With respect to the last dollar of funding: I think Open Philanthropy expects to spend their last dollar on something more cost-effective than GiveDirectly. So I think the last dollar of spending will still look good, and at the worst case your spending now will move some other funding to something somewhat less effective but still pretty good down the line.
Another potential advantage for an individual donor would be identifying something not currently receiving large amounts of funding that you think is worth taking a bet on. That would give the initiative more time to demonstrate it’s value and to gather information on how well it’s achieving its goals (or it could be funding an individual to grow their skills or something).
We’ve also seen Will write that the FTX Future Fund rejected 95% of their applicants, so it’s not the case that there’s a money firehose that everyone has access to. Plenty of people are, presumably, open to working on new projects given funding.
I know that professional grant makers think that last-dollar funding is not cost effective because they aren’t funding more projects, but aren’t out of dollars.
None of our big donors were intending to spend all of their funding before now. It’s taken Open Phil years to grow their capacity and increase their giving in line with their standards of diligence. They intend to spend down their funds, I believe, within the lifetime of their funders.
With respect to the last dollar of funding: I think Open Philanthropy expects to spend their last dollar on something more cost-effective than GiveDirectly. So I think the last dollar of spending will still look good, and at the worst case your spending now will move some other funding to something somewhat less effective but still pretty good down the line.
Another potential advantage for an individual donor would be identifying something not currently receiving large amounts of funding that you think is worth taking a bet on. That would give the initiative more time to demonstrate it’s value and to gather information on how well it’s achieving its goals (or it could be funding an individual to grow their skills or something).
We’ve also seen Will write that the FTX Future Fund rejected 95% of their applicants, so it’s not the case that there’s a money firehose that everyone has access to. Plenty of people are, presumably, open to working on new projects given funding.
None of our big donors were intending to spend all of their funding before now. It’s taken Open Phil years to grow their capacity and increase their giving in line with their standards of diligence. They intend to spend down their funds, I believe, within the lifetime of their funders.