Thanks for the insightful comment, Jack. I should have been clearer that “is it waivable” has both a procedural and a substantive component—a non-conflicted organizational authority needs to determine that waiver is in the best interests of the organization. And it’s certainly reasonable for people to think that it would have been preferable for OP to take a different approach.
But on the known facts, I conclude that a decision to waive would be reasonable on the best-interests standard: Claire had no personal interest in the grant outcome, and is basically on EVF’s board at OP’s request as its representative-of-sorts (rather than her happening to be on the board of a grant-seeking organization for her personal reasons). I still think there is a COI there, but I would rate it as fairly mild when viewed through the eyes of an observer with knowledge of all relevant facts.
I don’t think the alternative of having someone else do the grant investigation actually achieves the same benefit to OP. If you think Claire has a COI and needs to recuse, then she needs to be walled off from OP’s evaluation of this grant altogether. But that defeats OP’s presumed purpose of having Claire on EVF’s board in the first place—to be able to use the information and experience she obtained in evaluating grant proposals instead of relying more heavily on EVF’s submissions. If OP thinks that is an important advantage, having the grant investigator on EVF’s board seems to be the only way to get it. I guess you could have a different grant investigator with Claire merely providing input in some fashion . . . but in my book, that’s just getting some of the potential benefit while accepting some of the COI. I think that’s an important distinction from your OFTW hypothetical—in that hypothetical, there were likely other vendors from whom the organization could have purchased the same services from.
Finally, there are some other background facts that make me apply a more deferential standard of review to OP’s waiver decision here:
I don’t think either OP or the ultimate donor are publicly-supported charities in any meaningful sense of that characterization. I am less flexible with COI waivers for publicly-supported charities, because the waiving authority is serving as a psuedo-proxy/trustee for the relevant stakeholders (donors, in the case of a grant) whose individual consent is not practical to obtain.
As you mentioned, presumably the grant would have gone through multiple levels of sign off and review.
If the person with a conflict has too much sway in the organization, a reasonable observer could question whether the waiver decisionmaker can actually decide whether to waive in an impartial manner. I don’t have any reason to believe Claire has anywhere near the kind of influence at OP that, say, LaPierre did at NRA.
I think you are absolutely right to be vigilant about COI issues, and I would probably agree with your position if some of these facts were different. I’m just not concerned by this one on these facts.
Thanks for this Jason—very helpful and illuminating.
I wasn’t aware that Claire specifically joined CEA’s Board at OP’s request. Where did you find this?
I also agree with your point 3 that LaPierre clearly had the opportunity to influence the decision not to consider the CoI material in a corrupt way, which Claire didn’t; and that Claire didn’t gain personally from this grant.
To be clear, my assumption is that no one acted in bad faith. However, I’m still very uncomfortable with someone sitting on both sides of a £10m transaction. This meets my materiality threshold for taking significant extra steps to avoid even the appearance of a CoI. I guess this whole OP and thread demonstrates why this might be worth doing, as the grant itself is contentious.
One possible concern here is that Claire would use her position at OPP to direct extra resources to EV. I don’t see how her being on the board increases that risk, relative to merely being a heavily involved investigator.
Another possible concern is that she will use OPP’s power to manipulate EV, to the detriment of it/its donors. That’s definitely possible, but it was always possible because OPP is such a large donor. Being on the board increases legibility much more than power, which is broadly good.
I think the actual concern might be something like “OPP and CEA feel like they’re coordinating more than they should.” They definitely are coordinating in ways Safeway and GE do not, or even GiveWell and AMF (I think but have not verified). I think you’re right to think of them as less than totally independent, due to this connection and others. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem. I think there’s some obligation on both their part to make this obvious to donors, and the number of surprised and angry people suggests they failed at that. But I don’t see anything inherently wrong with organizations coordinating to fulfill mutual goals
Thanks for this. Interestingly, I wasn’t especially concerned about the things you list, although I do think they are all risks. I agree that they are possible, but also agree that they are unlikely to be material. Indeed, I feel bad for focusing mainly on Claire and this transaction, because I have no reason to think they are anything but a great trustee and great program officer.
My concern is broader than this—unfortunately, I see this transaction as one fairly prominent example of a pattern.
EA orgs tolerate an unusually large number of conflicts of interest. A relatively small group of people sit on multiple Boards and orgs; it is not unusual for people to sit on both sides of very large transactions; sometimes the biggest recipients of funding are organizations where the grantor’s trustees work, or where they are trustees, or similar; etc. We saw this in particular with FTX but it is true across the EA ecosystem.
This is contrary to just about any accepted governance norms. Many of these conflicts could be managed fairly easily, for example by using conflicted people as advisors rather than trustees; by asking disinterested people to assess grant bids and interested people to recuse themselves; etc. However, this rarely seems to happen, even in cases where there is an incredibly strong prima facie case for doing so, like this one. So I think the pattern is that EA orgs/leaders are less bothered by conflicts than I/people familiar with governance would expect; and that they tend to just acknowledge the conflict and then assume everyone will both a) act in good faith (largely true, I expect) and b) make the best decisions possible (trickier).
I think this matters for three reasons:
It meaningfully increases the risk of intentional malpractice, as happened with FTX.
It meaningfully increases the risk of people acting in good faith but not making the best decisions, because they are conflicted.
It reinforces negative impressions of EA, e.g. that it is an ‘immature’ movement, that it is prone to self-dealing etc. (Notably, conflicts of interest policies always talk about both actual andperceived conflicts, and there are numerous examples of the perception of a conflict causing huge reputational harm in the public eye.)
So that means that there is risk of actual material harm, and a risk of reputational harm.
To go back to my original comment, I am still genuinely amazed that there either wasn’t a perceived conflict, or that the conflict was ignored, in this particular case, because it seems like a textbook example of something where your conflict of interest policy would kick in and where it would be worth taking extra steps to manage both the conflict and the perception of a conflict. That is, it’s a materially large transaction (>£10m), with a person in a potentially conflicted position, on a potentially controversial grant.
I notice that most of my comments here are getting pretty bad karma and agreement, so it may be that the community isn’t with me on this—but, honestly, I think this might be an example of EA thinking the normal rules don’t apply to it because [insert reason here].
My view is that there are reasons that governance norms and procedures for managing conflicts of interest exist, and I think EA orgs/leaders will learn those reasons the hard way if they don’t take them seriously now. And this seems particularly pertinent as we literally just saw the consequences of bad governance/controls in the most devastating, harmful way possible with FTX (who are now on the record as thinking that they were too smart for things like basic accounting practices).
Just finally, this has rather migrated from a discussion about the Wytham Abbey grant into ‘Jack’s concerns about EA governance’, which is pretty unfair to people involved in the original issue. So I just want to emphasise that I’m absolutely not accusing Claire of any of the ‘theoretical ’issues here, like malpractice or acting in bad faith or getting the grant decision obviously wrong. I’m just explaining why I find this transaction and process concerning.
It sounds like you’re advocating for the position of always following “good practices heuristics” and you’re saying “grantmakers who are on the board of another org should recuse themselves from grantmaking decisions about this other org” is one such heuristic. The first point seems uncontroversial; the second point is, in my view, open to debate.
It’s open to debate because “board membership” at most correlates with having specific conflicts of interest. What we should really be concerned about are the potentially-biasing influences themselves, like:
Does the grantmaker person have a strong financial motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong reputational motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong social motive (friendship, romance, peer pressure, etc.) to make a particular decision?
Once we learn that Claire joined EVF’s board in her role as a grantmaker, all the other ways in which “being a board member” is usually correlated with the above three potentially-biasing influences no longer apply. Learning the context in which she joined screens off these other factors. By contrast, if we knew nothing about why Claire joined the EVF board, and especially if she had joined their board before starting to work at Open Phil, then it would become hard to rule out that her board membership comes with potentially-biasing influences.
Maybe another concern is “Is the grantmaker at risk of exerting undue influence over an org” – but that depends on what we mean by “undue.” It’s also somewhat common for funders to join boards, so it’s not like this clearly violates good practices.
Overall, I think it’s quite reasonable not to be concerned about this after thinking through the specifics. The position of “it’s hubris to think through the specifics when we must avoid anything that’s even just vaguely correlated with a conflict of interest” doesn’t seem appealing to me. It also seems like “process theater” where people signal how virtuously they adhere to “good processes” without seeming to even understand or care why these processes are there in the first place. If anything, I’d find it concerning if people reasoned about things in a rigidly-rule-driven way that’s disconnected from “why might this be bad?”
I think the information about Claire’s dual role (and rationale) should have been publicly disclosed up front (was it?) . That would have been very low cost, and would send a signal that the appropriate people were keeping an eye on COI issues. Not disclosing a conflict, the waiver, and the rationale on a big grant until a grant decision is challenged in the media and by numerous forum users would not send the right message about EA’s attitude toward managing COI.
As to the merits of this one, I just can’t find a huge difference between the ultimate donor (who I assume was Dustin Moskovitz / GV) serving dual roles of sitting on the EVF board and deciding whether to fund an EVF ask, and the donor authorizing Claire to perform both roles (with oversight on the OP end) more or less on his behalf. That’s why I come back to whether the donor was aware of and approved the conflict waiver. $15MM is enough that I think that some actual donor awareness of the dual role was necessary here.
Thanks for the insightful comment, Jack. I should have been clearer that “is it waivable” has both a procedural and a substantive component—a non-conflicted organizational authority needs to determine that waiver is in the best interests of the organization. And it’s certainly reasonable for people to think that it would have been preferable for OP to take a different approach.
But on the known facts, I conclude that a decision to waive would be reasonable on the best-interests standard: Claire had no personal interest in the grant outcome, and is basically on EVF’s board at OP’s request as its representative-of-sorts (rather than her happening to be on the board of a grant-seeking organization for her personal reasons). I still think there is a COI there, but I would rate it as fairly mild when viewed through the eyes of an observer with knowledge of all relevant facts.
I don’t think the alternative of having someone else do the grant investigation actually achieves the same benefit to OP. If you think Claire has a COI and needs to recuse, then she needs to be walled off from OP’s evaluation of this grant altogether. But that defeats OP’s presumed purpose of having Claire on EVF’s board in the first place—to be able to use the information and experience she obtained in evaluating grant proposals instead of relying more heavily on EVF’s submissions. If OP thinks that is an important advantage, having the grant investigator on EVF’s board seems to be the only way to get it. I guess you could have a different grant investigator with Claire merely providing input in some fashion . . . but in my book, that’s just getting some of the potential benefit while accepting some of the COI. I think that’s an important distinction from your OFTW hypothetical—in that hypothetical, there were likely other vendors from whom the organization could have purchased the same services from.
Finally, there are some other background facts that make me apply a more deferential standard of review to OP’s waiver decision here:
I don’t think either OP or the ultimate donor are publicly-supported charities in any meaningful sense of that characterization. I am less flexible with COI waivers for publicly-supported charities, because the waiving authority is serving as a psuedo-proxy/trustee for the relevant stakeholders (donors, in the case of a grant) whose individual consent is not practical to obtain.
As you mentioned, presumably the grant would have gone through multiple levels of sign off and review.
If the person with a conflict has too much sway in the organization, a reasonable observer could question whether the waiver decisionmaker can actually decide whether to waive in an impartial manner. I don’t have any reason to believe Claire has anywhere near the kind of influence at OP that, say, LaPierre did at NRA.
I think you are absolutely right to be vigilant about COI issues, and I would probably agree with your position if some of these facts were different. I’m just not concerned by this one on these facts.
Thanks for this Jason—very helpful and illuminating.
I wasn’t aware that Claire specifically joined CEA’s Board at OP’s request. Where did you find this?
I also agree with your point 3 that LaPierre clearly had the opportunity to influence the decision not to consider the CoI material in a corrupt way, which Claire didn’t; and that Claire didn’t gain personally from this grant.
To be clear, my assumption is that no one acted in bad faith. However, I’m still very uncomfortable with someone sitting on both sides of a £10m transaction. This meets my materiality threshold for taking significant extra steps to avoid even the appearance of a CoI. I guess this whole OP and thread demonstrates why this might be worth doing, as the grant itself is contentious.
What, specifically, are you worried about?
One possible concern here is that Claire would use her position at OPP to direct extra resources to EV. I don’t see how her being on the board increases that risk, relative to merely being a heavily involved investigator.
Another possible concern is that she will use OPP’s power to manipulate EV, to the detriment of it/its donors. That’s definitely possible, but it was always possible because OPP is such a large donor. Being on the board increases legibility much more than power, which is broadly good.
I think the actual concern might be something like “OPP and CEA feel like they’re coordinating more than they should.” They definitely are coordinating in ways Safeway and GE do not, or even GiveWell and AMF (I think but have not verified). I think you’re right to think of them as less than totally independent, due to this connection and others. I don’t think that’s inherently a problem. I think there’s some obligation on both their part to make this obvious to donors, and the number of surprised and angry people suggests they failed at that. But I don’t see anything inherently wrong with organizations coordinating to fulfill mutual goals
Hi Elizabeth,
Thanks for this. Interestingly, I wasn’t especially concerned about the things you list, although I do think they are all risks. I agree that they are possible, but also agree that they are unlikely to be material. Indeed, I feel bad for focusing mainly on Claire and this transaction, because I have no reason to think they are anything but a great trustee and great program officer.
My concern is broader than this—unfortunately, I see this transaction as one fairly prominent example of a pattern.
EA orgs tolerate an unusually large number of conflicts of interest. A relatively small group of people sit on multiple Boards and orgs; it is not unusual for people to sit on both sides of very large transactions; sometimes the biggest recipients of funding are organizations where the grantor’s trustees work, or where they are trustees, or similar; etc. We saw this in particular with FTX but it is true across the EA ecosystem.
This is contrary to just about any accepted governance norms. Many of these conflicts could be managed fairly easily, for example by using conflicted people as advisors rather than trustees; by asking disinterested people to assess grant bids and interested people to recuse themselves; etc. However, this rarely seems to happen, even in cases where there is an incredibly strong prima facie case for doing so, like this one. So I think the pattern is that EA orgs/leaders are less bothered by conflicts than I/people familiar with governance would expect; and that they tend to just acknowledge the conflict and then assume everyone will both a) act in good faith (largely true, I expect) and b) make the best decisions possible (trickier).
I think this matters for three reasons:
It meaningfully increases the risk of intentional malpractice, as happened with FTX.
It meaningfully increases the risk of people acting in good faith but not making the best decisions, because they are conflicted.
It reinforces negative impressions of EA, e.g. that it is an ‘immature’ movement, that it is prone to self-dealing etc. (Notably, conflicts of interest policies always talk about both actual and perceived conflicts, and there are numerous examples of the perception of a conflict causing huge reputational harm in the public eye.)
So that means that there is risk of actual material harm, and a risk of reputational harm.
To go back to my original comment, I am still genuinely amazed that there either wasn’t a perceived conflict, or that the conflict was ignored, in this particular case, because it seems like a textbook example of something where your conflict of interest policy would kick in and where it would be worth taking extra steps to manage both the conflict and the perception of a conflict. That is, it’s a materially large transaction (>£10m), with a person in a potentially conflicted position, on a potentially controversial grant.
I notice that most of my comments here are getting pretty bad karma and agreement, so it may be that the community isn’t with me on this—but, honestly, I think this might be an example of EA thinking the normal rules don’t apply to it because [insert reason here].
My view is that there are reasons that governance norms and procedures for managing conflicts of interest exist, and I think EA orgs/leaders will learn those reasons the hard way if they don’t take them seriously now. And this seems particularly pertinent as we literally just saw the consequences of bad governance/controls in the most devastating, harmful way possible with FTX (who are now on the record as thinking that they were too smart for things like basic accounting practices).
Just finally, this has rather migrated from a discussion about the Wytham Abbey grant into ‘Jack’s concerns about EA governance’, which is pretty unfair to people involved in the original issue. So I just want to emphasise that I’m absolutely not accusing Claire of any of the ‘theoretical ’issues here, like malpractice or acting in bad faith or getting the grant decision obviously wrong. I’m just explaining why I find this transaction and process concerning.
It sounds like you’re advocating for the position of always following “good practices heuristics” and you’re saying “grantmakers who are on the board of another org should recuse themselves from grantmaking decisions about this other org” is one such heuristic. The first point seems uncontroversial; the second point is, in my view, open to debate.
It’s open to debate because “board membership” at most correlates with having specific conflicts of interest. What we should really be concerned about are the potentially-biasing influences themselves, like:
Does the grantmaker person have a strong financial motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong reputational motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong social motive (friendship, romance, peer pressure, etc.) to make a particular decision?
Once we learn that Claire joined EVF’s board in her role as a grantmaker, all the other ways in which “being a board member” is usually correlated with the above three potentially-biasing influences no longer apply. Learning the context in which she joined screens off these other factors. By contrast, if we knew nothing about why Claire joined the EVF board, and especially if she had joined their board before starting to work at Open Phil, then it would become hard to rule out that her board membership comes with potentially-biasing influences.
Maybe another concern is “Is the grantmaker at risk of exerting undue influence over an org” – but that depends on what we mean by “undue.” It’s also somewhat common for funders to join boards, so it’s not like this clearly violates good practices.
Overall, I think it’s quite reasonable not to be concerned about this after thinking through the specifics. The position of “it’s hubris to think through the specifics when we must avoid anything that’s even just vaguely correlated with a conflict of interest” doesn’t seem appealing to me. It also seems like “process theater” where people signal how virtuously they adhere to “good processes” without seeming to even understand or care why these processes are there in the first place. If anything, I’d find it concerning if people reasoned about things in a rigidly-rule-driven way that’s disconnected from “why might this be bad?”
I think the information about Claire’s dual role (and rationale) should have been publicly disclosed up front (was it?) . That would have been very low cost, and would send a signal that the appropriate people were keeping an eye on COI issues. Not disclosing a conflict, the waiver, and the rationale on a big grant until a grant decision is challenged in the media and by numerous forum users would not send the right message about EA’s attitude toward managing COI.
As to the merits of this one, I just can’t find a huge difference between the ultimate donor (who I assume was Dustin Moskovitz / GV) serving dual roles of sitting on the EVF board and deciding whether to fund an EVF ask, and the donor authorizing Claire to perform both roles (with oversight on the OP end) more or less on his behalf. That’s why I come back to whether the donor was aware of and approved the conflict waiver. $15MM is enough that I think that some actual donor awareness of the dual role was necessary here.