Even for the subset of EA Funds spending that is public[1], 3⁄4 funds (1,2,3) haven’t published a grant report for roughly the past year. ETA: This is incorrect/misleading. EA Funds isn’t publishing grant reports anymore because they now have a public grant database. I support this change and regret the error.
ETA: The potential for conflicts of interest with intra-EVF grantmaking isn’t a problem I’d previously thought about here, but seems like an additional reason why EA Funds should not be making secret grants (or at least, why it should commit to not making secret grants within EVF).
I take a more middling approach—I don’t think incompletely disclosed funding is bad per se, but it needs some clear and published guardrails, such as:
(1) This isn’t the CIA budget; one should be able to share some information (even: “mental health support for an individual EA -- $5,000”). For instance, for an applicant who is concerned about future job prospects, it should usually be possible to release most of the typical information other than the grantee’s name or other potentially identifying information.
(2) I get the need for sometimes using more relaxed conflict-of-interest standards in a smaller community, but the standards should be considerably tighter in evaluating an grant with an undisclosed recipient.
(3) At a certain dollar amount, there needs to be an explicit finding that either (1) enough information can be disclosed to adequately achieve the goals of transparency and accountability; or (2) the reasons for the grant are compelling enough to justify the transparency/accountability costs. In other words, past that dollar amount, there should be an explicit recognition that the bar is higher for minimal-disclosure funding than it is for disclosed funding. That is maybe, sorta implied by EA Funds’ statements;
(4) There probably should be a cap on the amount that a minimal-disclosure grantee can receive, and a cap on the percentage of monies that can go to minimal-disclosure grants.
I note that US charities must disclose organizations—but not individuals—receiving over $5,000 in grants on their Form 990 schedules. And grants over 25K pounds (at least to organizations) are disclosed in the Trustees’ Statement and Financial Statements filed with the UK Charity Commission.
I agree that all of the guardrails you suggest—especially (1) -- would make me pro tanto less opposed to EA Funds making secret grants. I think I might still be opposed on net to them keeping grants secret from their donors, even given all of these guardrails, given the way they continue to be recommended as “default giving options” for members of the community.
How about disclosure of more information about low-information grants to a jury of somewhat randomly selected donor-jurors who have signed an NDA but can vote on whether (1) the grant was reasonable (not a de novo reconsideration of the grant), and (2) the limitations on release of public information were reasonable under the circumstances? There would need to be an advanced commitment to publish those vote totals. The idea is that while there isn’t disclosure to every donor, there is disclosure to a representative sample, and the votes provide a significant fraction of the information that direct disclosure would. Plus they would provide a check on fund managers making secret decisions without accountability to donors.
In many cases, the names or details of individuals should not be revealed to the jurors, and I think a jury would only be potentially appropriate and resource-effective for somewhat larger grants. I’d also let the grantee strike a few names off the draft juror list to avoid disclosure to anyone in their circle. It doesn’t seem too time consuming, as the jury would presumably only be reading the information that would have otherwise been published (and perhaps with some redaction).
The “default giving option” point really depends for me on what percentage of grants (by dollar amount) are undisclosed.
I’m concerned that allowing grants to people whose names are not exposed even to your suggested jury risks giving grants to known bad actors (either because their history is unknown to the grantmakers, or because the grantmakers don’t care when the donors still might).
Right, it’s a tradeoff. You could establish rules for when a name could be withheld from the jury to manage that risk. But I’m crediting, in the absence of reason to disbelieve, the managers’ view that there are sometimes sufficient reasons to shatply limit disclosure of some grantees’ identity.
I think something like this would again be a significant step in the right direction. (& I appreciate your creative effort to come up with constructive solutions, here & in your previous comment!)
I’m less excited about your second paragraph, though. For the jury to have the effect I would want, I’d want them to be able to scrutinise small grants to individuals.
Not opposed to a lower threshold—that would depend in significant part on how much staff, grantee, and donor time this process took. I’d probably start with a more significant threshold, then consider lowering it after a year based on lessons learned. Another option to potentially reduce costs would be having a random sample of microgrants go to jury.
Also, I didn’t mean to suggest that grants to individuals should avoid scrutiny, only that there’s a stronger argument for not identifying them by name or other personally-identifying information in many cases, even to the jury. I guess I would need to know the universe of what people had received unpublished grants for to have a more informed opinion on that.
This is, alas, false.
Even for the subset of EA Funds spending that is public[1], 3⁄4 funds (1,2,3) haven’t published a grant report for roughly the past year. ETA: This is incorrect/misleading. EA Funds isn’t publishing grant reports anymore because they now have a public grant database. I support this change and regret the error.ETA: The potential for conflicts of interest with intra-EVF grantmaking isn’t a problem I’d previously thought about here, but seems like an additional reason why EA Funds should not be making secret grants (or at least, why it should commit to not making secret grants within EVF).
I believe the exact proportion that is public vs secret has not been disclosed, though would be happy to learn I was wrong about that.
I take a more middling approach—I don’t think incompletely disclosed funding is bad per se, but it needs some clear and published guardrails, such as:
(1) This isn’t the CIA budget; one should be able to share some information (even: “mental health support for an individual EA -- $5,000”). For instance, for an applicant who is concerned about future job prospects, it should usually be possible to release most of the typical information other than the grantee’s name or other potentially identifying information.
(2) I get the need for sometimes using more relaxed conflict-of-interest standards in a smaller community, but the standards should be considerably tighter in evaluating an grant with an undisclosed recipient.
(3) At a certain dollar amount, there needs to be an explicit finding that either (1) enough information can be disclosed to adequately achieve the goals of transparency and accountability; or (2) the reasons for the grant are compelling enough to justify the transparency/accountability costs. In other words, past that dollar amount, there should be an explicit recognition that the bar is higher for minimal-disclosure funding than it is for disclosed funding. That is maybe, sorta implied by EA Funds’ statements;
(4) There probably should be a cap on the amount that a minimal-disclosure grantee can receive, and a cap on the percentage of monies that can go to minimal-disclosure grants.
I note that US charities must disclose organizations—but not individuals—receiving over $5,000 in grants on their Form 990 schedules. And grants over 25K pounds (at least to organizations) are disclosed in the Trustees’ Statement and Financial Statements filed with the UK Charity Commission.
I agree that all of the guardrails you suggest—especially (1) -- would make me pro tanto less opposed to EA Funds making secret grants. I think I might still be opposed on net to them keeping grants secret from their donors, even given all of these guardrails, given the way they continue to be recommended as “default giving options” for members of the community.
How about disclosure of more information about low-information grants to a jury of somewhat randomly selected donor-jurors who have signed an NDA but can vote on whether (1) the grant was reasonable (not a de novo reconsideration of the grant), and (2) the limitations on release of public information were reasonable under the circumstances? There would need to be an advanced commitment to publish those vote totals. The idea is that while there isn’t disclosure to every donor, there is disclosure to a representative sample, and the votes provide a significant fraction of the information that direct disclosure would. Plus they would provide a check on fund managers making secret decisions without accountability to donors.
In many cases, the names or details of individuals should not be revealed to the jurors, and I think a jury would only be potentially appropriate and resource-effective for somewhat larger grants. I’d also let the grantee strike a few names off the draft juror list to avoid disclosure to anyone in their circle. It doesn’t seem too time consuming, as the jury would presumably only be reading the information that would have otherwise been published (and perhaps with some redaction).
The “default giving option” point really depends for me on what percentage of grants (by dollar amount) are undisclosed.
I’m concerned that allowing grants to people whose names are not exposed even to your suggested jury risks giving grants to known bad actors (either because their history is unknown to the grantmakers, or because the grantmakers don’t care when the donors still might).
Right, it’s a tradeoff. You could establish rules for when a name could be withheld from the jury to manage that risk. But I’m crediting, in the absence of reason to disbelieve, the managers’ view that there are sometimes sufficient reasons to shatply limit disclosure of some grantees’ identity.
I guess I’m just less trusting than you, and I think this ability would be used exactly in the kind of situation I describe.
I think something like this would again be a significant step in the right direction. (& I appreciate your creative effort to come up with constructive solutions, here & in your previous comment!)
I’m less excited about your second paragraph, though. For the jury to have the effect I would want, I’d want them to be able to scrutinise small grants to individuals.
Not opposed to a lower threshold—that would depend in significant part on how much staff, grantee, and donor time this process took. I’d probably start with a more significant threshold, then consider lowering it after a year based on lessons learned. Another option to potentially reduce costs would be having a random sample of microgrants go to jury.
Also, I didn’t mean to suggest that grants to individuals should avoid scrutiny, only that there’s a stronger argument for not identifying them by name or other personally-identifying information in many cases, even to the jury. I guess I would need to know the universe of what people had received unpublished grants for to have a more informed opinion on that.
Good catch, thank you. EVF/EA Funds asks a huge amount of trust from their donors. I don’t think I would recommend donating to them.