This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. 

Commenting and feedback guidelines:

I'm posting this to get it out there. I'd love to see comments that take the ideas forward, but criticism of my argument won't be as useful at this time, in part because I won't do any further work on it.

This is a post I drafted in November 2023, then updated for an hour in March 2025. I don’t think I’ll ever finish it so I am just leaving it in this draft form for draft amnesty week (I know I'm late). I don’t think it is particularly well calibrated, but mainly just makes a bunch of points that I haven’t seen assembled elsewhere. Please take it as extremely low-confidence and there being a low-likelihood of this post describing these dynamics perfectly.

I’ve [...]

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Outline:

(02:45) Deference is everywhere

(04:39) Funders often lack information you have access to

(08:29) Funders often don't share your values

(09:58) Funders have experience in grantmaking. That is different from experience doing the work.

(11:48) What can we do to make this better?

(12:22) There are lots of issues with over-updating on this!

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First published:
March 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/adZEA4SEkab4SZhTx/on-deference-to-funders

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.