I’d add that even if these organizations are already very well funded from Open Phil and the EA Animal Welfare Fund, there still is a lot of value in getting additional donations from other donors...
`1.) diversity of donations is generally important for organizational health, to avoid overreliance on any one funder and to provide more independence from intentional or unintentional pressures from that funder. (That being said, for some organizations, having pressure from these funders is a really good thing, as many times I trust the strategy of these funders more than the strategy of these organizations.)
2.) if you trust an organization and its leadership and are not personally as constrained (say by cause area or mission or need to justify decisions) as the big funders, providing fully unrestricted funding can be much more valuable to the organization per dollar than money received from large institutions in allowing them to try new initiatives, etc. (Though of course you would want to understand more about why these large funders aren’t also funding these new initiatives or other ideas.)
3.) some large funders are capped in the amount of a budget they are willing to be for an organization (say max 50%) and it can be much harder to get the other part. By providing money to an organization, you may be unlocking more funding from these larger funders due to the cap. (Though as far as I know the “max 50%” thing is no longer true for Open Phil or any of the EA Funds and I think these funders are much more comfortable now funding very large portions of a budget. However I think this factor still exists to some degree.)
4.) it can be a useful signal to larger funders that individual donors trust the organization enough to support it
I’d add that even if these organizations are already very well funded from Open Phil and the EA Animal Welfare Fund, there still is a lot of value in getting additional donations from other donors...
`1.) diversity of donations is generally important for organizational health, to avoid overreliance on any one funder and to provide more independence from intentional or unintentional pressures from that funder. (That being said, for some organizations, having pressure from these funders is a really good thing, as many times I trust the strategy of these funders more than the strategy of these organizations.)
2.) if you trust an organization and its leadership and are not personally as constrained (say by cause area or mission or need to justify decisions) as the big funders, providing fully unrestricted funding can be much more valuable to the organization per dollar than money received from large institutions in allowing them to try new initiatives, etc. (Though of course you would want to understand more about why these large funders aren’t also funding these new initiatives or other ideas.)
3.) some large funders are capped in the amount of a budget they are willing to be for an organization (say max 50%) and it can be much harder to get the other part. By providing money to an organization, you may be unlocking more funding from these larger funders due to the cap. (Though as far as I know the “max 50%” thing is no longer true for Open Phil or any of the EA Funds and I think these funders are much more comfortable now funding very large portions of a budget. However I think this factor still exists to some degree.)
4.) it can be a useful signal to larger funders that individual donors trust the organization enough to support it