I’d love to see some other EA donors and community members step up here. I think it’s kind of damning how little EA money comes from community members or sources other than OP right now. Long-term this seems pretty unhealthy.
There was some prior relevant discussion in November 2023 in this CEA fundraising thread, such as my comment here about funder diversity at CEA. Basically, I didn’t think that there was much meaningful difference between a CEA that was (e.g.) 90% OP/GV funded vs. 70% OP/GV funded. So I think the only practical way for that percentage to move enough to make a real difference would be both an increase in community contributions/control and CEA going on a fairly severe diet.
As for EAIF, expected total grantmaking was ~$2.5MM for 2025. Even if a sizable fraction of that went to CEA, it would only be perhaps 1-2% of CEA’s 2023 budget of $31.4MM.
I recall participating in some discussions here about identifying core infrastructure that should be prioritized for broad-based funding for democratic and/or epistemic reasons. Identifying items in the low millions for more independent funding seems more realistic than meaningful changes in CEA’s funding base. The Forum strikes me as an obvious candidate, but a community-funded version would presumably need to run on a significantly leaner budget than I understand to be currently in place.
Basically, I didn’t think that there was much meaningful difference between a CEA that was (e.g.) 90% OP/GV funded vs. 70% OP/GV funded.
Personally, I’m optimistic that this could be done in specific ways that could be better than one might initially presume. One wouldn’t fund “CEA”—they could instead fund specific programs in CEA, for instance. I imagine that people at CEA might have some good ideas of specific things they could fund that OP isn’t a good fit for.
One complication is that arguably we’d want to do this in a way that’s “fair” to OP. Like, it doesn’t seem “fair” for OP to pay for all the stuff that both OP+EA agrees on, and EA only to fund the stuff that EA likes. But this really depends on what OP is comfortable with.
Lastly, I’d flag that CEA being 90% OP/GV funded really can be quite different than 70% in some important ways, still. For example, if OP/GV were to leave—then CEA might be able to go to 30% of its size—a big loss, but much better than 10% of its size.
Personally, I’m optimistic that this could be done in specific ways that could be better than one might initially presume. One wouldn’t fund “CEA”—they could instead fund specific programs in CEA, for instance. I imagine that people at CEA might have some good ideas of specific things they could fund that OP isn’t a good fit for.
That may be viable, although I think it would be better for both sides if these programs were not in CEA but instead in an independent organization. For the small-donor side, it limits the risk that their monies will just funge against OP/GV’s, or that OP/GV will influence how the community-funded program is run (e.g., through its influence on CEA management officials). On the OP/GV side, organizational separation is probably necessary to provide some of the reputational distance it may be looking for. That being said, given that small/medium donors have never to my knowledge been given this kind of opportunity, and the significant coordination obstacles involved, I would not characterize them not having taken it as indicative of much in particular.
~
More broadly, I think this is a challenging conversation without nailing down the objective better—and that may be hard for us on the Forum to do. Without any inside knowledge, my guess is that OP/GV’s concerns are not primarily focused on the existence of discrete programs “that OP isn’t a good fit for” or a desire not to fund them.
For example, a recent public comment from Dustin contain the following sentence: “But I can’t e.g. get SBF to not do podcasts nor stop the EA (or two?) that seem to have joined DOGE and started laying waste to USAID.” The concerns implied by that statement aren’t really fixable by the community funding discrete programs, or even by shelving discrete programs altogether. Not being the flagship EA organization’s predominant donor may not be sufficient for getting reputational distance from that sort of thing, but it’s probably a necessary condition.
I speculate that other concerns may be about the way certain core programs are run—e.g., I would not be too surprised to hear that OP/GV would rather not have particular controversialcontent allowed on the Forum, or have advocates for certain political positions admitted to EAGs, or whatever. I’m not going to name the content I have in mind in an attempt not to be drawn into an object-level discussion on those topics, but I wouldn’t want my own money being used to platform such content or help its adherents network either. Anyway, these types of issues can probably be fixed by running the program with community/other-donor funding in a separate organization, but these programs are expensive to run. And the community / non-OP/GV donors are not a monolithic constituency; I suspect that at least a significant minority of the community would share OP/GV’s concerns on the merits.
Lastly, I’d flag that CEA being 90% OP/GV funded really can be quite different than 70% in some important ways, still. For example, if OP/GV were to leave—then CEA might be able to go to 30% of its size—a big loss, but much better than 10% of its size.
I agree—the linked comment was focused more on the impact of funding diversity on conflicts of interest and cause prio. But the amount of smaller-EA-donor dollars to go around is limited,[1] and so we have to consider the opportunity cost of diverting them to fund CEA or similar meta work on an ongoing basis. OP/GV is usually a pretty responsible funder, so the odds of them suddenly defunding CEA without providing some sort of notice and transitional funding seems low.
For instance, I believe GWWC pledgers gave about $32MM/year on average from 2020-2022 [p. 12 of this impact assessment], and not all pledgers are EAs.
I think you bring up a bunch of good points. I’d hope that any concrete steps on this would take these sorts of considerations in mind.
> The concerns implied by that statement aren’t really fixable by the community funding discrete programs, or even by shelving discrete programs altogether. Not being the flagship EA organization’s predominant donor may not be sufficient for getting reputational distance from that sort of thing, but it’s probably a necessary condition.
I wasn’t claiming that this funding change would fix all of OP/GV’s concerns. I assume that would take a great deal of work, among many different projects/initiatives.
One thing I care about is that someone is paid to start thinking about this critically and extensively, and I imagine they’d be more effective if not under the OP umbrella. So one of the early steps to take is just trying to find a system that could help figure out future steps.
> I speculate that other concerns may be about the way certain core programs are run—e.g., I would not be too surprised to hear that OP/GV would rather not have particular controversialcontent allowed on the Forum, or have advocates for certain political positions admitted to EAGs, or whatever.
I think this raises an important and somewhat awkward point that levels of separation between EA and OP/GV would make it harder for OP/GV to have as much control over these areas, and there are times where they wouldn’t be as happy with the results.
Of course: 1. If this is the case, it implies that the EA community does want some concretely different things, so from the standpoint of the EA community, this would make funding more appealing. 2. I think in the big picture, it seems like OP/GV doesn’t want to be held as responsible for the EA community. Ultimately there’s a conflict here—on one hand, they don’t want to be seen as responsible for the EA community—on the other hand, they might prefer situations where they can have a very large amount of control over the EA community. I hope it can be understood that these two desires can’t easily go together. Perhaps they won’t be willing to compromise on the latter, but also will complain about the former. That might well happen, but I’d hope there could be a better arrangement made.
> OP/GV is usually a pretty responsible funder, so the odds of them suddenly defunding CEA without providing some sort of notice and transitional funding seems low.
I largely agree. That said, if I were CEA, I’d still feel fairly uncomfortable. When the vast majority of your funding comes from any one donor, you’ll need to place a whole lot of trust in them.
I’d imagine that if I were working within CEA, I’d be incredibly precautious not to upset OP or GV. I’d also imagine this to mess with my epistemics/communication/actions.
Also, of course, I’d flag that the world can change quickly. Maybe Trump will go on a push against EA one day, and put OP in an awkward spot, for example.
There was some prior relevant discussion in November 2023 in this CEA fundraising thread, such as my comment here about funder diversity at CEA. Basically, I didn’t think that there was much meaningful difference between a CEA that was (e.g.) 90% OP/GV funded vs. 70% OP/GV funded. So I think the only practical way for that percentage to move enough to make a real difference would be both an increase in community contributions/control and CEA going on a fairly severe diet.
As for EAIF, expected total grantmaking was ~$2.5MM for 2025. Even if a sizable fraction of that went to CEA, it would only be perhaps 1-2% of CEA’s 2023 budget of $31.4MM.
I recall participating in some discussions here about identifying core infrastructure that should be prioritized for broad-based funding for democratic and/or epistemic reasons. Identifying items in the low millions for more independent funding seems more realistic than meaningful changes in CEA’s funding base. The Forum strikes me as an obvious candidate, but a community-funded version would presumably need to run on a significantly leaner budget than I understand to be currently in place.
Personally, I’m optimistic that this could be done in specific ways that could be better than one might initially presume. One wouldn’t fund “CEA”—they could instead fund specific programs in CEA, for instance. I imagine that people at CEA might have some good ideas of specific things they could fund that OP isn’t a good fit for.
One complication is that arguably we’d want to do this in a way that’s “fair” to OP. Like, it doesn’t seem “fair” for OP to pay for all the stuff that both OP+EA agrees on, and EA only to fund the stuff that EA likes. But this really depends on what OP is comfortable with.
Lastly, I’d flag that CEA being 90% OP/GV funded really can be quite different than 70% in some important ways, still. For example, if OP/GV were to leave—then CEA might be able to go to 30% of its size—a big loss, but much better than 10% of its size.
That may be viable, although I think it would be better for both sides if these programs were not in CEA but instead in an independent organization. For the small-donor side, it limits the risk that their monies will just funge against OP/GV’s, or that OP/GV will influence how the community-funded program is run (e.g., through its influence on CEA management officials). On the OP/GV side, organizational separation is probably necessary to provide some of the reputational distance it may be looking for. That being said, given that small/medium donors have never to my knowledge been given this kind of opportunity, and the significant coordination obstacles involved, I would not characterize them not having taken it as indicative of much in particular.
~
More broadly, I think this is a challenging conversation without nailing down the objective better—and that may be hard for us on the Forum to do. Without any inside knowledge, my guess is that OP/GV’s concerns are not primarily focused on the existence of discrete programs “that OP isn’t a good fit for” or a desire not to fund them.
For example, a recent public comment from Dustin contain the following sentence: “But I can’t e.g. get SBF to not do podcasts nor stop the EA (or two?) that seem to have joined DOGE and started laying waste to USAID.” The concerns implied by that statement aren’t really fixable by the community funding discrete programs, or even by shelving discrete programs altogether. Not being the flagship EA organization’s predominant donor may not be sufficient for getting reputational distance from that sort of thing, but it’s probably a necessary condition.
I speculate that other concerns may be about the way certain core programs are run—e.g., I would not be too surprised to hear that OP/GV would rather not have particular controversial content allowed on the Forum, or have advocates for certain political positions admitted to EAGs, or whatever. I’m not going to name the content I have in mind in an attempt not to be drawn into an object-level discussion on those topics, but I wouldn’t want my own money being used to platform such content or help its adherents network either. Anyway, these types of issues can probably be fixed by running the program with community/other-donor funding in a separate organization, but these programs are expensive to run. And the community / non-OP/GV donors are not a monolithic constituency; I suspect that at least a significant minority of the community would share OP/GV’s concerns on the merits.
I agree—the linked comment was focused more on the impact of funding diversity on conflicts of interest and cause prio. But the amount of smaller-EA-donor dollars to go around is limited,[1] and so we have to consider the opportunity cost of diverting them to fund CEA or similar meta work on an ongoing basis. OP/GV is usually a pretty responsible funder, so the odds of them suddenly defunding CEA without providing some sort of notice and transitional funding seems low.
For instance, I believe GWWC pledgers gave about $32MM/year on average from 2020-2022 [p. 12 of this impact assessment], and not all pledgers are EAs.
I think you bring up a bunch of good points. I’d hope that any concrete steps on this would take these sorts of considerations in mind.
> The concerns implied by that statement aren’t really fixable by the community funding discrete programs, or even by shelving discrete programs altogether. Not being the flagship EA organization’s predominant donor may not be sufficient for getting reputational distance from that sort of thing, but it’s probably a necessary condition.
I wasn’t claiming that this funding change would fix all of OP/GV’s concerns. I assume that would take a great deal of work, among many different projects/initiatives.
One thing I care about is that someone is paid to start thinking about this critically and extensively, and I imagine they’d be more effective if not under the OP umbrella. So one of the early steps to take is just trying to find a system that could help figure out future steps.
> I speculate that other concerns may be about the way certain core programs are run—e.g., I would not be too surprised to hear that OP/GV would rather not have particular controversial content allowed on the Forum, or have advocates for certain political positions admitted to EAGs, or whatever.
I think this raises an important and somewhat awkward point that levels of separation between EA and OP/GV would make it harder for OP/GV to have as much control over these areas, and there are times where they wouldn’t be as happy with the results.
Of course:
1. If this is the case, it implies that the EA community does want some concretely different things, so from the standpoint of the EA community, this would make funding more appealing.
2. I think in the big picture, it seems like OP/GV doesn’t want to be held as responsible for the EA community. Ultimately there’s a conflict here—on one hand, they don’t want to be seen as responsible for the EA community—on the other hand, they might prefer situations where they can have a very large amount of control over the EA community. I hope it can be understood that these two desires can’t easily go together. Perhaps they won’t be willing to compromise on the latter, but also will complain about the former. That might well happen, but I’d hope there could be a better arrangement made.
> OP/GV is usually a pretty responsible funder, so the odds of them suddenly defunding CEA without providing some sort of notice and transitional funding seems low.
I largely agree. That said, if I were CEA, I’d still feel fairly uncomfortable. When the vast majority of your funding comes from any one donor, you’ll need to place a whole lot of trust in them.
I’d imagine that if I were working within CEA, I’d be incredibly precautious not to upset OP or GV. I’d also imagine this to mess with my epistemics/communication/actions.
Also, of course, I’d flag that the world can change quickly. Maybe Trump will go on a push against EA one day, and put OP in an awkward spot, for example.