Epistemic status: I only spent 10 minutes thinking about this before I started writing.
Idea: Funders may want to pre-commit to awarding whoever accomplished a certain goal. (e.g. maybe some funder like Open Phil can commit to awarding a pool of money to people/orgs who reduce meat consumption to a certain level, and the pool will be split in proportion to contribution)
Detailed considerations:
This can be seen as a version of retroactive funding, but it’s special in that the funder makes a pre-commitment.
(I don’t know a lot about retroactive funding/impact markets, so please correct me if I’m wrong on the comparisons below)
Compared to other forms of retroactive funding, this leads to the following benefits:
less prebuilt infrastructure is needed
provides stronger incentives to prospective “grantees”
better funder coordination
better grantee coordination
… but also the following detriments:
much less flexibility
perhaps stronger funding centralization
potentially unhealthy competition between grantees
Compared to classical grant-proposal-based funding mechanisms, this leads to the following benefits:
better grantee coordination
stronger incentives for grantees
more flexibility (i.e. grantees can use whatever strategy that works, rather than whatever strategy the funder likes)
… but also the following detriments:
lack of funds to kickstart new projects that otherwise (ie if without funding) wouldn’t be started
perhaps stronger funding centralization
potentially unhealthy competition between grantees
Important points:
The goals should probably be high-level but achievable, while being strategy-agnostic (i.e. you can use whatever morally acceptable strategies to achieve the goal). Otherwise, you lose a large part of the value from pre-committed awards—sparkling creativity from prospective grantees.
If your ultimate goal is too large and you need to decompose it into subgoals and award the subgoals, make sure your subgoals are dispersed across a diverse range of tracks/strategies. For example, if your ultimate goal is to reduce meat consumption, you may want to set subgoals on the alt protein track, as well as on the vegan advocacy track, and various other tracks.
Explicitly emphasize that foundation-building work will be awarded, rather than awarding only the work that completed the one last step to the goal.
Attribute contribution using an open and transparent research process. Maybe crowdsource opinions from a diverse group of experts.
Such research will be hard. This is IMO one of the biggest barriers to this approach, but I think it applies to other versions of retroactive funding/impact markets too.
Epistemic status: I only spent 10 minutes thinking about this before I started writing.
Idea: Funders may want to pre-commit to awarding whoever accomplished a certain goal. (e.g. maybe some funder like Open Phil can commit to awarding a pool of money to people/orgs who reduce meat consumption to a certain level, and the pool will be split in proportion to contribution)
Detailed considerations:
This can be seen as a version of retroactive funding, but it’s special in that the funder makes a pre-commitment.
(I don’t know a lot about retroactive funding/impact markets, so please correct me if I’m wrong on the comparisons below)
Compared to other forms of retroactive funding, this leads to the following benefits:
less prebuilt infrastructure is needed
provides stronger incentives to prospective “grantees”
better funder coordination
better grantee coordination
… but also the following detriments:
much less flexibility
perhaps stronger funding centralization
potentially unhealthy competition between grantees
Compared to classical grant-proposal-based funding mechanisms, this leads to the following benefits:
better grantee coordination
stronger incentives for grantees
more flexibility (i.e. grantees can use whatever strategy that works, rather than whatever strategy the funder likes)
… but also the following detriments:
lack of funds to kickstart new projects that otherwise (ie if without funding) wouldn’t be started
perhaps stronger funding centralization
potentially unhealthy competition between grantees
Important points:
The goals should probably be high-level but achievable, while being strategy-agnostic (i.e. you can use whatever morally acceptable strategies to achieve the goal). Otherwise, you lose a large part of the value from pre-committed awards—sparkling creativity from prospective grantees.
If your ultimate goal is too large and you need to decompose it into subgoals and award the subgoals, make sure your subgoals are dispersed across a diverse range of tracks/strategies. For example, if your ultimate goal is to reduce meat consumption, you may want to set subgoals on the alt protein track, as well as on the vegan advocacy track, and various other tracks.
Explicitly emphasize that foundation-building work will be awarded, rather than awarding only the work that completed the one last step to the goal.
Attribute contribution using an open and transparent research process. Maybe crowdsource opinions from a diverse group of experts.
Such research will be hard. This is IMO one of the biggest barriers to this approach, but I think it applies to other versions of retroactive funding/impact markets too.