This was a surprising question to me, because that’s not how I think about my donations. I think there are a few things going on there:
I only listed the four largest recipients that account for around 2/​3rds of the total, so smaller orgs were naturally not listed.
As it happens another cluster I very nearly mentioned was AIM. I’ve donated roughly 150k (10% of donations) to AIM /​ AIM’s predecessors /​ AIM-incubated charities.
At the time I gave to 80k, in 2014-2018, they were much less of an ‘established institution’ and much more of a fast-expanding startup.
Similarly, the bulk of the money I gave to GWWC was right as they were spinning up again in 2021.
Still, even with that said I think you’re pointing at something real; my approach has certainly been more institution-heavy than say EAIF. So to show some cards, I’m roughly of the opinion that the ‘give a promising individual a one-off grant’ setup that’s common in EA is pretty dysfunctional and I’m reluctant to pour much money into it. It requires a lot of evaluation time on the funder side and causes a lot of pain and heartache on the grantee side. There’s a reason most people prefer to be employees not contractors, and I think even contractors have way better average job security than the individuals and tiny orgs inside this model.
Then I’m also not sold the outputs are better as they would need to be to justify those non-financial costs. In the private sector my understanding is that large orgs are generally more productive than smaller ones, at least up to sizes way larger than all EA orgs, due to fixed overheads and better ability to allow employees to specialise.
None of this is a hard no, and clearly I have done this sometimes. AIM mitigates some of these issues about as well as I think they can be mitigated. Sometimes I’m just much closer to a grant opportunity than other funders and it makes sense for me to take it. But mostly I do end up preferring to give to institutions.
This was a surprising question to me, because that’s not how I think about my donations. I think there are a few things going on there:
I only listed the four largest recipients that account for around 2/​3rds of the total, so smaller orgs were naturally not listed.
As it happens another cluster I very nearly mentioned was AIM. I’ve donated roughly 150k (10% of donations) to AIM /​ AIM’s predecessors /​ AIM-incubated charities.
At the time I gave to 80k, in 2014-2018, they were much less of an ‘established institution’ and much more of a fast-expanding startup.
Similarly, the bulk of the money I gave to GWWC was right as they were spinning up again in 2021.
Still, even with that said I think you’re pointing at something real; my approach has certainly been more institution-heavy than say EAIF. So to show some cards, I’m roughly of the opinion that the ‘give a promising individual a one-off grant’ setup that’s common in EA is pretty dysfunctional and I’m reluctant to pour much money into it. It requires a lot of evaluation time on the funder side and causes a lot of pain and heartache on the grantee side. There’s a reason most people prefer to be employees not contractors, and I think even contractors have way better average job security than the individuals and tiny orgs inside this model.
Then I’m also not sold the outputs are better as they would need to be to justify those non-financial costs. In the private sector my understanding is that large orgs are generally more productive than smaller ones, at least up to sizes way larger than all EA orgs, due to fixed overheads and better ability to allow employees to specialise.
None of this is a hard no, and clearly I have done this sometimes. AIM mitigates some of these issues about as well as I think they can be mitigated. Sometimes I’m just much closer to a grant opportunity than other funders and it makes sense for me to take it. But mostly I do end up preferring to give to institutions.