“Three things that surprised me about technical grantmaking at Coefficient Giving (fka Open Phil)” by null

Open Philanthropy's Coefficient Giving's Technical AI Safety team is hiring grantmakers. I thought this would be a good moment to share some positive updates about the role that I’ve made since I joined the team a year ago. tl;dr: I think this role is more impactful and more enjoyable than I anticipated when I started, and I think more people should consider applying. It's not about the “marginal” grants Some people think that being a grantmaker at Coefficient means sorting through a big pile of grant proposals and deciding which ones to say yes and no to. As a result, they think that the only impact at stake is how good our decisions are about marginal grants, since all the excellent grants are no-brainers. But grantmakers don’t just evaluate proposals; we elicit them. I spend the majority of my time trying to figure out how to get better proposals into our pipeline: writing RFPs that describe the research projects we want to fund, or pitching promising researchers on AI safety research agendas, or steering applicants to better-targeted or more ambitious proposals. Maybe more importantly, cG's technical AI safety grantmaking strategy is currently underdeveloped, and even junior grantmakers can help [...] ---Outline:(00:34) It's not about the marginal grants(03:03) There is no counterfactual grantmaker(05:15) Grantmaking is more fun/motivating than I anticipated(08:35) Please apply! --- First published: November 26th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gLt7KJkhiEDwoPkae/three-things-that-surprised-me-about-technical-grantmaking --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.