I think it’s good that EA Funds are distributed in a technocratic way, rather than a democratic way, although I agree that more transparency would help people at least understand the decision processes behind granting decisions and allow for them to be criticized and improved.
I generally agree with this, though I don’t have a strong sense of how good EA Funds grants are. It just seems like a more reasonable grounds for debate than making demands of EA donors in general.
If the money for EA Funds comes from donors who have the impression the fund is allocated in a technocratic way do you still think it is a reasonable compromise for EA Funds to become more democratic? It seems low intergrity for an entity to raise funding after communicating a fairly specific model for how the funding will be used and then change it’s mind and spend it on a different program (unless we have made it pretty clear upfront that we might do other programs).
If the suggestion is to start a new fund that does not use existing donations that seems more reasonable to me, but then I don’t think that EA Funds has a substantial advantage in doing this over other organisations with similarly competent staff.
Agree on maintaining existing EA Funds largely as is, but I am curious what other non-EVF organizations might be in a good position to pull this off. I’m not a non-profit (or other) tax expert, but it seems that the number of non-EVF good homes for a new fund could be somewhat limited. In particular, my guess is that EVF/CEA USA’s dual corporate existence in the US and UK is a major practical advantage. E.g., if the new funds only had a US corporate existence, they’d not only start off at a major disadvantage for UK donors, but would also face extra challenges granting to non-profits from the UK—presumably they would need to obtain an equivalency determination costing several thousand dollars, or assume expenditure responsibility, for each non-US non-profit grantee. And then you’d probably want some practical grantmaking-operations experience in the fiscal sponsor org as well for efficiency reasons.
I generally agree with this, though I don’t have a strong sense of how good EA Funds grants are. It just seems like a more reasonable grounds for debate than making demands of EA donors in general.
If the money for EA Funds comes from donors who have the impression the fund is allocated in a technocratic way do you still think it is a reasonable compromise for EA Funds to become more democratic? It seems low intergrity for an entity to raise funding after communicating a fairly specific model for how the funding will be used and then change it’s mind and spend it on a different program (unless we have made it pretty clear upfront that we might do other programs).
If the suggestion is to start a new fund that does not use existing donations that seems more reasonable to me, but then I don’t think that EA Funds has a substantial advantage in doing this over other organisations with similarly competent staff.
Agree on maintaining existing EA Funds largely as is, but I am curious what other non-EVF organizations might be in a good position to pull this off. I’m not a non-profit (or other) tax expert, but it seems that the number of non-EVF good homes for a new fund could be somewhat limited. In particular, my guess is that EVF/CEA USA’s dual corporate existence in the US and UK is a major practical advantage. E.g., if the new funds only had a US corporate existence, they’d not only start off at a major disadvantage for UK donors, but would also face extra challenges granting to non-profits from the UK—presumably they would need to obtain an equivalency determination costing several thousand dollars, or assume expenditure responsibility, for each non-US non-profit grantee. And then you’d probably want some practical grantmaking-operations experience in the fiscal sponsor org as well for efficiency reasons.
See here. I’m not sure how EA Funds is pitched to donors. A new fund probably would be better regardless.
(Adding for context: I had heard EA Funds was being reorganized at one point, which suggested to me it might be looking for a new funding model)