MichaelA🔸 comments on We should consider funding well-known think tanks to do EA policy research

[MichaelA🔸]

I’d guess the answer is “no”, based in part on the $55m grant to CSET. (Though it’s debatable whether CSET is EA vs EA-adjacent vs non-EA, and CSET was basically “incubated” by that grant rather than already having been a well-known think tank.) Also there’s lots of funding to places like Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Centre for Global Development.

One could look at OP’s grants database to get a more systematic sense of this. (Of course OP doesn’t account for all of EA funding, but does account for a big chunk.)

(That apparent error aside, I still thought this was a good post and feel glad you wrote it :) )

[DavidZhang]

Thanks both—this is really interesting and not what I expected. I think in the UK context there is policy-adjacent research being funded for CSER, CLTR and FHI, and a bit for CE, which I count as all in the EA org bucket, whereas I don’t know of any EA funding going to non-EA policy think tanks. I had also put CSET more in the EA category, but it’s great to hear that things are different in DC and there’s a real interest in funding policy think tanks!

[lukeprog]

Yeah CSET isn’t an EA think tank, though a few EAs have worked there over the years.