We (Founders Pledge) do have a significant presence in SF, and are actively trying to grow much faster in the U.S. in 2024.
A couple weakly held takes here, based on my experience:
Although it’s true that issues around effective giving are much more salient in the Bay Area, it’s also the case that effective giving is nearly as much of an uphill battle with SF philanthropists as with others. People do still have pet causes, and there are many particularities about the U.S. philanthropic ecosystem that sometimes push against individuals’ willingness to take the main points of effective giving on board.
Relatedly, growing in SF seems in part to be hard essentially because of competition. There’s a lot of money and philanthropic intent, and a fair number of existing organizations (and philanthropic advisors, etc) that are focused on capturing that money and guiding that philanthropy. So we do face the challenge of getting in front of people, getting enough of their time, etc.
Since FP has historically offered mostly free services to members, growing our network in SF is something we actually need to fundraise for. On the margin I believe it’s worthwhile, given the large number of potentially aligned UHNWs, but it’s the kind of investment (in this case, in Founders Pledge by its funders) that would likely take a couple years to bear fruit in terms of increased amounts of giving to effective charities. I expect this is also a consideration for other existing groups that are thinking about raising money for a Bay Area expansion.
It’s great that you have a presence in SF and are trying to grow it substantially in 2024! That said, I’m a bit confused about what Founders’ Pledge does; in particular how much I should be thinking about Founders’ Pledge as a fairly GCR-motivated organization vs more of a “broad tent” org more akin to Giving What We Can or even the Giving Pledge. In particular, here are the totals when I look at your publicly-listed funds:
Climate Change ($9.1M)
Global Catastrophic Risks ($5.3M in 7 grants)
$3M of which went to NTI in October 2023. Congrats on the large recent grant btw!
Global Health and Development ($1.3M)
Patient Philanthropy Fund (~0)
Though to be fair that’s roughly what I’d expect from a patient fund.
From a GCR/longtermist/x-risk focused perspective, I’m rather confused about how to reconcile the following considerations for inputs vs outputs:
~$10B(!) donations pledged, according to your website.
~$1B moved to charitable sector
<20M total donations tracked publicly
<10 total grants made (which is maybe ~1.5-2 OOMs lower than say EA Funds)
Presumably you do great work, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to get funding and/or reasonable hires. But I’m confused about what your organizational mandate and/or planned path-to-impact is. Possibilities:
You have a broad tent strategy aiming for greater philanthropic involvement of startup founders in general, not a narrow focus on locally high-impact donations
Founders’ Pledge sees itself as primarily a research org with a philanthropic arm attached, not primarily a philanthropic fund that also does some research to guide giving
A very large fraction of your money moved to impactful charities is private/”behind the scenes”, so your public funds are a very poor proxy for your actual impact.
Easily reconciled — most of our money moved is via advising our members. These grants are in large part not public, and members also grant to many organizations that they choose irrespective of our recommendations. We provide the infrastructure to enable this.
The Funds are a relatively recent development, and indeed some of the grants listed on the current Fund pages were actually advised by the fund managers, not granted directly from money contributed to the Fund (this is noted on the website if it’s the case for each grant). Ideally, we’d be able to grow the Funds a lot more so that we can do much more active grantmaking, and at the same time continue to advise members on effective giving.
My team (11 people at the moment) does generalist research across worldviews — animal welfare, longtermism/GCRs, and global health and development. We also have a climate vertical, as you note, which I characterize in more detail in this previous forum comment.
EDIT:
Realized I didn’t address your final question. I think we are a mix, basically — we are enabling successful entrepreneurs to give, period (in fact, we are committing them to do so via a legally binding pledge), and we are trying to influence as much of their giving as possible toward the most effective possible things. It is probably more accurate to represent FP as having a research arm, simply given staff proportions, but equally accurate to describe our recommendations as being “research-driven.”
We (Founders Pledge) do have a significant presence in SF, and are actively trying to grow much faster in the U.S. in 2024.
A couple weakly held takes here, based on my experience:
Although it’s true that issues around effective giving are much more salient in the Bay Area, it’s also the case that effective giving is nearly as much of an uphill battle with SF philanthropists as with others. People do still have pet causes, and there are many particularities about the U.S. philanthropic ecosystem that sometimes push against individuals’ willingness to take the main points of effective giving on board.
Relatedly, growing in SF seems in part to be hard essentially because of competition. There’s a lot of money and philanthropic intent, and a fair number of existing organizations (and philanthropic advisors, etc) that are focused on capturing that money and guiding that philanthropy. So we do face the challenge of getting in front of people, getting enough of their time, etc.
Since FP has historically offered mostly free services to members, growing our network in SF is something we actually need to fundraise for. On the margin I believe it’s worthwhile, given the large number of potentially aligned UHNWs, but it’s the kind of investment (in this case, in Founders Pledge by its funders) that would likely take a couple years to bear fruit in terms of increased amounts of giving to effective charities. I expect this is also a consideration for other existing groups that are thinking about raising money for a Bay Area expansion.
It’s great that you have a presence in SF and are trying to grow it substantially in 2024! That said, I’m a bit confused about what Founders’ Pledge does; in particular how much I should be thinking about Founders’ Pledge as a fairly GCR-motivated organization vs more of a “broad tent” org more akin to Giving What We Can or even the Giving Pledge. In particular, here are the totals when I look at your publicly-listed funds:
Climate Change ($9.1M)
Global Catastrophic Risks ($5.3M in 7 grants)
$3M of which went to NTI in October 2023. Congrats on the large recent grant btw!
Global Health and Development ($1.3M)
Patient Philanthropy Fund (~0)
Though to be fair that’s roughly what I’d expect from a patient fund.
From a GCR/longtermist/x-risk focused perspective, I’m rather confused about how to reconcile the following considerations for inputs vs outputs:
Founders’ Pledge being around for ~7 years.
Founders’ Pledge having ~50 employees on your website (though I don’t know how many FTEs, maybe only 20-30?)
~$10B(!) donations pledged, according to your website.
~$1B moved to charitable sector
<20M total donations tracked publicly
<10 total grants made (which is maybe ~1.5-2 OOMs lower than say EA Funds)
Presumably you do great work, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to get funding and/or reasonable hires. But I’m confused about what your organizational mandate and/or planned path-to-impact is. Possibilities:
You have a broad tent strategy aiming for greater philanthropic involvement of startup founders in general, not a narrow focus on locally high-impact donations
Founders’ Pledge sees itself as primarily a research org with a philanthropic arm attached, not primarily a philanthropic fund that also does some research to guide giving
A very large fraction of your money moved to impactful charities is private/”behind the scenes”, so your public funds are a very poor proxy for your actual impact.
Some other reason that I haven’t thought of.
Easily reconciled — most of our money moved is via advising our members. These grants are in large part not public, and members also grant to many organizations that they choose irrespective of our recommendations. We provide the infrastructure to enable this.
The Funds are a relatively recent development, and indeed some of the grants listed on the current Fund pages were actually advised by the fund managers, not granted directly from money contributed to the Fund (this is noted on the website if it’s the case for each grant). Ideally, we’d be able to grow the Funds a lot more so that we can do much more active grantmaking, and at the same time continue to advise members on effective giving.
My team (11 people at the moment) does generalist research across worldviews — animal welfare, longtermism/GCRs, and global health and development. We also have a climate vertical, as you note, which I characterize in more detail in this previous forum comment.
EDIT:
Realized I didn’t address your final question. I think we are a mix, basically — we are enabling successful entrepreneurs to give, period (in fact, we are committing them to do so via a legally binding pledge), and we are trying to influence as much of their giving as possible toward the most effective possible things. It is probably more accurate to represent FP as having a research arm, simply given staff proportions, but equally accurate to describe our recommendations as being “research-driven.”