That’s their preogative, sure. It is also individuals’ preogative to critique them for that lack of transparency, and to judge the grant on the basis of publicly available information if they wish. (I think when an organization accepts the implied public subsidy that tax-advantaged status provides, it opens itself up to a considerably broader range of scrutiny and criticism than would be fair game without that status.)
I think most people realize there may be grant-specific reasons for a low-transparency approach. There are doubtless cases in which very little information should be disclosed, although I think one could safely disclose more information than this in the vast majority of cases. I think Robert’s bottom-line conclusion that there isn’t much in the response to update with (unless you started with concerns about due dilligence) makes sense. So I think one ultimately has to judge this grant on a combination of publicly available information and one’s priors about OP’s grantmaking skills.
I think when an organization accepts the implied public subsidy that tax-advantaged status provides, it opens itself up to a considerably broader range of scrutiny and criticism than would be fair game without that status.
That’s not where I thought you were going to go with this! If I wrote to a random foundation (ex: Hewlett) and asked why they made a specific grant I think they’d probably decline, and I don’t think there’s any sort of commonly held view that foundations are supposed to be making their evidence and reasoning public in exchange for their tax treatment.
I thought instead you’d say that OP is different because they use the word “open” in their name, initially had a goal of being extremely transparent about their decisions, spun out of GiveWell, cross-pollinate with EA, etc?
I think there are sound practical reasons for OP to be more open-by-default than other foundations. In my view, OP (in conjunction with its financial backers) is the most central animating organization in EA. There are a lot of people who sacrifice a lot for the goals OP is pursuing, and I think having the most central animating organization keep its decisions unnecessarily shrouded in mystery probably hurts community cohesion. But that’s not the reason I think people are entitled to criticize OP here—I think accepting criticism is simply part of the deal when a charity accepts tax-advantaged status.
Another angle, I think, is that the public information on Helena appears to make awarding the grant inconsistent with OP’s stated principles. For instance, if you had a foundation whose stated purpose was to improve the welfare of children, most people would probably look at it funny if it announced a grant to a senior center. Maybe the grant actually serves the foundation’s purposes, but many people wouldn’t be impressed if the hypothetical foundation suggested it was part of a hits-based approach to child welfare with hardly any substantive supporting detail. Given OP’s stated emphasis on effectiveness, and given that Helena appears to be an unusually ineffective charity, that scenario seems somewhat analogous here.
>> OP to be more open-by-default than other foundations
Which foundations do you think are more open than OP? Transparency is a spectrum and OP certainly seems to publish quite a bit. No others have forums dedicated to verbosely tearing apart their grants when they smell weakness.
That said, Open has an oft-forgotten second meaning: OP is open to any cause area in theory. i.e. it is cause neutral.
I think the primary content in ASB’s comment is actually “hits-based”—i.e. this is a grant with a low probability of a big win. To think it is obviously bad, as so many commenters here do, you must have e.g. 90% confidence that the grant won’t result in $5M worth of counterfactual x-risk funding. (I do not have inside information that this was the goal/haven’t talked to ASB about it; it just seems like the right kind of goal for an org focused on “elephant bumping”). Striking this bit out as someone pointed out you might have more rules-based objections to the grant.
Apologies for the snarky language, but I did not mean to disparage the criticisms in the slightest. I think they are quite fine as they are, and do add value (80% confidence). I’m just pointing out that people frequently say there is no scrutiny of OP while engaging in an explicit act of scrutiny.
It’s very true that big philanthropies are surprisingly bad at giving reasons for their grants publicly, and that EA orgs are far better. This is part of the reason I’m a fan of EA philanthropies. The only foundation I know of which writes content reasons for every grant is GiveWell, and besides that very few are more transparent than OP.
I think a reasonable response might be for OpenPhil to not change anything -and list information the same way they do now, but if scrutiny comes like here, then perhaps they could respond in detail. Helena and Atlas I think are the only 2 that have come under the pump recently on the forum—I don’t think moderately in depth and specific replies would be that difficult. There may be on occasions good reasons for not sharing information, then saying that in a reply would be good.
I don’t think that this forum is overly dedicated to verbosely tearing apart grants from OpenPhil. A small percentage of Openphil grants come under scrutiny here, and a lot of respondants to the posters who criticise make efforts to steelman grants. Also just looking at Karma and agreement voting there is more support for defence of OP in the thread than criticism here at least.
As a tiny note—the hits based approach is great no issues there, but with this approach it might be easy and helpful here to outline what the hit would be if successful, and why the org is well placed to potentially (even if low percentage chance) of hitting that home run.
I’m not Nick, but if I were concerned enough about the grant, I would ask if it would be possible to disclose those reasons to a few independent community members under an NDA that allows them to tell the community only whether there were good reasons not to disclose more info, and whether the grant was reasonable in their eyes. That would be cumbersome and only appropriate in fairly rare cases.
I am not personally concerned about this grant very much—I can surmise a plausible and defensible reason for making it that Open Phil would prefer not to disclose, and am OK assuming that was the reason.
“And in general is be interested if there was a format of forum critiques that OP would be most interested in.” I really like this, and feels in the spirit of EA.
I think when an organization accepts the implied public subsidy that tax-advantaged status provides, it opens itself up to a considerably broader range of scrutiny and criticism than would be fair game without that status.
Worth noting that OP’s biosecurity funding comes from a single private individual and is conducted via an LLC, so I don’t think this particular argument works in this particular case.
(To be clear, not trying to say here I agree or disagree with the Helena grant or OP’s approach to transparency on grants—just trying to make this much smaller point)
Can you confirm this is true specifically for biosecurity grants made to 501(c)(3)s like Helena? I know a lot of the biosecurity funding needs to be channeled through for-profit channels because of who the recipients are (or because the transaction is actually an investment vs. a pure grant), but it’s not clear to me why you wouldn’t run a pure grant to a 501(c)(3) through tax-advantaged channels.
I cannot confirm that. Reflecting on what I said, I think I may have misunderstood you at first, and think you have a better point than I first thought.
What Jason has said above is the thrust of my inquiry. If Open Phil said that in weighing the grant impact (as a hits-based grant) the private information they had justified the grant (which is not really what was in the comment on behalf of Open Phil). Then I would accept that as a pragmatic response based on the real world constraints to their grant-making, even if the rationale does not answer my own questions about the grant. I would expect a little more detail about what the grant actually entails, since it is about the least descriptive grant on the website.
It does open up questions about the importance we place on accountability and transparency in regard to norm- and priority-setting within EA and philanthropic giving.
That’s their preogative, sure. It is also individuals’ preogative to critique them for that lack of transparency, and to judge the grant on the basis of publicly available information if they wish. (I think when an organization accepts the implied public subsidy that tax-advantaged status provides, it opens itself up to a considerably broader range of scrutiny and criticism than would be fair game without that status.)
I think most people realize there may be grant-specific reasons for a low-transparency approach. There are doubtless cases in which very little information should be disclosed, although I think one could safely disclose more information than this in the vast majority of cases. I think Robert’s bottom-line conclusion that there isn’t much in the response to update with (unless you started with concerns about due dilligence) makes sense. So I think one ultimately has to judge this grant on a combination of publicly available information and one’s priors about OP’s grantmaking skills.
That’s not where I thought you were going to go with this! If I wrote to a random foundation (ex: Hewlett) and asked why they made a specific grant I think they’d probably decline, and I don’t think there’s any sort of commonly held view that foundations are supposed to be making their evidence and reasoning public in exchange for their tax treatment.
I thought instead you’d say that OP is different because they use the word “open” in their name, initially had a goal of being extremely transparent about their decisions, spun out of GiveWell, cross-pollinate with EA, etc?
I think there are sound practical reasons for OP to be more open-by-default than other foundations. In my view, OP (in conjunction with its financial backers) is the most central animating organization in EA. There are a lot of people who sacrifice a lot for the goals OP is pursuing, and I think having the most central animating organization keep its decisions unnecessarily shrouded in mystery probably hurts community cohesion. But that’s not the reason I think people are entitled to criticize OP here—I think accepting criticism is simply part of the deal when a charity accepts tax-advantaged status.
Another angle, I think, is that the public information on Helena appears to make awarding the grant inconsistent with OP’s stated principles. For instance, if you had a foundation whose stated purpose was to improve the welfare of children, most people would probably look at it funny if it announced a grant to a senior center. Maybe the grant actually serves the foundation’s purposes, but many people wouldn’t be impressed if the hypothetical foundation suggested it was part of a hits-based approach to child welfare with hardly any substantive supporting detail. Given OP’s stated emphasis on effectiveness, and given that Helena appears to be an unusually ineffective charity, that scenario seems somewhat analogous here.
>> OP to be more open-by-default than other foundations
Which foundations do you think are more open than OP? Transparency is a spectrum and OP certainly seems to publish quite a bit. No others have forums dedicated to verbosely tearing apart their grants when they smell weakness.
That said, Open has an oft-forgotten second meaning: OP is open to any cause area in theory. i.e. it is cause neutral.
I think the primary content in ASB’s comment is actually “hits-based”—i.e. this is a grant with a low probability of a big win.
To think it isobviouslybad, as so many commenters here do, you must have e.g. 90% confidence that the grant won’t result in $5M worth of counterfactual x-risk funding. (I do not have inside information that this was the goal/haven’t talked to ASB about it; it just seems like the right kind of goal for an org focused on “elephant bumping”).Striking this bit out as someone pointed out you might have more rules-based objections to the grant.“No others have forums dedicated to verbosely tearing apart their grants when they smell weakness.”
How could people’s input be best framed? Do you think this critique adds any value? I guess it does, so how best to frame it?
Apologies for the snarky language, but I did not mean to disparage the criticisms in the slightest. I think they are quite fine as they are, and do add value (80% confidence). I’m just pointing out that people frequently say there is no scrutiny of OP while engaging in an explicit act of scrutiny.
It’s very true that big philanthropies are surprisingly bad at giving reasons for their grants publicly, and that EA orgs are far better. This is part of the reason I’m a fan of EA philanthropies. The only foundation I know of which writes content reasons for every grant is GiveWell, and besides that very few are more transparent than OP.
I think a reasonable response might be for OpenPhil to not change anything -and list information the same way they do now, but if scrutiny comes like here, then perhaps they could respond in detail. Helena and Atlas I think are the only 2 that have come under the pump recently on the forum—I don’t think moderately in depth and specific replies would be that difficult. There may be on occasions good reasons for not sharing information, then saying that in a reply would be good.
I don’t think that this forum is overly dedicated to verbosely tearing apart grants from OpenPhil. A small percentage of Openphil grants come under scrutiny here, and a lot of respondants to the posters who criticise make efforts to steelman grants. Also just looking at Karma and agreement voting there is more support for defence of OP in the thread than criticism here at least.
As a tiny note—the hits based approach is great no issues there, but with this approach it might be easy and helpful here to outline what the hit would be if successful, and why the org is well placed to potentially (even if low percentage chance) of hitting that home run.
If ASB said “there are good reasons not to provide more details”, would you accept that, or ask for the reasons?
I’m not Nick, but if I were concerned enough about the grant, I would ask if it would be possible to disclose those reasons to a few independent community members under an NDA that allows them to tell the community only whether there were good reasons not to disclose more info, and whether the grant was reasonable in their eyes. That would be cumbersome and only appropriate in fairly rare cases.
I am not personally concerned about this grant very much—I can surmise a plausible and defensible reason for making it that Open Phil would prefer not to disclose, and am OK assuming that was the reason.
Yea that’s reasonable.
Thanks yes i would accept that and what Jason said below would be absolute gold standard.
Great.
And in general is be interested if there was a format of forum critiques that OP would be most interested in.
Also, for Nuno I’ll ask when OP gonna let us bet against them.
“And in general is be interested if there was a format of forum critiques that OP would be most interested in.” I really like this, and feels in the spirit of EA.
Worth noting that OP’s biosecurity funding comes from a single private individual and is conducted via an LLC, so I don’t think this particular argument works in this particular case.
(To be clear, not trying to say here I agree or disagree with the Helena grant or OP’s approach to transparency on grants—just trying to make this much smaller point)
Can you confirm this is true specifically for biosecurity grants made to 501(c)(3)s like Helena? I know a lot of the biosecurity funding needs to be channeled through for-profit channels because of who the recipients are (or because the transaction is actually an investment vs. a pure grant), but it’s not clear to me why you wouldn’t run a pure grant to a 501(c)(3) through tax-advantaged channels.
I cannot confirm that. Reflecting on what I said, I think I may have misunderstood you at first, and think you have a better point than I first thought.
What Jason has said above is the thrust of my inquiry. If Open Phil said that in weighing the grant impact (as a hits-based grant) the private information they had justified the grant (which is not really what was in the comment on behalf of Open Phil). Then I would accept that as a pragmatic response based on the real world constraints to their grant-making, even if the rationale does not answer my own questions about the grant. I would expect a little more detail about what the grant actually entails, since it is about the least descriptive grant on the website.
It does open up questions about the importance we place on accountability and transparency in regard to norm- and priority-setting within EA and philanthropic giving.