Hi Ludwig, thanks for raising some of these issues around governance. I work on the research team at Giving What We Can, and I’m responding here specifically to the claims relating to our work. There are a few factual errors in your post, and other areas I’d like to add additional context on. I’ll touch on:
Our recommendations (we do disclosure conflicts of interest).
The Longtermism Fund specifically (payout reports are about to be published).
Our relationship with EVF (we set our own strategy, independently fundraise, and have little to do with most organisations under EVF).
#1 Recommendations
With respect to our recommendations: They are determined by our inclusion criteria which we regularly link to (for example, on our recommended charities page and on every charity page). As outlined in our inclusion criteria, we rely on our trusted evaluators to determine our giving recommendations. Longview Philanthropy and EA Funds are two of the five trusted evaluators we relied on this giving season. We explicitly outline our conflict of interests with both organisations in our trusted evaluators page.
We want to provide the best possible giving recommendations to our donors. Unfortunately, given we are very connected to the effective giving ecosystem — and as you highlighted, part of EVF — this is regularly in tension with avoiding conflicts of interest. We did our best this giving season to highlight these conflicts, and justify why we chose the evaluators we did, but we want to do better next year (we touch on this in our most recent announcement of our new research direction).
#2 The Longtermism Fund
The fund will disclose all of its spending in regular payout reports. Its first report will be released shortly (by the end of today! It’s been in production over the past weeks).
As shared in our announcement of the fund, the fund is a collaboration between Giving What We Can and Longview. We (GWWC) are responsible for the communications around the fund; Longview are responsible for the grantmaking and research.
Giving What We Can initially helped create EVF’s predecessor (CEA) back in 2011, alongside 80,000 Hours — read more about its history here. In short, EVF currently provides GWWC with:
Operational support (e.g., finance, legal, HR) via EV Ops.
Board of Trustees (of which each organisation has historical had its own “Active Trustee” who has worked closely with the respective organisation’s leader on strategy and management).
Shared privacy policy (this facilitates a single sign-on for GWWC, EA Forum and EA Global).
Some limited shared communications and facilities (e.g., some shared Slack channels, Notion spaces, and access to Trajan House—though nobody at GWWC currently uses this).
Importantly, GWWC independently:
Fundraises for its core expenses (i.e., we independently seek funding to pay for our staff and costs).
Sets its own strategy (we work as a team consulting GWWC members and other stakeholders to decide how we can have the most impact), does its own hiring, etc. See our most recent strategy update where we were seeking community feedback on our plans.
Independently choose its approach to giving recommendations — we receive no benefit for recommending organisations within EVF; historically, we err on the side of avoiding this due to perceived/potential conflicts of interest).
thanks for the thorough reply! I apologize for not contacting you for comment before publishing this post.
You’re right, GWWC mentions conflicts of interest on the other page. Sorry for overlooking that and misrepresenting the facts. I don’t believe the organizations actively hide their relationship. I’d like to see it mentioned more prominently anyways.
I’m looking forward to the Longtermism Fund’s report, glad to hear that it’s coming!
On governance/independence: I don’t believe GWWC is currently facing significant pressures to act against the best interest of the community, but I’m not convinced it’s well-enough protected for that to stay the case.
Overall, your answer makes me trust GWWC and EVF a fair bit more!
Really appreciated this comment. Several valuable updates for me here.
Board of Trustees (of which each organisation has historical had its own “Active Trustee” who has worked closely with the respective organisation’s leader on strategy and management).
Not claiming it’s your responsibility to do this, but if one thing that came out of this was EV writing more publicly about its governance structures, including this “active trustee” structure, that seems like a pretty great outcome to me.
Regarding independence of GWWC: employees working in e.g. CEA have no influence over the hiring in GWWC, and vice versa; but ultimately all sub-orgs are accountable, including in hiring decisions, to the same 5-person board of trustees. Is that correct?
Regarding recommendations: correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand your description (and from a brief look at the recommendations page), the conflict of interest is not disclosed on the recommendations page, but rather somewhere else on the site that’s not straightforwardly visible when looking at the recommendations. Why should this be the case?
Hey Michael, thanks for the information. Five follow-up questions (I’d be interested to hear the answers from any of EV’s other suborganisations if anyone from them is reading):
What are the main sources of your funding?
Would you consider making the main sources public, subject to their being willing (as eg Vox Future Perfect does), and if not, why not?
Same questions to you as to Peter Wildeford, above—what barriers would there be to receiving some or all operational support as a service from a legally unconnected org?
Would those barriers differ if it was a paid service, vs if they were a donor-funded nonprofit themselves?
What is your estimation for the net annual cost of overcoming such barriers, and would you expect that cost to scale with org size, be fixed, or somewhere in between?
Per our transparency page we are “funded through a combination of direct donations from members and other individuals, as well as grants from philanthropic foundations. So far our largest funders have been Open Philanthropy and the Future Fund.”
Would you consider making the main sources public, subject to their being willing (as eg Vox Future Perfect does), and if not, why not?
Yes, they are public on our transparency page and FAQ
What barriers would there be to receiving some or all operational support as a service from a legally unconnected org?
The main service we receive is finance support (reconciling donations, selling shares that are donated, regranting to other organisations etc). We could contract some of that (e.g. bookkeeping) but because we are the same legal entity it makes sense to be done together. If we were to spin off (become a different legal entity) we’d need to set up a new charity in both the UK and USA (not a small feat) cancel and restart all recurring donations and bequests etc (which we’re bound to lose people – especially bequests could be risky), transfer all contacts (huge privacy considerations) and IP, and do a lot of stakeholder management. There are other potential models here (e.g. start another nonprofit for the core operations but still use EVF as a fiscal sponsor for regranting in the US and UK) but I’d estimate many versions of this would put us back ~1-2 years at this stage in terms of potential growth and distraction from our core focus. I’m not against making steps in this direction (as I said in my original comment it’s something I’m thinking about) but I think that the complexity and distraction is severely underrated by the OP and many commenters.
Thanks for the reply, Luke. Is it reasonable to understand that if you were to start up a new GWWC-esque charity as an independent entity vs starting one as a new branch of EV, you’d expect the difference in costs primarily to be the extra work of gaining charitable status in whatever regions you needed it?
Hi Ludwig, thanks for raising some of these issues around governance. I work on the research team at Giving What We Can, and I’m responding here specifically to the claims relating to our work. There are a few factual errors in your post, and other areas I’d like to add additional context on. I’ll touch on:
Our recommendations (we do disclosure conflicts of interest).
The Longtermism Fund specifically (payout reports are about to be published).
Our relationship with EVF (we set our own strategy, independently fundraise, and have little to do with most organisations under EVF).
#1 Recommendations
With respect to our recommendations: They are determined by our inclusion criteria which we regularly link to (for example, on our recommended charities page and on every charity page). As outlined in our inclusion criteria, we rely on our trusted evaluators to determine our giving recommendations. Longview Philanthropy and EA Funds are two of the five trusted evaluators we relied on this giving season. We explicitly outline our conflict of interests with both organisations in our trusted evaluators page.
We want to provide the best possible giving recommendations to our donors. Unfortunately, given we are very connected to the effective giving ecosystem — and as you highlighted, part of EVF — this is regularly in tension with avoiding conflicts of interest. We did our best this giving season to highlight these conflicts, and justify why we chose the evaluators we did, but we want to do better next year (we touch on this in our most recent announcement of our new research direction).
#2 The Longtermism Fund
The fund will disclose all of its spending in regular payout reports. Its first report will be released shortly (by the end of today! It’s been in production over the past weeks).
As shared in our announcement of the fund, the fund is a collaboration between Giving What We Can and Longview. We (GWWC) are responsible for the communications around the fund; Longview are responsible for the grantmaking and research.
We also publicly committed to sharing reports outlining the funds grants in our announcement of the fund.
#3 Relationship with EVF
Giving What We Can initially helped create EVF’s predecessor (CEA) back in 2011, alongside 80,000 Hours — read more about its history here. In short, EVF currently provides GWWC with:
Operational support (e.g., finance, legal, HR) via EV Ops.
Board of Trustees (of which each organisation has historical had its own “Active Trustee” who has worked closely with the respective organisation’s leader on strategy and management).
Shared privacy policy (this facilitates a single sign-on for GWWC, EA Forum and EA Global).
Some limited shared communications and facilities (e.g., some shared Slack channels, Notion spaces, and access to Trajan House—though nobody at GWWC currently uses this).
Importantly, GWWC independently:
Fundraises for its core expenses (i.e., we independently seek funding to pay for our staff and costs).
Sets its own strategy (we work as a team consulting GWWC members and other stakeholders to decide how we can have the most impact), does its own hiring, etc. See our most recent strategy update where we were seeking community feedback on our plans.
Independently choose its approach to giving recommendations — we receive no benefit for recommending organisations within EVF; historically, we err on the side of avoiding this due to perceived/potential conflicts of interest).
Happy to clarify any of the above.
Hello Michael,
thanks for the thorough reply! I apologize for not contacting you for comment before publishing this post.
You’re right, GWWC mentions conflicts of interest on the other page. Sorry for overlooking that and misrepresenting the facts. I don’t believe the organizations actively hide their relationship. I’d like to see it mentioned more prominently anyways.
I’m looking forward to the Longtermism Fund’s report, glad to hear that it’s coming!
On governance/independence: I don’t believe GWWC is currently facing significant pressures to act against the best interest of the community, but I’m not convinced it’s well-enough protected for that to stay the case.
Overall, your answer makes me trust GWWC and EVF a fair bit more!
Really appreciated this comment. Several valuable updates for me here.
Not claiming it’s your responsibility to do this, but if one thing that came out of this was EV writing more publicly about its governance structures, including this “active trustee” structure, that seems like a pretty great outcome to me.
Regarding independence of GWWC: employees working in e.g. CEA have no influence over the hiring in GWWC, and vice versa; but ultimately all sub-orgs are accountable, including in hiring decisions, to the same 5-person board of trustees. Is that correct?
Regarding recommendations: correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand your description (and from a brief look at the recommendations page), the conflict of interest is not disclosed on the recommendations page, but rather somewhere else on the site that’s not straightforwardly visible when looking at the recommendations. Why should this be the case?
Hey Michael, thanks for the information. Five follow-up questions (I’d be interested to hear the answers from any of EV’s other suborganisations if anyone from them is reading):
What are the main sources of your funding?
Would you consider making the main sources public, subject to their being willing (as eg Vox Future Perfect does), and if not, why not?
Same questions to you as to Peter Wildeford, above—what barriers would there be to receiving some or all operational support as a service from a legally unconnected org?
Would those barriers differ if it was a paid service, vs if they were a donor-funded nonprofit themselves?
What is your estimation for the net annual cost of overcoming such barriers, and would you expect that cost to scale with org size, be fixed, or somewhere in between?
What are the main sources of your funding?
Per our transparency page we are “funded through a combination of direct donations from members and other individuals, as well as grants from philanthropic foundations. So far our largest funders have been Open Philanthropy and the Future Fund.”
Would you consider making the main sources public, subject to their being willing (as eg Vox Future Perfect does), and if not, why not?
Yes, they are public on our transparency page and FAQ
What barriers would there be to receiving some or all operational support as a service from a legally unconnected org?
The main service we receive is finance support (reconciling donations, selling shares that are donated, regranting to other organisations etc). We could contract some of that (e.g. bookkeeping) but because we are the same legal entity it makes sense to be done together. If we were to spin off (become a different legal entity) we’d need to set up a new charity in both the UK and USA (not a small feat) cancel and restart all recurring donations and bequests etc (which we’re bound to lose people – especially bequests could be risky), transfer all contacts (huge privacy considerations) and IP, and do a lot of stakeholder management. There are other potential models here (e.g. start another nonprofit for the core operations but still use EVF as a fiscal sponsor for regranting in the US and UK) but I’d estimate many versions of this would put us back ~1-2 years at this stage in terms of potential growth and distraction from our core focus. I’m not against making steps in this direction (as I said in my original comment it’s something I’m thinking about) but I think that the complexity and distraction is severely underrated by the OP and many commenters.
Thanks for the reply, Luke. Is it reasonable to understand that if you were to start up a new GWWC-esque charity as an independent entity vs starting one as a new branch of EV, you’d expect the difference in costs primarily to be the extra work of gaining charitable status in whatever regions you needed it?