Most of the questions here are on whether Atlas Fellowship is wasting resources. I think we should give projects some space to breathe before scrutinising rumours on their coffee tables. It hasn’t been much time since this project has been founded. Cofounders of Atlas Fellowship have a strong track record in creating a lot of value and their time is quite expensive. The team is only 4 people afaik. Probably their spending on physical goods is very low within their overall budget, so spending their time on cutting costs of physical goods isn’t worth their time. Sometimes spending your time on cutting costs is wasting resources because your time is more valuable.
Both the cofounders and the grantmakers of this project have a strong track record in raising tons of money. So if they think offering high schoolers 50k scholarships for a fellowship might create $500m+ impact in expectation, that seems to be a hypothesis worth testing out. Maybe the SPARC and ESPCR programs you mention are really better. But let’s just let the project to breathe a few years so we can really have data on this.
This project will also have verifiable, measurable results in a short amount time. So I think there are already strong accountability mechanisms on whether the project really delivered its promises. If they don’t deliver on their promises, we will find out that maybe their time was better spent cutting these costs. If they get strong results, we will discover that spending thrir time on improving other aspects of the project was better use of their time. So I think we will be in a much better place to discuss Atlas in a few years.
If you think the project is doing harm, that’s fair to discuss. I think it’s also fair to ask the grantmakers the rationale behind large grant decisions such as this one. But unless there is a suspicion of the project doing harm, I think it’s better to let project founders do their thing for some time before micromanaging all the small decisions they make. Funders/investors of startups don’t usually do that sort of thing and allow founders to execute their vision independently. It will be clear whether they were really effective when they will have to demonstrate results.
I recognise that not all of your questions are about wasting money, my response is not relevant to those questions.
I think there’s value in discussing ops decisions. They still represent how an org runs.
The most expensive coffee table I find in my local IKEA is $150, the cheapest $16. I wouldn’t quibble over the outright choice to buy the $150 one and agree at some point spending time comparing items to save cash is not a good use of time. I agree the difference saved between these tables is less than the value of some people’s time, sure.
But $10,000? That’s just unreasonable. That amount of money could save two lives and would be appalling spending if this is true. There has to be a cheaper alternative that can be found in little time. Say 20 minutes. Which would mean there is no one at Atlas whose time is below $30,000 an hour? Hard to believe.
I think I’m more sympathetic to some types of discussion than others.
If someone really established that Atlas spent 100x extra money on a coffee table than it was needed, then I think it would be fair for them to make sarcastic jokes about Atlas coffee tables in public or over the internet.
But I’m much more resistant to a culture where project founders are expected to respond to every similar rumour with a paragraph like “actually, it wasn’t a coffee table, it was a much larger piece of furniture for a bar, and it wasn’t actually $10000, it was $4000. Here is the screenshot of our digital receipt.”
If we establish a culture where every rumour about every similar product purchase is expected to receive an explanation from the relevant organisations, many projects would move much more slowly. If this wasn’t just a rumour, I think it’s more justified to criticise but I still feel resistant to the idea of founders being expected to explain all their weird-looking spending on physical goods that make up less than 0.1% of their budget.
I agree with most of this sentiment (and I don’t like sharing of unsubstantiated rumours). Once the rumour is out there though I don’t see the harm in responding to every rumour with a paragraph. There aren’t that many rumours flying around on the forum. It would take 5-10 minutes to put this particular rumour to bed. I don’t think this would slow down projects meaningfully to respond. Yes it might not make sense to explain tiny percentages of spending, but if that is where the scrutiny happens to fall why not just clear it up quicksmart?
Fortunately @Habryka was here to clear it up, but the head of the org could have also taken a few minutes to quash the rumour.
Note: Written on mobile
Most of the questions here are on whether Atlas Fellowship is wasting resources. I think we should give projects some space to breathe before scrutinising rumours on their coffee tables. It hasn’t been much time since this project has been founded. Cofounders of Atlas Fellowship have a strong track record in creating a lot of value and their time is quite expensive. The team is only 4 people afaik. Probably their spending on physical goods is very low within their overall budget, so spending their time on cutting costs of physical goods isn’t worth their time. Sometimes spending your time on cutting costs is wasting resources because your time is more valuable.
You might ask “why they don’t hire another operations specialist to cut costs”. Unfortunately, hiring someone has many hidden costs explained in this blog post, so it’s usually more difficult than it sounds: https://blog.givewell.org/2013/08/29/we-cant-simply-buy-capacity/
Both the cofounders and the grantmakers of this project have a strong track record in raising tons of money. So if they think offering high schoolers 50k scholarships for a fellowship might create $500m+ impact in expectation, that seems to be a hypothesis worth testing out. Maybe the SPARC and ESPCR programs you mention are really better. But let’s just let the project to breathe a few years so we can really have data on this.
This project will also have verifiable, measurable results in a short amount time. So I think there are already strong accountability mechanisms on whether the project really delivered its promises. If they don’t deliver on their promises, we will find out that maybe their time was better spent cutting these costs. If they get strong results, we will discover that spending thrir time on improving other aspects of the project was better use of their time. So I think we will be in a much better place to discuss Atlas in a few years.
If you think the project is doing harm, that’s fair to discuss. I think it’s also fair to ask the grantmakers the rationale behind large grant decisions such as this one. But unless there is a suspicion of the project doing harm, I think it’s better to let project founders do their thing for some time before micromanaging all the small decisions they make. Funders/investors of startups don’t usually do that sort of thing and allow founders to execute their vision independently. It will be clear whether they were really effective when they will have to demonstrate results.
I recognise that not all of your questions are about wasting money, my response is not relevant to those questions.
I think there’s value in discussing ops decisions. They still represent how an org runs.
The most expensive coffee table I find in my local IKEA is $150, the cheapest $16. I wouldn’t quibble over the outright choice to buy the $150 one and agree at some point spending time comparing items to save cash is not a good use of time. I agree the difference saved between these tables is less than the value of some people’s time, sure.
But $10,000? That’s just unreasonable. That amount of money could save two lives and would be appalling spending if this is true. There has to be a cheaper alternative that can be found in little time. Say 20 minutes. Which would mean there is no one at Atlas whose time is below $30,000 an hour? Hard to believe.
I think I’m more sympathetic to some types of discussion than others.
If someone really established that Atlas spent 100x extra money on a coffee table than it was needed, then I think it would be fair for them to make sarcastic jokes about Atlas coffee tables in public or over the internet.
But I’m much more resistant to a culture where project founders are expected to respond to every similar rumour with a paragraph like “actually, it wasn’t a coffee table, it was a much larger piece of furniture for a bar, and it wasn’t actually $10000, it was $4000. Here is the screenshot of our digital receipt.”
If we establish a culture where every rumour about every similar product purchase is expected to receive an explanation from the relevant organisations, many projects would move much more slowly. If this wasn’t just a rumour, I think it’s more justified to criticise but I still feel resistant to the idea of founders being expected to explain all their weird-looking spending on physical goods that make up less than 0.1% of their budget.
I sure think the coffee table is a distraction, but in any case, I left a comment with the story of the rumored coffee table here (TLDR: It’s a really cool art-piece/coffee table that cost around $2200, Lightcone bought it from Atlas a few months ago at list price): https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fMrtoKBFK7p6oRHpu/atlas-fellowship-why-do-100-high-schoolers-need-usd50k-each?commentId=tPDmJWrimG9KpBCfi
I agree with most of this sentiment (and I don’t like sharing of unsubstantiated rumours). Once the rumour is out there though I don’t see the harm in responding to every rumour with a paragraph. There aren’t that many rumours flying around on the forum. It would take 5-10 minutes to put this particular rumour to bed. I don’t think this would slow down projects meaningfully to respond. Yes it might not make sense to explain tiny percentages of spending, but if that is where the scrutiny happens to fall why not just clear it up quicksmart?
Fortunately @Habryka was here to clear it up, but the head of the org could have also taken a few minutes to quash the rumour.