I think for marginal donations on RP, perhaps the best way to think about this would be in the cost to produce marginal research. A new researcher hire would cost ~$87K in salary (median, there is of course variation by title level here) and ~$28K in other costs (e.g., taxes, employment fees, benefits, equipment, employee travel). We then need to spend ~$31K in marginal spending on operations and ~$28K in marginal spending on management to support a new researcher. So the total cost for one new FTE year of research ends up being ~$174K. I think if you want to get a sense of how much it costs to support research at RP and how that balances between operations and other costs, this is a useful breakdown to look at.
In addition to research and operations, I’d say we produce roughly four other categories of things: fiscal sponsorship, incubated organizations, internal events, and external conferences. Let me go into a bit of detail about that:
Fiscal sponsorship arrangements pay for themselves out of the sponsored org’s budget, so they’re not something we’d seek public funding for.
Incubation work, or work to produce and advise new organizations based on our research (e.g., Condor Camp, Insect Institute) are things we’d raise money for and hope that they’d be impactful enough to encourage you to support. My rough guess is that in 2024 we would spend ~$150K from our animal welfare research budget and ~$900K for our Existential Security Team to work on incubating new organizations, and we are looking to fundraise for those amounts. These would be subject to similar marginal costs per FTE as mentioned above.
Internal events come out of the operations budget mentioned above.
External conferences are not something we’d seek public funding for – these have always been fully covered by getting a specific grant for the conference.
If you want to financially support only a particular part of RP or a particular thing RP does, let me know and we can discuss ways we could honor that arrangement.
I think for marginal donations on RP, perhaps the best way to think about this would be in the cost to produce marginal research. A new researcher hire would cost ~$87K in salary (median, there is of course variation by title level here) and ~$28K in other costs (e.g., taxes, employment fees, benefits, equipment, employee travel). We then need to spend ~$31K in marginal spending on operations and ~$28K in marginal spending on management to support a new researcher. So the total cost for one new FTE year of research ends up being ~$174K. I think if you want to get a sense of how much it costs to support research at RP and how that balances between operations and other costs, this is a useful breakdown to look at.
In addition to research and operations, I’d say we produce roughly four other categories of things: fiscal sponsorship, incubated organizations, internal events, and external conferences. Let me go into a bit of detail about that:
Fiscal sponsorship arrangements pay for themselves out of the sponsored org’s budget, so they’re not something we’d seek public funding for.
Incubation work, or work to produce and advise new organizations based on our research (e.g., Condor Camp, Insect Institute) are things we’d raise money for and hope that they’d be impactful enough to encourage you to support. My rough guess is that in 2024 we would spend ~$150K from our animal welfare research budget and ~$900K for our Existential Security Team to work on incubating new organizations, and we are looking to fundraise for those amounts. These would be subject to similar marginal costs per FTE as mentioned above.
Internal events come out of the operations budget mentioned above.
External conferences are not something we’d seek public funding for – these have always been fully covered by getting a specific grant for the conference.
If you want to financially support only a particular part of RP or a particular thing RP does, let me know and we can discuss ways we could honor that arrangement.