That said, I suspect that the underlying concern here is one of imbalance of power. As I’ve seen from the funder’s side, there are a number of downsides when a grantee is overly dependent on one particular funder: 1) the funder might change direction in a way that is devastating to the grantee and its employees; 2) the grantee is incentivized to cater solely to that one funder while remaining silent about possible criticisms, all of which can silently undermine the effectiveness of the work.
I wonder to what extent this happens to the EA movement broadly, given the dominance of Open Phil as a funder (more so due to the implosion of SBF).
To be sure, Open Phil does a better job than just about any philanthropy at being transparent and welcoming of critique!
Even so, folks are still intimidated (hence anonymity for that long “Doing EA Better” post), and it often strikes me that some possible lines of questioning aren’t raised at all.
For example, while I might have missed something, I haven’t seen anyone ask why the Regranting Challenge gave $70 million to the Gates Foundation that has a 2021 endowment of$55 billion, with Gates’ net worth over $100 billion and many more billions on the way from Warren Buffett.
Why is this cause “neglected”? It may well be, of course—perhaps the folks working on a TB vaccine are doing great work but don’t have the internal political capital at Gates to get even 1/1000th of the Gates wealth allocated to their team. And it may just be a matter of framing—a “collaboration” or “joint funding effort” with Gates wouldn’t come across the same way as “a grant to Gates,” which I guess is irrational on my part. So maybe there’s nothing here at all.
Still....”giving money to Gates” is the kind of thing that would attract some questioning if anyone else did it, and the only criticism of the Regranting Challenge I’ve seen is from another funder who isn’t dependent on future funding here: https://twitter.com/mulagostarr/status/1613911821857230848
In other words, I suspect that some folks have the internal feeling, “I think Open Phil made questionable decisions in one case or another, but it seems too high-risk to speak out despite Open Phil’s willingness to consider critiques. I wish there were a way to capture the kinds of insights that are currently being stifled.”
The relative lack of truly honest feedback is something that bothered me as a funder, and it seemed really hard to address! Even anonymous surveys won’t tell you what grantees and others really think (most people that have a very specific insight or critique can’t say very much without making it obvious which grant they’re talking about and who is speaking).
Definitely agree with this post.
That said, I suspect that the underlying concern here is one of imbalance of power. As I’ve seen from the funder’s side, there are a number of downsides when a grantee is overly dependent on one particular funder: 1) the funder might change direction in a way that is devastating to the grantee and its employees; 2) the grantee is incentivized to cater solely to that one funder while remaining silent about possible criticisms, all of which can silently undermine the effectiveness of the work.
I wonder to what extent this happens to the EA movement broadly, given the dominance of Open Phil as a funder (more so due to the implosion of SBF).
To be sure, Open Phil does a better job than just about any philanthropy at being transparent and welcoming of critique!
Even so, folks are still intimidated (hence anonymity for that long “Doing EA Better” post), and it often strikes me that some possible lines of questioning aren’t raised at all.
For example, while I might have missed something, I haven’t seen anyone ask why the Regranting Challenge gave $70 million to the Gates Foundation that has a 2021 endowment of$55 billion, with Gates’ net worth over $100 billion and many more billions on the way from Warren Buffett.
Why is this cause “neglected”? It may well be, of course—perhaps the folks working on a TB vaccine are doing great work but don’t have the internal political capital at Gates to get even 1/1000th of the Gates wealth allocated to their team. And it may just be a matter of framing—a “collaboration” or “joint funding effort” with Gates wouldn’t come across the same way as “a grant to Gates,” which I guess is irrational on my part. So maybe there’s nothing here at all.
Still....”giving money to Gates” is the kind of thing that would attract some questioning if anyone else did it, and the only criticism of the Regranting Challenge I’ve seen is from another funder who isn’t dependent on future funding here: https://twitter.com/mulagostarr/status/1613911821857230848
In other words, I suspect that some folks have the internal feeling, “I think Open Phil made questionable decisions in one case or another, but it seems too high-risk to speak out despite Open Phil’s willingness to consider critiques. I wish there were a way to capture the kinds of insights that are currently being stifled.”
The relative lack of truly honest feedback is something that bothered me as a funder, and it seemed really hard to address! Even anonymous surveys won’t tell you what grantees and others really think (most people that have a very specific insight or critique can’t say very much without making it obvious which grant they’re talking about and who is speaking).