the extent to which fund managers should be trying to instantiate donor’s wishes vs fund managers allocating the money by their own lights of what’s best (i.e. as if it were just their money). I think this is probably a matter of degree, but I lean towards the former
This is a longer discussion, but I lean towards the latter, both because I think this will often lead to better decisions, and because many donors I’ve talked to actually want the fund managers to spend the money that way (the EA Funds pitch is “defer to experts” and donors want to go all in on that, with only minimal scope constraints).
To explain how this could lead us to different conclusions, if I believed I had been entrusted with money to give to A but not B, then I should give to A, even if I personally thought B was better.
I suspect you would agree with this in principle: you wouldn’t want an EA fund manager to recommend a grant clearly/wildly outside the scope of their fund even if they sincerely thought it was great, e.g. the animal welfare fund recommended something that only benefitted humans even if they thought it was more cost-effective than something animal-focused.
Yeah, I agree that all grants should be broadly in scope – thanks for clarifying.
I haven’t thought lots about the topic, but all these concerns strike me as a reason to move towards a set of funds that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive—this gives donors greater choice and minimises worries about permissible fund allocation.
Fund scope definitions are always a bit fuzzy, many grants don’t fit into a particular bucket very neatly, and there are lots of edge cases. So while I’m sympathetic to the idea in principle, I think it would be really hard to do in practice. See Max’s comment.
This is a longer discussion, but I lean towards the latter, both because I think this will often lead to better decisions, and because many donors I’ve talked to actually want the fund managers to spend the money that way (the EA Funds pitch is “defer to experts” and donors want to go all in on that, with only minimal scope constraints).
Yeah, I agree that all grants should be broadly in scope – thanks for clarifying.
Fund scope definitions are always a bit fuzzy, many grants don’t fit into a particular bucket very neatly, and there are lots of edge cases. So while I’m sympathetic to the idea in principle, I think it would be really hard to do in practice. See Max’s comment.