I have been donating to the Long Term Futures fund on a recurring monthly basis for over a year now. Figured it was the best way for me to save time and not have to do due diligence for every giving opportunity.
From reading this it seems that I was wrong and will be cancelling my donations. This has definitely put a dent in my confidence towards donating to EA orgs of any sort. I may stop donating entirely and instead invest the money now with a plan to donate it when promising opportunities present themselves in the future.
While I personally have trust that Nick Beckstead has been acting in good faith, I also completely understand why donors might choose to stop donating because of this extreme lack of regular communication.
It’s important for EAs to realize that even when you have good intentions and are making good choices about what to do, if you aren’t effectively communicating your thinking to stakeholders, then you aren’t doing all that you should be doing. Communications are vitally important, and I hope that comments like this one really help to drive this point home to not just EA Funds distributors, but also others in the EA community.
For what it’s worth, I’ve not been convinced one way or another donating now vs. later is optimal. So if one has been under the impression based on the views of many other effective altruists to donate in the present, but on reflection based on incidents like this among other factors, one chooses to donate when there are more promising opportunities in the future, I condone that choice. This is in spite of the fact I expect most community members will continue to donate in the present, and would encourage others to do the same. Ultimately, I think it comes down to judgement calls of when or how far into the future one should wait to donate. At the end, I’ve always found the arguments for a hard conclusion to donate now; invest; or put money into a donor-advised fund to be loose. I expect it comes down to personal preferences hard to make explicit. If you like, I can try finding some resources or other community members who’ve made a similar choice you can talk to about it.
I should say this is an unusual lack of transparency and accountability from an EA project or organization. I would discourage donors from generalizing to many or all EA orgs from this incident alone. That from within the EA community a more grassroots fundraising platform that would be more peer-to-peer has been tabled before. In light of this post, following up, I expect I will suggest the EA community pursue that end. While this will entail more time and due diligence for giving opportunities than we would’ve hoped for through the EA Funds, ultimately I think it’d be easier on donors and funders than a process of cold donation requests in the community. I haven’t looked closely at all the alternatives suggested, but I’m guessing the platform could be up within several months. In the grand scheme of things, that isn’t too long. So if that sounds promising, I can follow up with you, and you might hold onto your money intended for donations a bit longer before ultimately deciding to invest.
I have been donating to the Long Term Futures fund on a recurring monthly basis for over a year now. Figured it was the best way for me to save time and not have to do due diligence for every giving opportunity. From reading this it seems that I was wrong and will be cancelling my donations. This has definitely put a dent in my confidence towards donating to EA orgs of any sort. I may stop donating entirely and instead invest the money now with a plan to donate it when promising opportunities present themselves in the future.
While I personally have trust that Nick Beckstead has been acting in good faith, I also completely understand why donors might choose to stop donating because of this extreme lack of regular communication.
It’s important for EAs to realize that even when you have good intentions and are making good choices about what to do, if you aren’t effectively communicating your thinking to stakeholders, then you aren’t doing all that you should be doing. Communications are vitally important, and I hope that comments like this one really help to drive this point home to not just EA Funds distributors, but also others in the EA community.
For what it’s worth, I’ve not been convinced one way or another donating now vs. later is optimal. So if one has been under the impression based on the views of many other effective altruists to donate in the present, but on reflection based on incidents like this among other factors, one chooses to donate when there are more promising opportunities in the future, I condone that choice. This is in spite of the fact I expect most community members will continue to donate in the present, and would encourage others to do the same. Ultimately, I think it comes down to judgement calls of when or how far into the future one should wait to donate. At the end, I’ve always found the arguments for a hard conclusion to donate now; invest; or put money into a donor-advised fund to be loose. I expect it comes down to personal preferences hard to make explicit. If you like, I can try finding some resources or other community members who’ve made a similar choice you can talk to about it.
I should say this is an unusual lack of transparency and accountability from an EA project or organization. I would discourage donors from generalizing to many or all EA orgs from this incident alone. That from within the EA community a more grassroots fundraising platform that would be more peer-to-peer has been tabled before. In light of this post, following up, I expect I will suggest the EA community pursue that end. While this will entail more time and due diligence for giving opportunities than we would’ve hoped for through the EA Funds, ultimately I think it’d be easier on donors and funders than a process of cold donation requests in the community. I haven’t looked closely at all the alternatives suggested, but I’m guessing the platform could be up within several months. In the grand scheme of things, that isn’t too long. So if that sounds promising, I can follow up with you, and you might hold onto your money intended for donations a bit longer before ultimately deciding to invest.