I suspect in some cases people don’t necessarily want to be associated with EA/longtermism/x-risk, especially as a precondition to a fairly small grant. (I’m especially sympathetic to this from very early career people who have a lot of uncertainty about what their future career plans might be).
I want to distinguish between “want to be associated” and “want to be publicly seen as associated”.
De-facto almost all of our grantees are enmeshed with the EA/longtermist/x-risk community, and are meaningfully influenced by that social group. Most people who request privacy want to avoid the additional step of that association becoming widely known. This makes my feelings on this more conflicted.
Likely so, although there’s a wide range of ways to balance the privacy and transparency interests that lie in various places between “searchable by Google” and “no identifying information available to anyone outside LTFF, even in a non-public manner to its donors.”
In general, I’m more inclined toward allowing fairly robust psuedonymity for smaller grants and/or junior researchers. Once you get to (e.g.) a 200K per FTE-year level Nick was referring to, I would strike the balance a bit differently even though it wouldn’t need to be searchable by Google.
I’m curious how much worries about private grants being wasted, given to net negative projects, etc, is a crux for potential donors. If many potential donors (or a few large ones) believe that this is a major concern, we can probably create an option to allow people to earmark their donations to only go to public grants. I suspect this will be operationally expensive for LTFF and EV, but if enough donors care, we can just eat those costs.
Another compromise solution (though again this adds operational overhead) is to allow grantees to opt-in into allowing us to share private writeups for donors who give $X within X time period of the grant. Then maybe private-grants-that-some-donors-can-also-see will go through the usual process, and completely private grants can go towards a separate pool that LTFF can fundraise for separately.
In general, I’m more inclined toward allowing fairly robust psuedonymity for smaller grants and/or junior researchers. Once you get to (e.g.) a 200K per FTE-year level Nick was referring to, I would strike the balance a bit differently even though it wouldn’t need to be searchable by Google.
Yes, sorting the anonymous grants by size reveals that the significant majority were 30K or less. (But much more of the dollar amount of anonymous grants was in the above 30K bracket.)
I think most would-be donors would understand that earmarking funds away from a disfavored expenditure type, when enough of a charity’s funds are unrestricted, is unlikely to have any real-world impact. Unless almost everyone earmarked, a donation of $X (whether earmarked or not) would be expected to increase non-anon grants by $Y and anonymous ones by $Z.
I think most would-be donors would understand that earmarking funds away from a disfavored expenditure type, when enough of a charity’s funds are unrestricted, is unlikely to have any real-world impact.
Hmm, I assumed people’s largest objections aren’t ultimately consequentialist in nature, though it’s hard to know without a more concrete survey. At least the last few times I’ve had discussions with people about this, I had a strong purity/”didn’t want to be a sucker” vibe from my interlocutors, though admittedly they didn’t seem very likely to be prospective donors.
Unless almost everyone earmarked, a donation of $X (whether earmarked or not) would be expected to increase non-anon grants by $Y and anonymous ones by $Z.
I expect you’ll see effects way before “almost everyone earmarked.” Eg say ~10% is currently anonymous. If 80% of donations are earmarked for non-anonymity, then the remaining 20% of donors* would face the prospect of having ~half of their donations be anonymous, which I assume is not an enticing offer.
*assuming for simplicity that there are not systematic differences in donation amounts of donors who are okay with anonymity and not.
Interesting I didn’t think of that. Makes a lot of sense. I think like Jason said the bigger the grant, the more weight I would put on transparency myself anyway.
If I remember correctly, the application form says if you are an individual then choosing to be anonymous is not held against you. If you are an org asking for anonymous donation then it is slightly held against you in the decision making process.
I can imagine there could be grants for orgs to work on infohazardous things which would need to be anonymized, and I am unsure how to handle these. Still, overall it seems like these are mostly small-ish grants to individuals, so I am OK with it, and as you said, the bigger the grant the higher the burden I would put on the org to not be anonymous. To be clear, I assume that’s what LTFF does anyway.
I can imagine there could be grants for orgs to work on infohazardous things which would need to be anonymized, and I am unsure how to handle these
It’s true that we get some applications that ask for privacy on infohazard grounds, and I think it’s very important that at least some longtermist/x-risk fund is willing to cover them without demanding public reports. But I think they’re very much in the minority of anonymous applications we receive or grants we give out, so if donors broadly don’t want us to make anonymous grants, I don’t want to hide behind infohazards as an excuse.
I would expect that most of those 52 are individuals who don’t want their incomes/research made searchable by Google.
I suspect in some cases people don’t necessarily want to be associated with EA/longtermism/x-risk, especially as a precondition to a fairly small grant. (I’m especially sympathetic to this from very early career people who have a lot of uncertainty about what their future career plans might be).
I want to distinguish between “want to be associated” and “want to be publicly seen as associated”.
De-facto almost all of our grantees are enmeshed with the EA/longtermist/x-risk community, and are meaningfully influenced by that social group. Most people who request privacy want to avoid the additional step of that association becoming widely known. This makes my feelings on this more conflicted.
Likely so, although there’s a wide range of ways to balance the privacy and transparency interests that lie in various places between “searchable by Google” and “no identifying information available to anyone outside LTFF, even in a non-public manner to its donors.”
In general, I’m more inclined toward allowing fairly robust psuedonymity for smaller grants and/or junior researchers. Once you get to (e.g.) a 200K per FTE-year level Nick was referring to, I would strike the balance a bit differently even though it wouldn’t need to be searchable by Google.
(speaking fairly off-the-cuff)
I’m curious how much worries about private grants being wasted, given to net negative projects, etc, is a crux for potential donors. If many potential donors (or a few large ones) believe that this is a major concern, we can probably create an option to allow people to earmark their donations to only go to public grants. I suspect this will be operationally expensive for LTFF and EV, but if enough donors care, we can just eat those costs.
Another compromise solution (though again this adds operational overhead) is to allow grantees to opt-in into allowing us to share private writeups for donors who give $X within X time period of the grant. Then maybe private-grants-that-some-donors-can-also-see will go through the usual process, and completely private grants can go towards a separate pool that LTFF can fundraise for separately.
’Note that 1.4M/52 ~=27k.
Yes, sorting the anonymous grants by size reveals that the significant majority were 30K or less. (But much more of the dollar amount of anonymous grants was in the above 30K bracket.)
I think most would-be donors would understand that earmarking funds away from a disfavored expenditure type, when enough of a charity’s funds are unrestricted, is unlikely to have any real-world impact. Unless almost everyone earmarked, a donation of $X (whether earmarked or not) would be expected to increase non-anon grants by $Y and anonymous ones by $Z.
Hmm, I assumed people’s largest objections aren’t ultimately consequentialist in nature, though it’s hard to know without a more concrete survey. At least the last few times I’ve had discussions with people about this, I had a strong purity/”didn’t want to be a sucker” vibe from my interlocutors, though admittedly they didn’t seem very likely to be prospective donors.
I expect you’ll see effects way before “almost everyone earmarked.” Eg say ~10% is currently anonymous. If 80% of donations are earmarked for non-anonymity, then the remaining 20% of donors* would face the prospect of having ~half of their donations be anonymous, which I assume is not an enticing offer.
*assuming for simplicity that there are not systematic differences in donation amounts of donors who are okay with anonymity and not.
Interesting I didn’t think of that. Makes a lot of sense. I think like Jason said the bigger the grant, the more weight I would put on transparency myself anyway.
If I remember correctly, the application form says if you are an individual then choosing to be anonymous is not held against you. If you are an org asking for anonymous donation then it is slightly held against you in the decision making process.
I can imagine there could be grants for orgs to work on infohazardous things which would need to be anonymized, and I am unsure how to handle these. Still, overall it seems like these are mostly small-ish grants to individuals, so I am OK with it, and as you said, the bigger the grant the higher the burden I would put on the org to not be anonymous. To be clear, I assume that’s what LTFF does anyway.
It’s true that we get some applications that ask for privacy on infohazard grounds, and I think it’s very important that at least some longtermist/x-risk fund is willing to cover them without demanding public reports. But I think they’re very much in the minority of anonymous applications we receive or grants we give out, so if donors broadly don’t want us to make anonymous grants, I don’t want to hide behind infohazards as an excuse.