EA - Select examples of adverse selection in longtermist grantmaking by Linch

<a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sWMwGNgpzPn7X9oSk/select-examples-of-adverse-selection-in-longtermist">Link to original article</a><br/><br/>Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Select examples of adverse selection in longtermist grantmaking, published by Linch on August 23, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Sometimes, there is a reason other grantmakers aren't funding a fairly well-known EA (-adjacent) project. This post is written in a professional capacity, as a volunteer/sometimes contractor for EA Funds' Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF), which is a fiscally sponsored project of Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) and Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. I am not and have never been an employee at either Effective Ventures entity. Opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent that of any of my employers or of either Effective Ventures entity. I originally wanted to make this post a personal shortform, but Caleb Parikh encouraged me to make it a top-level post instead. There is an increasing number of new grantmakers popping up, and also some fairly rich donors in longtermist EA that are thinking of playing a more active role in their own giving (instead of deferring). I am broadly excited about the diversification of funding in longtermist EA. There are many advantages of having a diverse pool of funding: Potentially increases financial stability of projects and charities Allows for a diversification of worldviews Encourages accountability, particularly of donors and grantmakers - if there's only one or a few funders, people might be scared of offering justified criticisms Access to more or better networks - more diverse grantmakers might mean access to a greater diversity of networks, allowing otherwise overlooked and potentially extremely high-impact projects to be funded Greater competition and race to excellence and speed among grantmakers - I've personally been on both sides of being faster and much slower than other grantmakers, and it's helpful to have a competitive ecosystem to improve grantee and/or donor experience However, this comment will mostly talk about the disadvantages. I want to address adverse selection: In particular, if a project that you've heard of through normal EA channels hasn't been funded by existing grantmakers like LTFF, there is a decently high likelihood that other grantmakers have already evaluated the grant and (sometimes for sensitive private reasons) have decided it is not worth funding. Reasons against broadly sharing reasons for rejection From my perspective as an LTFF grantmaker, it is frequently imprudent, impractical, or straightforwardly unethical to directly make public our reasons for rejection. For example: Our assessments may include private information that we are not able to share with other funders. Writing up our reasons for rejection of specific projects may be time-consuming, politically unwise, and/or encourage additional ire ("punching down"). We don't want to reify our highly subjective choices too much, and public writeups of rejections can cause informational cascades. Often other funders don't even think to ask about whether the project has already been rejected by us, and why (and/or rejected grantees don't pass on that they've been rejected by another funder). Sharing negative information about applicants would make applying to EA Funds more costly and could discourage promising applicants. Select examples Here are some (highly) anonymized examples of grants I have personally observed being rejected by a centralized grantmaker. For further anonymization, in some cases I've switched details around or collapsed multiple examples into one. Most, although not all, of the examples are personal experiences from working on the LTFF. Many of these examples are grants that have later been funded by other grantmakers or private donors. An academic wants funding for a promising sounding existential safety research intervention in an area of study that none of the LTFF grantmakers ...

First published

08/23/2023

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Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Select examples of adverse selection in longtermist grantmaking, published by Linch on August 23, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Sometimes, there is a reason other grantmakers aren't funding a fairly well-known EA (-adjacent) project. This post is written in a professional capacity, as a volunteer/sometimes contractor for EA Funds' Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF), which is a fiscally sponsored project of Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) and Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. I am not and have never been an employee at either Effective Ventures entity. Opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent that of any of my employers or of either Effective Ventures entity. I originally wanted to make this post a personal shortform, but Caleb Parikh encouraged me to make it a top-level post instead. There is an increasing number of new grantmakers popping up, and also some fairly rich donors in longtermist EA that are thinking of playing a more active role in their own giving (instead of deferring). I am broadly excited about the diversification of funding in longtermist EA. There are many advantages of having a diverse pool of funding: Potentially increases financial stability of projects and charities Allows for a diversification of worldviews Encourages accountability, particularly of donors and grantmakers - if there's only one or a few funders, people might be scared of offering justified criticisms Access to more or better networks - more diverse grantmakers might mean access to a greater diversity of networks, allowing otherwise overlooked and potentially extremely high-impact projects to be funded Greater competition and race to excellence and speed among grantmakers - I've personally been on both sides of being faster and much slower than other grantmakers, and it's helpful to have a competitive ecosystem to improve grantee and/or donor experience However, this comment will mostly talk about the disadvantages. I want to address adverse selection: In particular, if a project that you've heard of through normal EA channels hasn't been funded by existing grantmakers like LTFF, there is a decently high likelihood that other grantmakers have already evaluated the grant and (sometimes for sensitive private reasons) have decided it is not worth funding. Reasons against broadly sharing reasons for rejection From my perspective as an LTFF grantmaker, it is frequently imprudent, impractical, or straightforwardly unethical to directly make public our reasons for rejection. For example: Our assessments may include private information that we are not able to share with other funders. Writing up our reasons for rejection of specific projects may be time-consuming, politically unwise, and/or encourage additional ire ("punching down"). We don't want to reify our highly subjective choices too much, and public writeups of rejections can cause informational cascades. Often other funders don't even think to ask about whether the project has already been rejected by us, and why (and/or rejected grantees don't pass on that they've been rejected by another funder). Sharing negative information about applicants would make applying to EA Funds more costly and could discourage promising applicants. Select examples Here are some (highly) anonymized examples of grants I have personally observed being rejected by a centralized grantmaker. For further anonymization, in some cases I've switched details around or collapsed multiple examples into one. Most, although not all, of the examples are personal experiences from working on the LTFF. Many of these examples are grants that have later been funded by other grantmakers or private donors. An academic wants funding for a promising sounding existential safety research intervention in an area of study that none of the LTFF grantmakers ...

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7 minutes

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The Nonlinear Library: EA Forum Weekly

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