Due to an increase in the number of high-quality applications, we believe that grants from Open Philanthropy will be crucial for making sure that all sufficiently impactful projects in the EA infrastructure space can be funded. However, if grantseekers received funding from both Open Philanthropy and the EAIF, this could result in a total grant larger than deliberately chosen by Open Philanthropy. It could also duplicate effort between the funders, and grants to larger organizations tend to be outside our wheelhouse.
On the other hand, grantees with large budgets would ideally be supported by multiple funders, each contributing roughly ‘their fair share’.
Our tentative policy for responding to this challenge is to adopt a heuristic: by default, the EAIF will not fund organizations that are Open Philanthropy grantees and that plan to apply for renewed funding from Open Philanthropy in the future.
However, we will consider exceptions: if your organization is an Open Philanthropy grantee, please explain in your EAIF application why your funding request can’t be covered by past or future Open Philanthropy grants. Valid reasons can include unanticipated and time-sensitive opportunities that require a small-to-medium grant with a fast turnaround, or funding requests restricted to a different purpose than the activities supported by Open Philanthropy.
It seems like it would be better to decide this more on an individual basis (beyond the exceptions), depending on the exact reasons why Open Phil didn’t fund them further, which you could ask them for (assuming this doesn’t take too much of everyone’s time). Besides only wanting to contribute ‘their fair share’ (donor coordination), they may also want to reduce (direct) dependence on Open Phil and have others vet these opportunities semi-independently. The organizations for which those were the only reasons Open Phil didn’t fund them more are plausibly the best ones to donate marginal funds to even after Open Phil grants, and ruling them out could mean individual donors can do better by donating to them than to the EAIF. Of course, Open Phil also might not be aware of many of EAIF’s grantees at all (or able to donate to them for various reasons), or Open Phil could make wrong decisions to not fund EAIF grantees it was aware of, so EAIF could therefore beat Open Phil by funding them.
Is the different treatment here primarily because “grants to larger organizations tend to be outside our wheelhouse”? It seems like Open Phil should be less hesitant to fully fund these, because
small EA donors are less likely to notice these opportunities,
there’s no public support test to maintain charitable status (it’s not a charity at all), and
leaving room for more funding here so that others have to re-vet many small opportunities is less efficient than having others re-vet fewer large opportunities.
I think that coordination costs are high, and this is a reasonable way to shortcut the problem by publicly telling Open Phil not to rely on EAIF to top up grants. If that should be changed for some reason, Open Phil can tell EAIF directly.
I’d guess that individual donors planning to support the EAIF should top up Open Phil grantees, either with or instead of donating to the EAIF.
Based on the argument here by Ben Todd, I think individual donors who donate to Open Phil grantees do at least as good as both Open Phil and the EAIF, if all of the following assumptions hold:
Open Phil’s judgement is sufficiently good,
The reason Open Phil doesn’t fund EAIF grantees directly is because Open Phil believes them to be less cost-effective on the margin than its own direct grantees, so, at least,
not just due to legal reasons,
not just due to falling outside the scope of all of their grantmaking areas,
not just because Open Phil tends to avoid small grants of the size the EAIF makes, and
not just because Open Phil was unaware of them, and
not due to any combination of the above.
Open Phil’s grant sizes are sufficiently sensitive in the right way to how much funding its grantees get.
Basically, under these assumptions, Open Phil grantees are either most cost-effective on the margin and in expectation, or Open Phil responds by granting less to those grantees and spending that funding on the next best marginal opportunities, which may include the EAIF itself. If Open Phil thought another dollar to EAIF would have been better than the last dollar to one of its other grantees, it would have granted that dollar to the EAIF instead, and vice versa. The “vice versa”, that EAIF is at least as good on the margin as Open Phil’s last dollar to its other grantees, seems to contradict the conjunction of 1 (Open Phil’s judgement) and 2 (Open Phil believes EAIF grantees are less cost-effective than Open Phil grantees).
So, under these same assumptions, individual donors who donate to the EAIF risk doing worse than Open Phil, since the EAIF has ruled out contributing to opportunities that are better in expectation than their actual EAIF grantees.
All of the above assumptions seem plausibly wrong. That being said, Open Phil could in principle avoid subpoints 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 by just deferring more of its grantmaking to the EAIF.
Note that this doesn’t require the EAIF managers to have worse judgement than Open Phil. The point is that Open Phil starts with the most promising opportunities it can, and the EAIF does not. You could think of Open Phil and the EAIF as one organization, and you can do better by topping up the best opportunities for which they left room for other donors than by adding to the marginal opportunities.
It seems like it would be better to decide this more on an individual basis (beyond the exceptions), depending on the exact reasons why Open Phil didn’t fund them further, which you could ask them for (assuming this doesn’t take too much of everyone’s time). Besides only wanting to contribute ‘their fair share’ (donor coordination), they may also want to reduce (direct) dependence on Open Phil and have others vet these opportunities semi-independently. The organizations for which those were the only reasons Open Phil didn’t fund them more are plausibly the best ones to donate marginal funds to even after Open Phil grants, and ruling them out could mean individual donors can do better by donating to them than to the EAIF. Of course, Open Phil also might not be aware of many of EAIF’s grantees at all (or able to donate to them for various reasons), or Open Phil could make wrong decisions to not fund EAIF grantees it was aware of, so EAIF could therefore beat Open Phil by funding them.
Is the different treatment here primarily because “grants to larger organizations tend to be outside our wheelhouse”? It seems like Open Phil should be less hesitant to fully fund these, because
small EA donors are less likely to notice these opportunities,
there’s no public support test to maintain charitable status (it’s not a charity at all), and
leaving room for more funding here so that others have to re-vet many small opportunities is less efficient than having others re-vet fewer large opportunities.
I think that coordination costs are high, and this is a reasonable way to shortcut the problem by publicly telling Open Phil not to rely on EAIF to top up grants. If that should be changed for some reason, Open Phil can tell EAIF directly.
I’d guess that individual donors planning to support the EAIF should top up Open Phil grantees, either with or instead of donating to the EAIF.
Based on the argument here by Ben Todd, I think individual donors who donate to Open Phil grantees do at least as good as both Open Phil and the EAIF, if all of the following assumptions hold:
Open Phil’s judgement is sufficiently good,
The reason Open Phil doesn’t fund EAIF grantees directly is because Open Phil believes them to be less cost-effective on the margin than its own direct grantees, so, at least,
not just due to legal reasons,
not just due to falling outside the scope of all of their grantmaking areas,
not just because Open Phil tends to avoid small grants of the size the EAIF makes, and
not just because Open Phil was unaware of them, and
not due to any combination of the above.
Open Phil’s grant sizes are sufficiently sensitive in the right way to how much funding its grantees get.
Basically, under these assumptions, Open Phil grantees are either most cost-effective on the margin and in expectation, or Open Phil responds by granting less to those grantees and spending that funding on the next best marginal opportunities, which may include the EAIF itself. If Open Phil thought another dollar to EAIF would have been better than the last dollar to one of its other grantees, it would have granted that dollar to the EAIF instead, and vice versa. The “vice versa”, that EAIF is at least as good on the margin as Open Phil’s last dollar to its other grantees, seems to contradict the conjunction of 1 (Open Phil’s judgement) and 2 (Open Phil believes EAIF grantees are less cost-effective than Open Phil grantees).
So, under these same assumptions, individual donors who donate to the EAIF risk doing worse than Open Phil, since the EAIF has ruled out contributing to opportunities that are better in expectation than their actual EAIF grantees.
All of the above assumptions seem plausibly wrong. That being said, Open Phil could in principle avoid subpoints 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 by just deferring more of its grantmaking to the EAIF.
Note that this doesn’t require the EAIF managers to have worse judgement than Open Phil. The point is that Open Phil starts with the most promising opportunities it can, and the EAIF does not. You could think of Open Phil and the EAIF as one organization, and you can do better by topping up the best opportunities for which they left room for other donors than by adding to the marginal opportunities.