EAIF and LTFF will continue to struggle for individual donor funding until they can provide as good a value proposition as AWF and GHDF. As a longtime EA donor, my sticky impression of EAIF and LTFF is that it is a slush fund for OPP/EVF to dole out to their friends with questionable impact. Hopefully the separation will help change that impression and make better grants.
[EDIT: This impression may not be entirely accurate—it could be outdated, or I may be unfairly lumping the LTFF in with EAIF (I’m skeptical of longtermism and wish it was less prominent in EA). Regardless, the value proposition for individual donors is different from Open Phil/EVF, who seem happy and willing to pay tens of millions for fancy retreat centers. I’ve often cringed at EAIF grants given what the money could have done if in the AWF or GHDF fund instead.]
I may be unfairly lumping the LTFF in with EAIF (I’m skeptical of longtermism and wish it was less prominent in EA)
LTFF recently released a long payout report, which you might or might not find helpful to dive into. FWIW I think relatively few of our grants are contingent on philosophical longtermism, though many of them are probably only cost-effective if you think there’s non-trivial probability of large-scale AI and/or biorisk catastrophes in the next 20-100 years, in addition to other more specific worldviews that fund managers may have.
Thanks for linking to that! I appreciate the transparency in the write-up, and thanks for responding well to criticism. I don’t have the knowledge to evaluate the quality of the AI-related LTFF grants on AI. But I do have some experience in pandemic / aerosol disease transmission, and I’ve been pretty stunned by the lack of EA expertise in the space despite the attention. Others experts have told me they share the concern. It seems there is a strong bias in EA to source knowledge from “value-aligned” people that brand themselves as EAs, even if they aren’t the main experts in the field. That can result in a tendency to fund EA friends or friends-of-friends, or people they see as “value-aligned”, rather than proactively seeking out expertise. I’ve seen a few examples of it in EA funds and in other EA domains, but I don’t have a clear picture of how widespread the issue is. I also know EA funds doesn’t really have infrastructure set up to prevent such conflicts of interests. I don’t think the AWF and GHDF have as much of an issue because they have a much stronger evidence basis and therefore it is harder to argue funding friends is the most effective use of funds.
Thanks for the feedback! But this all sounds very generic and I don’t know how to interpret it. Can you give specific examples of pandemic/aerosol grantees we’ve funded but you think shouldn’t be funded, or (with their permission ofc) grants that we rejected that you think should be funded?
I downvoted this comment because of the following section: “I’ve often cringed at EAIF grants”. I don’t think people should be using sentences like “I’m disgusted by your work” “I cringe at your work” in a cooperative environment. There are better ways to make very strong or even devastating criticisms.
I think most grants to university, city, or national groups fund work that would have been done just as effectively by volunteers. Some of the university grants are particularly egregious, given how nearly all other college clubs exist just fine without paid organizers. “We are a student group interested in the most effective causes, and oh by the way funding us to organize this group for a semester is of similar levels of effectiveness as preventing 3 kids dying from malaria in poor countries.” I can think of few things more effective at turning people away from EA than college students learning the EA organizer is paid lots of money for it.
(I don’t work for the EAIF, and have limited visibility into their past decisionmaking)
Hmm, I think it’s fairly likely that the added value of having people devote significant time to university organizing (over what you could realistically get with volunteers) has higher EV via getting more future donations or via future hires than direct donations.
Do you disagree with this characterization of the expected consequences, or is the disagreement non-consequentialist in nature?
Separately, I also expect college club organizers to mostly be too young and relatively unknown entities for grantmakers that the “dole out to their friends” concern should be pretty minimal.
I think EAIF vastly overstates the effectiveness difference between paid vs. unpaid organizers, and dismisses the reputational risks of having paid organizers. Many college groups thrive without paid organizers, and EAIF-level of funding paid organizers only start being necessary once groups sizes reach 100. I don’t think there are any EA college groups that large, and they can fund-raise for it. I think the reputational harm—that EA is for self-serving grifters—causes far more damage than the marginal benefit from paid recruitment. It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively.
The EAIF isn’t supporting university groups anymore (though I don’t think it’s implausible that we will start doing this again in the future).
I think we have a pretty good sense of which uni groups and activities tend to produce people that go on to do high-impact work. I don’t think that is the only metric on which we should assess uni groups, but it’s an important one. I do think that groups wth paid organisers tend to have more measurable impact than groups without (though ofc there are selection effects). The groups also generally seem larger and more productive.
I think the reputational harm effects that you pointed out exist, but I don’t think they are particularly large. My personal view is that people should be compensated for doing challenging work that produces large amounts of altruistic value and I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many EA groups do have a large positive impact e.g. the Rethink Priorities and Open Phil surveys.
EA Funds would like to do more retroactive investigation into the effectiveness of past grants, if you have ideas on which metrics would convince you that paid organizers are effective vs ineffective use of marginal resources, that’d be really appreciated! But of course there’s no expectation that you’d do our work for us either!
I don’t think I fully understand the reputational argument. The most naive interpretation of “It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively” is that you’re simply assuming the conclusion. If the EV of having paid organizers is very low (or worse, negative), then of course this will be a hypocritical message to send to others. But if the EV is high (or at least higher than counterfactuals), then your actions are in line with your moral beliefs.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure EAIF organizers do, or at least did, believe their grants are cost-effective. But as you say, they might well be wrong,
Many college groups thrive without paid organizers
Do you have good specific examples? Impressive college groups that lead to highly talented young people doing positively impactful projects would be great to emulate!
EAIF and LTFF will continue to struggle for individual donor funding until they can provide as good a value proposition as AWF and GHDF. As a longtime EA donor, my sticky impression of EAIF and LTFF is that it is a slush fund for OPP/EVF to dole out to their friends with questionable impact. Hopefully the separation will help change that impression and make better grants.
[EDIT: This impression may not be entirely accurate—it could be outdated, or I may be unfairly lumping the LTFF in with EAIF (I’m skeptical of longtermism and wish it was less prominent in EA). Regardless, the value proposition for individual donors is different from Open Phil/EVF, who seem happy and willing to pay tens of millions for fancy retreat centers. I’ve often cringed at EAIF grants given what the money could have done if in the AWF or GHDF fund instead.]
LTFF recently released a long payout report, which you might or might not find helpful to dive into. FWIW I think relatively few of our grants are contingent on philosophical longtermism, though many of them are probably only cost-effective if you think there’s non-trivial probability of large-scale AI and/or biorisk catastrophes in the next 20-100 years, in addition to other more specific worldviews that fund managers may have.
Thanks for linking to that! I appreciate the transparency in the write-up, and thanks for responding well to criticism. I don’t have the knowledge to evaluate the quality of the AI-related LTFF grants on AI. But I do have some experience in pandemic / aerosol disease transmission, and I’ve been pretty stunned by the lack of EA expertise in the space despite the attention. Others experts have told me they share the concern. It seems there is a strong bias in EA to source knowledge from “value-aligned” people that brand themselves as EAs, even if they aren’t the main experts in the field. That can result in a tendency to fund EA friends or friends-of-friends, or people they see as “value-aligned”, rather than proactively seeking out expertise. I’ve seen a few examples of it in EA funds and in other EA domains, but I don’t have a clear picture of how widespread the issue is. I also know EA funds doesn’t really have infrastructure set up to prevent such conflicts of interests. I don’t think the AWF and GHDF have as much of an issue because they have a much stronger evidence basis and therefore it is harder to argue funding friends is the most effective use of funds.
Thanks for the feedback! But this all sounds very generic and I don’t know how to interpret it. Can you give specific examples of pandemic/aerosol grantees we’ve funded but you think shouldn’t be funded, or (with their permission ofc) grants that we rejected that you think should be funded?
Happy to message or chat 1:1; I don’t want to dispute specific LTFF grants in the comment section.
DM’d, though I also think disputing specific LTFF grants in EA Forum comments is a time-honored tradition, see eg comments here.
I downvoted this comment because of the following section: “I’ve often cringed at EAIF grants”. I don’t think people should be using sentences like “I’m disgusted by your work” “I cringe at your work” in a cooperative environment. There are better ways to make very strong or even devastating criticisms.
If you want to share specific examples, you can find most of the EAIF grants here.
I think most grants to university, city, or national groups fund work that would have been done just as effectively by volunteers. Some of the university grants are particularly egregious, given how nearly all other college clubs exist just fine without paid organizers. “We are a student group interested in the most effective causes, and oh by the way funding us to organize this group for a semester is of similar levels of effectiveness as preventing 3 kids dying from malaria in poor countries.” I can think of few things more effective at turning people away from EA than college students learning the EA organizer is paid lots of money for it.
(I don’t work for the EAIF, and have limited visibility into their past decisionmaking)
Hmm, I think it’s fairly likely that the added value of having people devote significant time to university organizing (over what you could realistically get with volunteers) has higher EV via getting more future donations or via future hires than direct donations.
Do you disagree with this characterization of the expected consequences, or is the disagreement non-consequentialist in nature?
Separately, I also expect college club organizers to mostly be too young and relatively unknown entities for grantmakers that the “dole out to their friends” concern should be pretty minimal.
I think EAIF vastly overstates the effectiveness difference between paid vs. unpaid organizers, and dismisses the reputational risks of having paid organizers. Many college groups thrive without paid organizers, and EAIF-level of funding paid organizers only start being necessary once groups sizes reach 100. I don’t think there are any EA college groups that large, and they can fund-raise for it. I think the reputational harm—that EA is for self-serving grifters—causes far more damage than the marginal benefit from paid recruitment. It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively.
The EAIF isn’t supporting university groups anymore (though I don’t think it’s implausible that we will start doing this again in the future).
I think we have a pretty good sense of which uni groups and activities tend to produce people that go on to do high-impact work. I don’t think that is the only metric on which we should assess uni groups, but it’s an important one. I do think that groups wth paid organisers tend to have more measurable impact than groups without (though ofc there are selection effects). The groups also generally seem larger and more productive.
I think the reputational harm effects that you pointed out exist, but I don’t think they are particularly large. My personal view is that people should be compensated for doing challenging work that produces large amounts of altruistic value and I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many EA groups do have a large positive impact e.g. the Rethink Priorities and Open Phil surveys.
EA Funds would like to do more retroactive investigation into the effectiveness of past grants, if you have ideas on which metrics would convince you that paid organizers are effective vs ineffective use of marginal resources, that’d be really appreciated! But of course there’s no expectation that you’d do our work for us either!
I don’t think I fully understand the reputational argument. The most naive interpretation of “It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively” is that you’re simply assuming the conclusion. If the EV of having paid organizers is very low (or worse, negative), then of course this will be a hypocritical message to send to others. But if the EV is high (or at least higher than counterfactuals), then your actions are in line with your moral beliefs.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure EAIF organizers do, or at least did, believe their grants are cost-effective. But as you say, they might well be wrong,
Do you have good specific examples? Impressive college groups that lead to highly talented young people doing positively impactful projects would be great to emulate!
This recent post from Dave, a university EA group leader, is quite relevant.