Funds allow donors to give as a community, with expert grantmakers and evaluators directing funds as cost-effectively as possible. Advantages include that the fund can learn how much funding an organization needs, provide it when they need it, monitor how it’s used, and incentivize them to be even more impactful. It also provides a reliable source of funding and support for those organisations.
GWWC recommends most donors give to funds, with the exception of those who have unique donation opportunities that funds can’t access, or who believe they can identify more cost-effective opportunities themselves (eg. due to substantial expertise, or differing values to existing funds). You can find their recommended funds here.
(If you’d like to see more summaries of top EA and LW forum posts, check out the Weekly Summaries series.)
Post summary (feel free to suggest edits!):
Funds allow donors to give as a community, with expert grantmakers and evaluators directing funds as cost-effectively as possible. Advantages include that the fund can learn how much funding an organization needs, provide it when they need it, monitor how it’s used, and incentivize them to be even more impactful. It also provides a reliable source of funding and support for those organisations.
GWWC recommends most donors give to funds, with the exception of those who have unique donation opportunities that funds can’t access, or who believe they can identify more cost-effective opportunities themselves (eg. due to substantial expertise, or differing values to existing funds). You can find their recommended funds here.
(If you’d like to see more summaries of top EA and LW forum posts, check out the Weekly Summaries series.)