Thanks Ozzie and Nick!
I agree that there will likely be some benefits beyond the grant period (which is 1-2 years depending on the grant). Those will especially be felt in cases in which the grant helped seed an org that might not get started or might get started many years later otherwise. That wasnāt the case for many of the grants though, in general weāre providing ops support for 1-2 y for an existing org.
Even though I made most of these grants non-renewable, in our core effective giving portfolio weāre a stable funder for most organizations, which means that Iāll reassess them every 2y or so to determine if we should renew funding, and at what level. We then use every grant period to look at (adjusted) money moved and how that compares to the orgs costs. This is a simplified view and I think weāll need to adjust it in some cases, e.g. now that a lot of the organizations are forming partnerships with GWWC, some of the wins they land in a given grant period through pledges will be seen for many years, so we should consider that, but avoid double counting in future periods.
Ozzie, to your point of expecting the area to be able to absorb more money, I think thatās true. We did discuss with some orgs if it was worth them scaling further, but most are being cautious and want to hit certain milestones/āmake sure theyāre on a sustainable growth path before doing so, which I appreciate. The two ways in which I currently imagine the ecosystem could absorb more funds is: (1) by seeding new efforts (there are still many gaps, so Iām excited to see other orgs get started), (2) by scaling existing efforts if some marketing strategy really pays off and/āor if they tap into a new segment and need more, or dedicated, staff (e.g. for national chapters that start doing more (U)HNW advising). I should also state that the amount of funding that weāre able to provide for the ecosystem will vary depending on the year, considering my programās budget and other grants on the table (both funding tied to existing grantees, and other potential opportunities).
Hi Ezra,
Thanks for your question! As a first pass, your assumption is correct in that, since our 1x benchmark is against GW charities (and charities of similar expected cost-effectiveness), an adjusted ROI of 6x is in expectation ~60x cash. That being said, we think the real number is likely lower than that, which is why we hold our EG grantees to a bar of at least 2x (and higher for more established efforts). Specifically, we think a 2x multiplier bar seems justified because (i) āmetaā funding opportunities that are more distant from impact seem more likely to overestimate cost-effectiveness by failing to adequately account for additional efforts required by other actors to achieve impact, and (ii) intuitively, we arenāt excited about supporting opportunities that could spend an additional $1 to generate only slightly more than that for high impact charities, even after a counterfactual adjustment. Supporting these opportunities would mean small errors in our calculations could result in negative impact, and risks falling into a meta-trap.