Even now I think we could scale up faster (and hugely welcome this scale-up post). But I understand that CoGi has a certain amount it wishes to allocate, and its strategy to maximise impact is allocating that in such a way as to create clear high-giving-multiplier funding gaps for other GiveWell-aligned donors to be able to step in and fill.
Are you confident that CG should be increasing the funding of EGIs faster (for example, by using looser funding caps)? If not, can you be confident that funding the EGIs supported by CG is significantly more cost-effective than funding GiveWell?
I am confident that CG running more RFPs, committing multi-year scale-up funding, branching out into diverse initiatives, and other such things with its increased EGI budget allocation is a very clear sign that it believes there is both high impact and absorbency here. And knowing that their previous RoI has been 5x, I doubt this one will end up substantially lower. I reckon theyāll use about the same judging criteria, the pot just wonāt run out so fast. Which means that I do think funding an EGI funded by CG is more cost-effective than GiveWell.
I am confident that CG running more RFPs, committing multi-year scale-up funding, branching out into diverse initiatives, and other such things with its increased EGI budget allocation is a very clear sign that it believes there is both high impact and absorbency here.
It does not follow from this that funding the EGIs supported by CG is more cost-effective than funding GiveWell? For this to be the case, assuming CG is trying to maximise their impact, one would have to think they should be scaling up their funding of EGIs faster, regardless of how fast they are currently scaling it. If CGās marginal funding of EGIs had a multiplier above 1 accounting for all effects, they would be leaving impact on the table by not scaling up faster.
I do believe that, from a purely expected-impact-maximising perspective, CG should scale up faster than they are currently doing by directing more of their money from GiveWell charities ā fundraising organisations for GiveWell charities. Thereās a whole bunch of opportunities above 1x they are intentionally missing out on, and also opportunities above their 5x funding bar they are trying to create and then intentionally miss out on. I believe that their current limit here is primarily reputational, and that altruism at this scale is not an efficient market.
The reputational considerations being that CG does not want to be seen using too much of its global health allocation paying for fundraisers, because someone could write a hitpiece on āa billionaire wants you to give money to help the extreme poor but wonāt give any himselfā.
Anyone who is not CG is not bound by the reputational considerations of CG, and can take advantage of a significant arbitrage opportunity.
CGās current scaling could still be maximising expected impact if they are correctly assessing the reputational risks of funding EGIs. However, I agree this applies less to small individual donors, and I also suspect the marginal multiplier accounting for all effects of these donors funding EGIs supported by CG is higher than 1.
I wonder whether it would be good for CG to clarify why they do not fund EGIs more. I feel like this would make sense even if the cause was the reputational risks you mentioned, which I believe are broadly seen as understandable.
Thanks for this discussion. I appreciate the thoughtful engagement even though I havenāt had the capacity to follow the full back-and-forth in detail. I wanted to offer a few points from the grantmaker perspective that might be useful.
On the marginal cost-effectiveness question: most of the effective giving organizations we fund are running very lean, and their costs are primarily staffing. So when we think about marginal funding, weāre often not thinking about abstract diminishing returns on a smooth curve, weāre thinking about specific roles and what theyād unlock. For example, if an org is going from two to four FTE, the additional hires might be an ultra-high-net-worth advisor who opens up a whole new donor segment, or a marketing hire who can meaningfully expand reach. In cases like these, the marginal dollar can be highly cost-effective (sometimes more so than earlier spending) because itās funding a function the org simply couldnāt perform before.
We try to do this kind of holistic (and sometimes hire-by-hire) assessment where we can, though we canāt do it for every grantee at every funding level.
One further point: the theoretical argument that orgs should already be spending on their highest-priority items first, so marginal funding should by definition go to lower-priority uses, doesnāt always hold in practice. Lean orgs often underspend on things like marketing or growth capacity, not because those arenāt high-value, but because theyāre harder to justify from scarce operating budgets, especially when the payoff is uncertain. Additional funding can unlock spending that should have been happening but wasnāt.
On average vs. marginal assessment: as I mentioned above, we tend to rely on average cost-effectiveness in our evaluations. I recognize that might be a limitation. In practice, we represent a large share of many granteesā funding, idealistically around 50%, but realistically 70ā100% for many newer grantees. When weāre that dominant a funder, the distinction between average and marginal matters less. Where weāve been a significantly smaller share of an orgās funding, we have done more explicit marginal analysis, and we expect to move further in that direction, particularly when we represent a smaller share or when a grantee is requesting a substantial increase in funding. We want to make sure the additional funding makes sense. That said, we believe most organizations in our portfolio are cost-effective enough and able to absorb more funding at this stage, and that filling a 10ā50% gap is cost-effective enough that more granular marginal analysis hasnāt been a top priority.
On why weāre not funding effective giving orgs even more: in many cases, we are increasing grant sizes for successful grantees, and part of our 2026 strategy is actively pushing high-performers to absorb more funding where we see opportunity. But our portfolio spans more than effective giving, we also want to grow in areas like effective careers, where organizations typically have fewer alternative funding sources than EG orgs, which can tap tipping functions and individual donors more readily. We also think of ourselves as providing sustained, long-term support. As we expand and take on more renewable grants, which naturally grow over time with inflation and organizational costs, an increasing share of our budget might go to renewals. Committing to be the sole or near-sole funder for most of these organizations would be irresponsible, both for our portfolio flexibility and for their long-term resilience.
Are you confident that CG should be increasing the funding of EGIs faster (for example, by using looser funding caps)? If not, can you be confident that funding the EGIs supported by CG is significantly more cost-effective than funding GiveWell?
I am confident that CG running more RFPs, committing multi-year scale-up funding, branching out into diverse initiatives, and other such things with its increased EGI budget allocation is a very clear sign that it believes there is both high impact and absorbency here. And knowing that their previous RoI has been 5x, I doubt this one will end up substantially lower. I reckon theyāll use about the same judging criteria, the pot just wonāt run out so fast. Which means that I do think funding an EGI funded by CG is more cost-effective than GiveWell.
It does not follow from this that funding the EGIs supported by CG is more cost-effective than funding GiveWell? For this to be the case, assuming CG is trying to maximise their impact, one would have to think they should be scaling up their funding of EGIs faster, regardless of how fast they are currently scaling it. If CGās marginal funding of EGIs had a multiplier above 1 accounting for all effects, they would be leaving impact on the table by not scaling up faster.
I do believe that, from a purely expected-impact-maximising perspective, CG should scale up faster than they are currently doing by directing more of their money from GiveWell charities ā fundraising organisations for GiveWell charities. Thereās a whole bunch of opportunities above 1x they are intentionally missing out on, and also opportunities above their 5x funding bar they are trying to create and then intentionally miss out on. I believe that their current limit here is primarily reputational, and that altruism at this scale is not an efficient market.
The reputational considerations being that CG does not want to be seen using too much of its global health allocation paying for fundraisers, because someone could write a hitpiece on āa billionaire wants you to give money to help the extreme poor but wonāt give any himselfā.
Anyone who is not CG is not bound by the reputational considerations of CG, and can take advantage of a significant arbitrage opportunity.
CGās current scaling could still be maximising expected impact if they are correctly assessing the reputational risks of funding EGIs. However, I agree this applies less to small individual donors, and I also suspect the marginal multiplier accounting for all effects of these donors funding EGIs supported by CG is higher than 1.
I wonder whether it would be good for CG to clarify why they do not fund EGIs more. I feel like this would make sense even if the cause was the reputational risks you mentioned, which I believe are broadly seen as understandable.
Thanks for this discussion. I appreciate the thoughtful engagement even though I havenāt had the capacity to follow the full back-and-forth in detail. I wanted to offer a few points from the grantmaker perspective that might be useful.
On the marginal cost-effectiveness question: most of the effective giving organizations we fund are running very lean, and their costs are primarily staffing. So when we think about marginal funding, weāre often not thinking about abstract diminishing returns on a smooth curve, weāre thinking about specific roles and what theyād unlock. For example, if an org is going from two to four FTE, the additional hires might be an ultra-high-net-worth advisor who opens up a whole new donor segment, or a marketing hire who can meaningfully expand reach. In cases like these, the marginal dollar can be highly cost-effective (sometimes more so than earlier spending) because itās funding a function the org simply couldnāt perform before.
We try to do this kind of holistic (and sometimes hire-by-hire) assessment where we can, though we canāt do it for every grantee at every funding level.
One further point: the theoretical argument that orgs should already be spending on their highest-priority items first, so marginal funding should by definition go to lower-priority uses, doesnāt always hold in practice. Lean orgs often underspend on things like marketing or growth capacity, not because those arenāt high-value, but because theyāre harder to justify from scarce operating budgets, especially when the payoff is uncertain. Additional funding can unlock spending that should have been happening but wasnāt.
On average vs. marginal assessment: as I mentioned above, we tend to rely on average cost-effectiveness in our evaluations. I recognize that might be a limitation. In practice, we represent a large share of many granteesā funding, idealistically around 50%, but realistically 70ā100% for many newer grantees. When weāre that dominant a funder, the distinction between average and marginal matters less. Where weāve been a significantly smaller share of an orgās funding, we have done more explicit marginal analysis, and we expect to move further in that direction, particularly when we represent a smaller share or when a grantee is requesting a substantial increase in funding. We want to make sure the additional funding makes sense. That said, we believe most organizations in our portfolio are cost-effective enough and able to absorb more funding at this stage, and that filling a 10ā50% gap is cost-effective enough that more granular marginal analysis hasnāt been a top priority.
On why weāre not funding effective giving orgs even more: in many cases, we are increasing grant sizes for successful grantees, and part of our 2026 strategy is actively pushing high-performers to absorb more funding where we see opportunity. But our portfolio spans more than effective giving, we also want to grow in areas like effective careers, where organizations typically have fewer alternative funding sources than EG orgs, which can tap tipping functions and individual donors more readily. We also think of ourselves as providing sustained, long-term support. As we expand and take on more renewable grants, which naturally grow over time with inflation and organizational costs, an increasing share of our budget might go to renewals. Committing to be the sole or near-sole funder for most of these organizations would be irresponsible, both for our portfolio flexibility and for their long-term resilience.
Thanks for the helpful clarifications, Melanie. They made sense to me.