Open Phil and the CEA Global Health and Development Fund have each made a grant to One for the World before, Open Phil has made grants to Founders Pledge, and the EA Infrastructure Fund has made grants to TLYCS, One for the World, RC Forward, Raising for Effective Giving, Founders Pledge, a tax deductible status project run by Effective Altruism Netherlands, Generation Pledge, http://āāgieffektivt.no/āā, Lucius Caviola and Joshua Greene (givingmultiplier.org), EA Giving Tuesday and Effektiv Spenden.
Of the 4 EA funds, the EA Infrastructure Fund has paid out the least to date, though, and it looks like they all started paying out in 2017.
My sense is that most individual donors arenāt excited about multiplier orgs because they find them complicated, donāt have time to dig into the leverage numbers to really understand them, and therefore donāt trust those numbers. And I think thatās a pretty reasonable strategy for most individuals. But it does seem telling that funders that have the resources to do more vetting have supported such a wide range of multiplier orgs.
These sophisticated donorsā support of such a wide range of multiplier orgs supports the idea that there could be a lot of leverage out there to be had. If thatās true, it also has some interesting implications for the āitās hard to get a job at an EA orgā discussion thatās been going on for a while, most recently here.
Hereās a simplified thought experiment. Letās say you invested $1 million in the orgs listed above, allocated proportionally to their current size (not all that far off from what the infrastructure fund has actually done, but weāll use stylized numbers to keep the math simple). Salaries are typically the biggest expense for multiplier orgs, so letās say $800k flows through to hiring new people. Assume $100k/āyear per new person and thatās 8 new hires. If 75% of those jobs go to people in the EA community, thatās 6 EAās getting the sorts of jobs that are immensely desireable and immensely scarce.
If the multiplier model really works, $1 million will be a small fraction of whatās needed to build a flourishing system multiplier orgs with models spanning research (e.g. GiveWell, ACE), fundraising for targeted causes (e.g. TLYCS, OFTW), fundraising for targeted donors (e.g. Founders Pledge and REG), and country-level organizations that provide tax deductible giving (e.g. RC Forward, EA Netherlands). If you built that ecosystem, youād quickly create dozens of new roles. So if the multiplier model works at scale, youāll move a ton of incremental money while also making real headway on the issue of EA jobs being scarce. (To be clear, I donāt think we should fund multiplier orgs so EAs will be able to get the jobs they want, Iām just saying that would be a nice added benefit if the multiplier model works and another reason to investigate whether it does work.)
Open Phil and the CEA Global Health and Development Fund have each made a grant to One for the World before, Open Phil has made grants to Founders Pledge, and the EA Infrastructure Fund has made grants to TLYCS, One for the World, RC Forward, Raising for Effective Giving, Founders Pledge, a tax deductible status project run by Effective Altruism Netherlands, Generation Pledge, http://āāgieffektivt.no/āā, Lucius Caviola and Joshua Greene (givingmultiplier.org), EA Giving Tuesday and Effektiv Spenden.
Of the 4 EA funds, the EA Infrastructure Fund has paid out the least to date, though, and it looks like they all started paying out in 2017.
My sense is that most individual donors arenāt excited about multiplier orgs because they find them complicated, donāt have time to dig into the leverage numbers to really understand them, and therefore donāt trust those numbers. And I think thatās a pretty reasonable strategy for most individuals. But it does seem telling that funders that have the resources to do more vetting have supported such a wide range of multiplier orgs.
These sophisticated donorsā support of such a wide range of multiplier orgs supports the idea that there could be a lot of leverage out there to be had. If thatās true, it also has some interesting implications for the āitās hard to get a job at an EA orgā discussion thatās been going on for a while, most recently here.
Hereās a simplified thought experiment. Letās say you invested $1 million in the orgs listed above, allocated proportionally to their current size (not all that far off from what the infrastructure fund has actually done, but weāll use stylized numbers to keep the math simple). Salaries are typically the biggest expense for multiplier orgs, so letās say $800k flows through to hiring new people. Assume $100k/āyear per new person and thatās 8 new hires. If 75% of those jobs go to people in the EA community, thatās 6 EAās getting the sorts of jobs that are immensely desireable and immensely scarce.
If the multiplier model really works, $1 million will be a small fraction of whatās needed to build a flourishing system multiplier orgs with models spanning research (e.g. GiveWell, ACE), fundraising for targeted causes (e.g. TLYCS, OFTW), fundraising for targeted donors (e.g. Founders Pledge and REG), and country-level organizations that provide tax deductible giving (e.g. RC Forward, EA Netherlands). If you built that ecosystem, youād quickly create dozens of new roles. So if the multiplier model works at scale, youāll move a ton of incremental money while also making real headway on the issue of EA jobs being scarce. (To be clear, I donāt think we should fund multiplier orgs so EAs will be able to get the jobs they want, Iām just saying that would be a nice added benefit if the multiplier model works and another reason to investigate whether it does work.)
Do you disagree that the EA community at large seems less excited about multiplier orgs vs. more direct orgs?
No, I agree with that.