Hi Catherine,
Thank you for your thoughtful responses and for getting the grant write-up online. After a busy holiday season, I just had a chance to go through it, and I appreciate the rationale provided therein.
I also noticed the update you mentioned to the Global Health and Development Fund’s webpage back in early December. While I’m grateful for the improved clarity with regards to the Fund’s current scope, my memory is that the previous webpage included language that specifically indicated the Fund would only be used to support direct work in global health and development, not movement-building work (e.g. in the section discussing why potential donors might not want to give to the fund). As a donor to the Fund with a strong preference to support direct work over movement-building work, this language was a part of the reason why I decided to support the Fund some time ago. While I am confident that this was not anyone’s intent, an outside observer might well infer that the webpage’s description of the Fund’s scope was updated in the wake of the One for the World grant as a means of shielding that grant from the scrutiny of donors who had been under the impression that their money would only go toward direct work.
These optics, I think, are further worsened by the fact that the grant was not disclosed to the public until I inquired about the Fund’s transparency a month after the fact, as well as by the nature of One for the World as a meta-charity. As far as I’m aware, One for the World is the only meta-charity that recommends donors support exclusively charities selected by GiveWell, and it features GiveWell’s logo on its website, thereby promoting GiveWell’s brand. While I am a strong supporter of GiveWell, and I hold its research in extremely high regard, I do think that the circumstances surrounding the October 2019 grant to One for the World give the impression that GiveWell took funds donors believed would be spent on direct anti-poverty work and directed them instead to a publicity/fundraising effort.
I understand that drawing more money to its recommended charities is one of GiveWell’s primary organizational goals at this point in time, and I fully support that. However, I would not support GiveWell spending funds donated for discretionary regranting to its top charities on advertising campaigns. I think that the only difference between that hypothetical and the One for the World grant is the greater degree of ambiguity in the way funds given to the Global Health and Development Fund are to be used compared to funds given to GiveWell for discretionary regranting. To be sure, this is an extremely important difference, but all the same, I do not think that the comparison is wholly unjustified.
Finally, given that GiveWell is providing the majority of One for the World’s funding through 2022, it seems exceptionally important that One for the World offer some kind of disclaimer about the nature of its relationships with GiveWell on its website (financial and otherwise). At the moment, its FAQs page says that it receives substantial funding from the Open Philanthropy Project, The Life You Can Save, members of its executive committee, and “a private donor.” Where the website does feature GiveWell, it states only that GiveWell is mission-aligned and a “partner” of One for the World. Neither gives readers any sense of the magnitude of One for the World’s reliance on GiveWell’s support. On the contrary, these statements give the impression that One for the World’s leadership opted of their own accord to make use of GiveWell’s recommendations in deciding how to structure their meta-charity. I expect that impression is likely true, and I would have done the same if I were founding a meta-charity. All the same, however, at the point that GiveWell is providing the majority of this organization’s budget, and that budget is being used to promote GiveWell’s work, that financial relationship must be disclosed. Donors should understand, for instance, that if the quality of GiveWell’s research were to suddenly decline for some reason, One for the World might nonetheless feel unable to alter its charity selection process due to its reliance on grants recommended by the GiveWell team.
I hope none of that comes across as unduly harsh. I hold your work in the highest possible esteem. I think it has done an enormous amount of good, and I hope to see it continue long into the future. Though I will no longer be donating to the Global Health and Development Fund, I will continue to support GiveWell’s top charities on the basis of GiveWell’s recommendations for the foreseeable future.
Thank you for that explanation. I’m glad to hear that the language of the Fund’s previous description would have raised questions at GiveWell about whether the One for the World grant was within the Fund’s scope, had it been on the relevant individuals’ radar at the time. In light of the fact that CEA told Elie the grant was within the Fund’s scope, it’s understandable that the GiveWell team did not pore over the Fund description to double-check CEA’s judgment. While I’m curious about how CEA understood the scope of the fund internally at the time (e.g. is it their view that the scope has changed?), I’m glad that we are all on the same page about it now. I’m also curious about when the GiveWell/CEA teams realized that the old EA Funds webpage’s description of the Fund’s scope might reasonably be read to exclude the One for the World grant. Was that realization the reason why the fund descriptions were updated back in late November/early December?
Additionally, I noticed you didn’t comment on the issue of One for the World presenting itself as fully independent of GiveWell when in fact it is highly reliant upon GiveWell for funding. I understand that you, of course, can’t speak for One for the World, but all the same, I think it’s important for this to be addressed. With that in mind, would GiveWell support One for the World in taking steps to clarify the nature of its relationships with GiveWell on its website?