Thanks!! :)
Nicole_Ross
Karma: 1,187
EA Interview Series, February 2016: John Salvatier
Hi Jon! This is certainly something I’ve thought about. I think there are lots of pros and cons, and currently I’m leaning towards no until I’ve had a chance to explore the cons more thoroughly. If we publicly share applications we reject, it’s especially important to give a thorough explanation so the applicant, other potential funders, and future applicants can understand our reasoning. These things involve a lot of nuance and complexity, and it would take a lot of time to do it at an adequate level. If you have any more thoughts, feel free to reach out to me directly: nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org. Thanks for putting thought into this!
(x-posting my comment)
Hi Jameson,
I lead the EA Grants program at CEA and anyone should feel free to contact me (nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) if they have any questions or if a time sensitive opportunity comes up before the next grant round opens. Please feel very free to reach out!
Also, in case it’s helpful: I looked at your other post briefly, and I don’t think the topic automatically excludes it from EA Grants.
More generally, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about the types of projects that might be falling through the cracks. I only recently started at CEA and am still thinking through what EA Grants should look like in the future (e.g. what niche it should fill within the funding space, how it can be better and more efficient). If you (or others) have thoughts on this topic, please email me: nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
This is so sweet and made me really happy to read <3
Hi Khorton,
Apologies! I missed your question. Most of the decisions have been made and funds disbursed, although there are a few decisions and fund disbursals that have been very delayed. This delay has been due to staff changes, an internal audit of our legal processes, and some more complex situations with a few of the applications. I’m in touch with those still waiting.
We have also discovered a number of other issues with the way grants were tracked and funded in 2017 and 2018. I’m working to resolve these issues, and intend to publicly follow up with more information later in the year.
If you have any more questions or concerns in the interim, please let me know: nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org. I’m always open to feedback and suggestions.
Hey Raemon—I run the EA Grants program at CEA. I’d be happy to chat! Email me at nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org if you want to arrange a time.
Thanks so much for writing this! This is something I think about in my work, but I’m sure still need to improve on.
Hey all,
I’m the EA Grants evaluator. We don’t usually comment publicly on reasons for not granting to something, but Greg gave us permission and encouragement in this case given the community interest. At this point I’m not excited to fund the EA Hotel’s general costs. My concerns are:
- Hotel management generally (including selection of guests/projects)
- Potential for community health issues, and concern about handling of a staffing issue
- Some concern about the handling of past PR situations; I think these were very difficult situations, but I think an excellent version of the hotel would have handled these better
I’m still happy to help with finding an excellent Project and Community Manager, and to consider topping up/extending funding for the right candidate, should the EA Hotel find general operating funding elsewhere.
Update on CEA’s EA Grants Program
Thanks for raising this! I agree with this concern, and more broadly think it’s important to do work to mitigate grantmaker biases and make the grantmaking ecosystem more robust. In this particular case I think the trade-offs are too high, the biggest ones being the ability to narrow CEA’s focus (which has historically been too broad) and our staff capacity.
This is a bit hard to go into detail without investing a lot of time. On a general level, I think some grants led to people starting projects with good, impactful output on areas EA cares about (including “meta”). This only describes some of the grants, but I think this is appropriate given the hits-based approach of this style of grantmaking. There were also some grants that I think created or deepened some risks without having much positive benefit. This is not specific to the particular grants made, but some of the general types of risks I would investigate if I did a more thorough review would be: impacts on the EA ecosystem/incentives (e.g. how does funding/not funding a particular project incentivize others), impacts on nascent fields (e.g. AI safety), and infohazards.
Hi all—just a quick note to thank everyone who has commented. I’ve been out on leave for personal reasons and will respond when I’m back. Apologies for the delay!
Thanks for this thoughtful comment! I agree with many of the points you raise. A few responses/clarifications:
On the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem: While I agree with you that EA Grants projected it would disburse more money than it actually did, when I said that “the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem was unclear” I primarily meant that there was ambiguity about which type of projects were likely to be accepted for EA Grants, and it was unclear to applicants whether they should apply to Funds or EA Grants. I also think that the hopes and plans for EA Grants were articulated but not clarified or updated, which they should have been as things evolved and EA Grants was failing to take the position in the grantmaking ecosystem it had originally claimed it would take (e.g. how much money it would disburse).
I agree that CEA’s communications have likely led to inaccurate perceptions of how much funding was available for early stage projects. It’s unclear to me how much of a shortage of funding there actually is, though, given what people expressed interest in doing this year. I think that a more important constraint in the ecosystem is not funding, but likely support and feedback for grantees and applicants. I think that it is very hard and time costly to give good feedback and support, but very important for individuals and early stage projects. This is part of why I’m excited about Charity Entrepreneurship’s incubation program. I am also exploring how the funding ecosystem may be able to provide more support to grantees to try to address this problem somewhat, though I expect this to be a hard problem to solve. On funding, if the Meta Fund sees funding shortages, I hope that they will make that known to donors, so that donors can fund the Meta Fund accordingly. To my knowledge, this has not been the case to date.
Where the freed up resources go is dependent on donors. EA Grants never had (to my knowledge) multi-year commitments. For example, since I’ve started, it’s been ~entirely funded by 1 anonymous donor.
EA Funds is already leveraging the improvements made for EA Grants. The work was not for nothing :)
I agree with this: “to fix things going forward, I think it’s important to have an accurate understanding of how they worked in the past. With respect to EA Grants, the past has involved a lot of overpromising and underdelivering, which seems to be a recurring theme in feedback.”
As mentioned in another response, where the freed up resources go is dependent on donors. EA Grants never had (to my knowledge) multi-year commitments. For example, since I’ve started, it’s been ~entirely funded by 1 anonymous donor. On funding, if the Meta Fund sees funding shortages, I hope that they will make that known to donors, so that donors can fund the Meta Fund accordingly. To my knowledge, this has not been the case to date, even though EA Grants has been somewhat limited in its disbursements this year.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree with most of your points, (though am a bit confused on your first one and would like to understand it better if you’d have the time to elaborate. EA Grants didn’t, when I was involved, have an overlapping funding mandate with CBGs, although I think that the distinction was a bit blurrier in the past). I am keen to work with others in the funding ecosystem so it can adapt in a good, healthy way. If you have more specific thoughts on how to make this happen, would love to hear them here or in a call.
Thanks for the comment! I agree. I think that whether this iteration makes sense will depend on what Funds can handle and what it looks like in the future. I do like this general idea of thinking creatively about how to best integrate EA Grants into EA Funds, and would be keen to hear more ideas if you have them.
I believe this has been fixed, but please let us know if you see any more issues.
Thanks for the question! My exact role is still being nailed down, but as an example, I’m likely to work on things related to risk mitigation. E.g. coordinating advice on how to give a talk to foreign government officials. Another consideration that’s related to staff capacity and is an input into this decision, is the importance of narrowing down CEA’s scope to allow more focus for the organization.
Hi Sanjay—apologies! It looks like we missed your question. We asked applicants if they were comfortable with us sharing their applications with other potential funders and we sometimes pass along promising projects. If you have more questions happy to follow-up via email: nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org. If you’d like to be alerted when the next open round is, please fill out the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeM4_1Um3qWI-s-DhE_LsV4YUGoh0KONvv452qeLXIxvsqYaw/viewform.