Bridging the FTX Funding Gap: Projects, ETG Ideas, and Brainstorming to Fill the ~35% Gap
Tldr: Comment with ideas, proejcts, and calls for collaboration for projects that can help fill the 35% funding gap left by FTX.
Hi everyone. This post is a call for ideas, projects, and solutions for the funding gap left by FTX and SBF’s recent failures. Any comments, discussion, construction critiques, and/or brainstorming (please note your comments accordingly) of ideas to help increase the amount of donations and funding to the wider EA community down below would be extremely helpful for members of the community who are no doubt looking for ways to tackle this crisis in EA. FTX funds contributed an estimated ~35% of the total EA funding in 2022. Given the distance that we ought to make between EA and FTX given the (highly probable) unethical business practices/lack of integrity FTX was conducting itself with, this crisis in funding needs to be solved by community members bringing novel solutions / or revitalizing older strategies and ideas.
In light of the FTX crisis, EA is facing a major narrowing in available funds. Many within our community are hurting because of this. However, we are a community of people aimed at doing the most good we can, in as skillfully, effectively, and integrity laiden way as we can muster. EA’s origins were not that of having tens of billions on hand at any given time in funding but such a level of funding now doubt does increase the our ability to hit key thresholds in the fight for human flourishing this century and far beyond.
Given what is at stake, if you have any projects in mind that may help generate additional resources for EA, general strategies or advice for individuals facing economic crunches, or earn to give projects that you are looking for allies and co-founders for, please post down below.
As the founder of a non-EA nonprofit, here are some things that the EA folks should be thinking about:
1 - For EA to survive, it needs to become a toolkit not a cause.
Philanthropy in general, such as the Gates Foundation, loves giving money to organizations that do research about philanthropy. Rather than EA being about giving to specific causes, EA can become a meta-analysis of what works and doesn’t work in philanthropy, and that it is a meta-layer on top of philanthropy rather than a specific cause. All of the EA people who want to work in EA should instead see themselves as people who want to contribute to improving philanthropy generally, and EA is a mindset for assessing giving.
2 - If you want to make an impact, work for a nonprofit that is making an impact, not for infrastructure
The point of EA is to funnel money to effective charities, like Give Directly. If you care about making an impact, why not just apply to work at those organizations, like Give Directly, and help them raise money for their causes? Cut out the middle man of EA itself and commit to the causes that EA cares about.
3 - Longterism needs to be divorced from EA for EA to survive as a coalition of individual donors.
Longtermism work is mostly think-tanky type work, and that is either funded by billionaires or it happens in academia. For EA to thrive here, it needs to embed itself in the world of think-tanks or otherwise find another billionaire patron, but it won’t survive from individual donations. For example, if EA can convince the 10,000 EA-committed folks to donate $100 per year to be a member of EA, it can raise $1m per year through these donations—that’s not going to be enough to sustain the movement.