The Nonlinear Library EA - Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund: March 2024 recommendations by Linch
May 27, 2024
29:58
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: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund: March 2024 recommendations, published by Linch on May 27, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This payout report covers the EA Infrastructure Fund's grantmaking from June 16th 2023 to March 31st 2024 (9.5 months). It follows our
previous June 2023 payout report.
Total funding recommended: $1,697,882
Total funding paid out[1]: $1,386,854
Number of grants paid out: 41
Acceptance rate (excluding desk rejections): 49/173 = 28.3%
Acceptance rate (including desk rejections): 18.4% (49/266)
Report authors: Linchuan Zhang (primary author), Caleb Parikh (interim fund chair), Harri Bescelli, Tom Barnes
Funding breakdown[2]
EA Groups: $456,780 granted across 18 grants
EA-related Groups: $312,304 granted across 6 grants
EA Content: $78,216 granted across 3 grants
EA Services and Infrastructure: $179,957 granted across 6 grants
Effective Giving: $53,000 granted across 2 grants
Research: $216,535 granted across 6 grants
[Total]: $1,386,854
8 of our grantees, who received a total of $521, 206, requested that our public reports for their grants are anonymized (they're written below). 1 grantee, who received $2,500, requested that we do not have a public report at all (You can read our policy on public reporting
here). Our median response time over this period was 27 days, and our average response time was 42 days. For paid out grants, our median and average turnaround times are 57 and 61 days, respectively.
Highlighted Grants
Below we've highlighted some grants from this round that we thought were particularly interesting and that represent a relatively wide range of EAIF's activities. We hope that these reports will help donors make more informed decisions about whether to donate to EAIF, as well as help the wider community understand our work.
Rethink Priorities Worldview Investigations Team ($168,000): Stipend to improve their
Cross-Cause Cost-Effectiveness Model, including a portfolio builder to help individuals and foundations prioritize their philanthropic spending. [Grant type: Research]
Note: This grant, while approved, has not yet been paid out, pending due diligence.
This project fits in well with the EA Infrastructure Fund's tentative reorientation towards
Principles-Focused Effective Altruism.
The fund managers were highly impressed by the ambitious scope of this endeavor. Despite the EA movement existing for over a decade, there were no other publicly available cross-cause models with comparable breadth and an EA-informed perspective. The gap suggests that creating such a comprehensive model is much more challenging than it might initially seem.
The fund managers admired the team's intention to produce a practical tool that funders could realistically use, rather than (e.g.) purely theoretical work on cause prioritization.
However, some fund managers were concerned about the default values used in the Cross-Cause Model, which sometimes appeared insufficiently principled or overly conservative. Caleb Parikh, the primary investigator for this grant,
provided more detailed thoughts in a comment.
Overall, while excited to grant this project presently, the fund managers believe continued excitement for renewing the grant or offering similar grants hinges on a few key conditions:
1. The methodology employed in Rethink Priorities' Cost-Effectiveness Model should be broadly reasonable, and easy for EAIF's fund managers to endorse
2. The project should demonstrate potential to genuinely influence decision-making among major funders.
3. We should broadly believe the team's proposed improvements to the model are likely to be useful.
Despite the high expected value, the fund managers acknowledge that real-world grantmaking decisions often involve holistic, contextual factors that may limit the direct impact of even thoughtfully-designed the...
This payout report covers the EA Infrastructure Fund's grantmaking from June 16th 2023 to March 31st 2024 (9.5 months). It follows our
previous June 2023 payout report.
Total funding recommended: $1,697,882
Total funding paid out[1]: $1,386,854
Number of grants paid out: 41
Acceptance rate (excluding desk rejections): 49/173 = 28.3%
Acceptance rate (including desk rejections): 18.4% (49/266)
Report authors: Linchuan Zhang (primary author), Caleb Parikh (interim fund chair), Harri Bescelli, Tom Barnes
Funding breakdown[2]
EA Groups: $456,780 granted across 18 grants
EA-related Groups: $312,304 granted across 6 grants
EA Content: $78,216 granted across 3 grants
EA Services and Infrastructure: $179,957 granted across 6 grants
Effective Giving: $53,000 granted across 2 grants
Research: $216,535 granted across 6 grants
[Total]: $1,386,854
8 of our grantees, who received a total of $521, 206, requested that our public reports for their grants are anonymized (they're written below). 1 grantee, who received $2,500, requested that we do not have a public report at all (You can read our policy on public reporting
here). Our median response time over this period was 27 days, and our average response time was 42 days. For paid out grants, our median and average turnaround times are 57 and 61 days, respectively.
Highlighted Grants
Below we've highlighted some grants from this round that we thought were particularly interesting and that represent a relatively wide range of EAIF's activities. We hope that these reports will help donors make more informed decisions about whether to donate to EAIF, as well as help the wider community understand our work.
Rethink Priorities Worldview Investigations Team ($168,000): Stipend to improve their
Cross-Cause Cost-Effectiveness Model, including a portfolio builder to help individuals and foundations prioritize their philanthropic spending. [Grant type: Research]
Note: This grant, while approved, has not yet been paid out, pending due diligence.
This project fits in well with the EA Infrastructure Fund's tentative reorientation towards
Principles-Focused Effective Altruism.
The fund managers were highly impressed by the ambitious scope of this endeavor. Despite the EA movement existing for over a decade, there were no other publicly available cross-cause models with comparable breadth and an EA-informed perspective. The gap suggests that creating such a comprehensive model is much more challenging than it might initially seem.
The fund managers admired the team's intention to produce a practical tool that funders could realistically use, rather than (e.g.) purely theoretical work on cause prioritization.
However, some fund managers were concerned about the default values used in the Cross-Cause Model, which sometimes appeared insufficiently principled or overly conservative. Caleb Parikh, the primary investigator for this grant,
provided more detailed thoughts in a comment.
Overall, while excited to grant this project presently, the fund managers believe continued excitement for renewing the grant or offering similar grants hinges on a few key conditions:
1. The methodology employed in Rethink Priorities' Cost-Effectiveness Model should be broadly reasonable, and easy for EAIF's fund managers to endorse
2. The project should demonstrate potential to genuinely influence decision-making among major funders.
3. We should broadly believe the team's proposed improvements to the model are likely to be useful.
Despite the high expected value, the fund managers acknowledge that real-world grantmaking decisions often involve holistic, contextual factors that may limit the direct impact of even thoughtfully-designed the...