Just noticed this, so sorry for the late reply! I (through EA Sweden) was the recipients of an EA Community Fund grant a few months back. I’ll just say a few things about the grant, some general thoughts about the EA Community Fund and am happy to answer any questions you might have!
I’d say that there was a bit more information to go on than simply Will having seen me do EA group organizing over the past 5 or so years: I also provided a project proposal. However, I’d agree with the impression that the main factor in making the grant was about trust and first-hand knowledge of my work in the past.
Abstracting from my particular situation, there currently seem to be growing pains in the EA community building-space. My impression is that the bottleneck is not good projects to fund, but rather ability to consider proposals and allocate funds. I think making funding decisions in the community building-space based largely on trust and proven track record is a good heuristic. However, it won’t be particularly scalable and so needs to be supplemented by more time-intensive methods.
Given the small size of the EA Community Fund, it seems unreasonable for Nick Beckstead to be managing it. Once CEA is able to allocate their EA Community Building Grants effectively, I’d recommend the EA Community Fund being allocated by CEA rather than Nick Beckstead.
Just noticed this, so sorry for the late reply! I (through EA Sweden) was the recipients of an EA Community Fund grant a few months back. I’ll just say a few things about the grant, some general thoughts about the EA Community Fund and am happy to answer any questions you might have!
I’d say that there was a bit more information to go on than simply Will having seen me do EA group organizing over the past 5 or so years: I also provided a project proposal. However, I’d agree with the impression that the main factor in making the grant was about trust and first-hand knowledge of my work in the past.
If you wanna know more about what we’ve been up to, you can read our plans for the year (as of February) here: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1kf/effective_altruism_sweden_plans_for_2018/
Abstracting from my particular situation, there currently seem to be growing pains in the EA community building-space. My impression is that the bottleneck is not good projects to fund, but rather ability to consider proposals and allocate funds. I think making funding decisions in the community building-space based largely on trust and proven track record is a good heuristic. However, it won’t be particularly scalable and so needs to be supplemented by more time-intensive methods.
Given the small size of the EA Community Fund, it seems unreasonable for Nick Beckstead to be managing it. Once CEA is able to allocate their EA Community Building Grants effectively, I’d recommend the EA Community Fund being allocated by CEA rather than Nick Beckstead.