect, counting overhead costs like office space, HR, finance etc. that an additional staff member would cost us £35-40k. In order to offer credible job-security to a new hire, we would like to have at least a full year of reserves set aside to fund that hire.
All this means that, in order to comfortably hire a new staff member in the next CEA recruitment cycle we are raising towards a target of £100,000.
A picture of the historical unit costs of some of our outputs (to be distinguished from outcomes) is available in our strategy document, although these are very rough estimates. You can also find more details of our funding needs.
I think we could comfortably absorb £150,000 (which would build 12 months of reserves and allow us to hire two researchers, and possibly an intern). Funds beyond that could be put to creative use (for example, hiring researchers qua the University is more expensive, but might let us get better talent) but might be better directed at other organisations.
At the moment, individuals in government are largely distracted by the upcoming elections, so we have deprioritised outreach to UK policy-makers. We plan to spend the time until the election (May 7th) preparing policy briefs and fundraising so that we can focus on policy outreach in the months following the election. Conventional wisdom is that this is the best time to pursue policy objectives.
We have probably not devoted enough resources to developing contacts in the Opposition. The election is too close to call, so this may not end up being a problem, but we are open to pursuing strong leads in this period despite the attention of politicians being elsewhere.
Because we are trying to appeal to such a broad range of communities and enable comparison between them, there are a very large number of stakeholders. Within the UK government, we have the most to say to similarly broad organisations (Cabinet Office and Treasury) as well as departments like DFID or DoH (similarly PHE) where we have specific interests that overlap. Similarly, within foundations, we see many existing metacharity organisations as stakeholders to engage with (including GiveWell, Copenhagen Consensus, DCP, WHO and others).
Consultations and parliamentary committees are an excellent point—this is something that I’ve been monitoring since I joined the team. In that period (just under two months) we have not seen any for which we felt we had sufficiently valuable things to contribute (which were also a priority for us). It is too early to say, though, whether that avenue will prove effective in the long run.
Do you receive any funding from CEA or do you have a separate budget?