Am I right in saying that OP will no longer be able to do what it thinks is most effective in some sense? That seems important to note.
An alternative theory is that OP doesn’t think these cause areas are the most effective one but wants to create new buckets and has been told ‘no’ which seems less notable.
I think this is a complicated question—it’s always been the case that individual OP staff had to submit grants to an overall review process and were not totally unilateral decision makers. As I said in my post above, they (and I) will now face somewhat more constraints. I think staff would differ in terms of how costly they would assess the new constraints as being. But it’s true this was a GV rather than OP decision; it wasn’t a place where GV was deferring to OP to weigh the costs and benefits.
Come on, I am confident if you did a survey of your staff you would find that people are expecting a huge shift and would meaningfully say that “yes, I think we will now be unable to make a non-trivial chunk of our most valuable grants via OP”. Of course OP has always faced some constraints here, but this is clearly a huge shift in your relation towards your OP-internal cost-effectiveness beliefs.
Totally! I agree that this situation would change again as soon as OP were to find other donors who would feel comfortable filling in the gaps, or deferring to OP in the way you had previously deferred your funding allocation to OP. But such a donor does not currently exist, and as such, the situation has very importantly changed, which is what I understood Nathan to be asking about.
I don’t think it’s true that no other donors exist for these areas. My understanding is Alexander and his colleagues are engaging some folks already and expect to get more inbounds now that this is better known.
It seems clear you actually do not want them to recruit donors for the grantees you’re focused on, which is ok, but there are also areas that have nothing to do with you.
I am pretty sure that the donors that Open Phil is talking to would not meaningfully undo the huge shift in OPs relationship to its own cost-effectiveness estimates. Maybe you disagree here, I would be happy to bet about survey outcomes of OP staff.
It seems clear you actually do not want them to recruit donors for the grantees you’re focused on
I am not sure what you mean by this. I would love for Open Phil staff to find additional donors for domains I support. I also think that donor would then probably be well-advised to hire away some of the OP staff, or hire additional staff of their own, and my guess is would end up with a very different relationship than you have to OP, but that doesn’t really bear on the question of whether I would OP staff to try to recruit donors for these things. I would like to see more funding to stuff that I care about, including from OP.
Oh sorry I wasn’t speaking precisely enough—I only meant you wouldn’t want them working with OP and would advise them not to. I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth and I agree they could help recruit a donor to work with another group.
Ah, cool. Yeah, that makes sense. I think that’s my current position, though to be clear, I am far from confident on this, it’s just my best guess about how to navigate the (to me) very tricky seeming dynamics here.
Yes, I am quite confident that Open Philanthropy staff will no longer be in a position to fund the things they consider most cost-effective (though it seems good for someone at OP or GV to confirm this). This does indeed seem like a huge shift in how OP operates.
Am I right in saying that OP will no longer be able to do what it thinks is most effective in some sense? That seems important to note.
An alternative theory is that OP doesn’t think these cause areas are the most effective one but wants to create new buckets and has been told ‘no’ which seems less notable.
I think this is a complicated question—it’s always been the case that individual OP staff had to submit grants to an overall review process and were not totally unilateral decision makers. As I said in my post above, they (and I) will now face somewhat more constraints. I think staff would differ in terms of how costly they would assess the new constraints as being. But it’s true this was a GV rather than OP decision; it wasn’t a place where GV was deferring to OP to weigh the costs and benefits.
Come on, I am confident if you did a survey of your staff you would find that people are expecting a huge shift and would meaningfully say that “yes, I think we will now be unable to make a non-trivial chunk of our most valuable grants via OP”. Of course OP has always faced some constraints here, but this is clearly a huge shift in your relation towards your OP-internal cost-effectiveness beliefs.
The question is inseparable from the lack of other donors. Of course it is true right now, because they have no one else to refer the grants to.
FWIW I certainly agree with “non-trivial”; “huge” is a judgment call IMO. We’ll see!
Totally! I agree that this situation would change again as soon as OP were to find other donors who would feel comfortable filling in the gaps, or deferring to OP in the way you had previously deferred your funding allocation to OP. But such a donor does not currently exist, and as such, the situation has very importantly changed, which is what I understood Nathan to be asking about.
I don’t think it’s true that no other donors exist for these areas. My understanding is Alexander and his colleagues are engaging some folks already and expect to get more inbounds now that this is better known.
It seems clear you actually do not want them to recruit donors for the grantees you’re focused on, which is ok, but there are also areas that have nothing to do with you.
I am pretty sure that the donors that Open Phil is talking to would not meaningfully undo the huge shift in OPs relationship to its own cost-effectiveness estimates. Maybe you disagree here, I would be happy to bet about survey outcomes of OP staff.
I am not sure what you mean by this. I would love for Open Phil staff to find additional donors for domains I support. I also think that donor would then probably be well-advised to hire away some of the OP staff, or hire additional staff of their own, and my guess is would end up with a very different relationship than you have to OP, but that doesn’t really bear on the question of whether I would OP staff to try to recruit donors for these things. I would like to see more funding to stuff that I care about, including from OP.
Oh sorry I wasn’t speaking precisely enough—I only meant you wouldn’t want them working with OP and would advise them not to. I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth and I agree they could help recruit a donor to work with another group.
Ah, cool. Yeah, that makes sense. I think that’s my current position, though to be clear, I am far from confident on this, it’s just my best guess about how to navigate the (to me) very tricky seeming dynamics here.
Yes, I am quite confident that Open Philanthropy staff will no longer be in a position to fund the things they consider most cost-effective (though it seems good for someone at OP or GV to confirm this). This does indeed seem like a huge shift in how OP operates.