EA Meta Fund Grants – July 2020

agdfoster

EA Meta Fund Grants – July 2020

agdfoster

13 min readAug 12, 2020

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MaxRa

Thanks for the work and the concise summaries! I’m really happy with the EA funds.

While risks and reservations for these organizations have been taken into account, we do not discuss them below in most cases.

Reading this I thought that it’s unfortunate that this really valuable information is not communicated as well. Or does this stem from the private and/or person-affecting nature of those reservations? For example, I think I have little intuition about why some projects are considered to have some downside risk and are therefore better not funded/undertaken. Reading more about these kinds of thoughts could be useful.

Jonas_

(I recently joined CEA as Head of EA Funds. Responding from my own perspective, rather than the Meta Fund's.)

As you said, it's hard to publish critiques of organizations or the work of particular people without harming someone's reputation or otherwise posing a risk to the careers of the people involved.

I also agree with you that it's useful to find ways to talk about risks and reservations.

One potential solution is to talk about the issues in an anonymized, aggregate manner. I have been thinking about whether we could publish sufficiently anonymized examples of risks and reservations to give the community some examples of things we don't fund – we expect this will make it easier to understand why we reject some applicants. And I've given a talk about downside risks and 80,000 Hours have published an article about them.

agdfoster

+1. A major factor is also that writing tastefully and responsibly about the things we are concerned about with an organisation would probably more than double or triple the size of all our write-ups. I'd expect the amount of time it took us to carefully think through those write-ups would be much higher than for the main writeup and we would be more likely to make mistakes which resulted in impact destruction.

Where a concern is necessarily part of the narrative for the decision or it feels like it's very important and can easily be shared with confidence, I think we have. But generally it's not necessary for the argument, and we stick to the default policy.

HaydnBelfield

I really appreciate your recognition of this - really positive!

"it's hard to publish critiques of organizations or the work of particular people without harming someone's reputation or otherwise posing a risk to the careers of the people involved. I also agree with you that it's useful to find ways to talk about risks and reservations. One potential solution is to talk about the issues in an anonymized, aggregate manner."

MaxRa

Anonymized, aggregate thoughts sound like the perfect solution, and thanks for the pointers!

Jonas_

Update: The current LTFF AMA elaborates on common reasons for rejecting applications to some degree.

Commentator

This comment is not intended to detract from the work that WANBAM has done (it's partly premised on the assumption that their mentoring work has likely been valuable to the individual people receiving mentorship): what would your views be about funding an EA mentoring program that was open to male EAs?

The case for such an initiative being extremely valuable seems very strong on the face of it. This is based on the assumption that mentoring is very valuable to individuals (this may have collective benefits if it makes them more impactful) and that there are many people who would benefit from mentoring and can't access it who are men. Both of those assumptions seem uncontroversially true. I would not be surprised if extending mentoring to more EAs paid for itself several times over and the Meta Fund does not seem particularly funding constrained. Adjudicating how this compares to other initiatives would depend on more controversial questions, especially if mentoring time is a scarce resource which can only be allocated to a somewhat fixed number of individuals, but it seems worth reflecting about.

One reason why this seems worth discussing explicitly is that I think that many people would be afraid to pitch a mentoring scheme that was open to men given that WANBAM exists (as I am somewhat afraid to make this comment) in case anyone infers any nefarious motivation behind it.

Max_Daniel

I think that many people would be afraid to pitch a mentoring scheme that was open to men given that WANBAM exists

FWIW, I find this very surprising, and like Denise personally have the opposite intuition.

(What I would be hesitant to do - but not because I'm afraid but because I think it's a bad idea - is to pitch a mentoring scheme that explicitly emphasizes or discusses at length that it's open to men, or any other audience which is normally included and would be odd to single out.)

In general, the default for most things is that they're open to men, and I struggle to think of examples where the mere existence of an opportunity with this property has been controversial. (This is different from suggesting that specific existing opportunities should be open to men, or bringing up this topic in contexts where people are trying to discuss issues specific to other audiences. These can be controversial, but I think often for good and very mundane reasons.)

It's also worth noting that a lot of mentoring happens outside of explicitly designed mentorship schemes. For example, as part of my job, I'm currently mentoring or advising six people, five of which happen to be male. And personally I've e.g. benefitted from countless informal conversations about my career.

In fact, hopefully any kind of work together with more experienced people includes aspects of mentorship. Mentoring seems such a ubiquitous aspect of work relationships that it makes a lot of sense to me that specific mentorship schemes will tend to focus on gaps in the existing landscapes, e.g. aspects of mentorship not usually provided in the workplace or mentorship on issues specific to certain audiences.

Specific mentorship schemes thus only represent a tiny fraction of the total mentoring that's happening. As a consequence, I think the fact that some or all of them are only open to specific audiences or focus on specific kinds of mentorship is poor evidence for imbalances in the mentorship landscape at large. (Except perhaps indirectly, i.e. the fact that someone thought it's a good idea to start a scheme focused on X suggests there was a gap in X.)

Dale

-1

What I would be hesitant to do - but not because I'm afraid but because I think it's a bad idea - is to pitch a mentoring scheme that explicitly emphasizes or discusses at length that it's open to men, or any other audience which is normally included and would be odd to single out.)

In general, the default for most things is that they're open to men.

It is true that most things are open to men, in the sense that (at least in the west) most careers, associations and organisations are open to both men and women. But it seems definitely the case that it is much more common to exclude men from something than to exclude women. So if your principle opposing emphasizing the acceptance of widely-accepted groups was commonly held, it would actually oppose the existance of an EA mentoring group specifically for women.

Consider some examples from high status organizations:

* At Harvard there are 21 non-sport clubs dedicated for women - they get a special section on the website. In contrast, the only such club I can think of for men was the Black Man Forum.

* Goldman has a woman's network, but no men's network.

* Mckinsey has a women's network, but no men's network

* The Democratic Party Platform has multiple sections dedicated to women, but none to men. The Republican Party Platform is not really organized into sections, but a similar principle applies at the content level, to a lesser degree.

* The Department of Labor has a women's bureau, but no men's bureau.

* Girls are allowed to join Scouts now, but boys are not allowed to join Guides.

This is I think basically because advocating for men in general is viewed as very low status, whereas advocating for women in general is high status. Consider the differing levels of respect that Mens Rights Advocates are held in vs Feminists. Indeed, Robin Hanson, who has been very influential on many EA topics, was recently deplatformed from an EA group, after consultation with CEA, because of a smear campaign resulting from his advocacy with regard male-effecting suffering. Even if this was the right decision, I think it is clear that he would not have been treated so had he instead been raising awareness of female suffering.

In light of this I think the grandparent's caution makes perfect sense: given there is already a women's group, pitching a group that was open to men would only benefit men, and this sort of advocacy is at best viewed as cringe-worthy and low status, to at worst a cancelable offense.

It is also quite possible that a more inclusive mentoring group might undermine the women's mentoring one. Consider the case of the female-only universities. In the old days Bryn Mawr had extremely high quality students, because the top women had few alternatives; but since they gained the option to go to Harvard, Bryn Mawr has declined dramatically. A similar thing might happen here: if there was a universal mentoring group that gave women access to both male and female mentors, why would they choose the segregated group that restricted them to a subset of mentors?

Max_Daniel

Thanks for the pushback. I think my above comment was in parts quite terse, and in particular the "odd" in "would be odd to single out" does a lot of work.

So yes, it agrees with my impression that in a reference class of explicit formalized groups similar to those you mentioned it's more common for men to be excluded than for women to be excluded. The landscape is too diverse to make confident claims about all of it, but I think in most cases I'd basically think it isn't odd to explicitly single out women as target audience while it would be odd to explicitly single out men.

I suspect it would require a longer conversation to hash out what determines my assessments of 'oddness' and how appropriate they are relative to various goals one might have. Very briefly, some inputs are whether there was a history of different treatment of some audience, whether that audience still faces specific obstacles, has specific experiences or specific needs, and whether there are imbalances in existing informal groups (e.g. similar to the above point on mentoring being ubiquitous surely a lot of informal networking happens at McKinsey).

I think this kind of reasoning is fairly standard and also explains many instances of target audience restriction and specialization other than the ones we've been discussing here. For example, consider the Veterans Administration in the US or Alcoholics Anonymous.

I think I don't want to go into much more depth here, partly because it would be a lot of work, partly because I think it would be a quite wide-ranging discussion that would be off-topic here (and possibly the EA Forum in general). I appreciate this may be frustrating, and if you think it would be important or very helpful to you to understand my views in more detail I'd be happy to have a conversation elsewhere (e.g. send me a PM and we can find a time to call).

FWIW, while I suspect we have a lot of underlying disagreements in this area, I've appreciated your pushback against orthodox liberal views in other discussions on this forum, and I'm sorry that your comment here was downvoted.

Chi

Small point that's not central to your argument:

A similar thing might happen here: if there was a universal mentoring group that gave women access to both male and female mentors, why would they choose the segregated group that restricted them to a subset of mentors?

I had actually also asked WANBAM at some point whether they considered adding male mentors as well but for different reasons.

I think at least some women would still prefer female mentors. Anecdotally, I often made the experience that it's easier for other women to relate to some of my work-related struggles and that it's generally easier for me to discuss those struggles with women. This is definitely not true in every case but the hit rate (of connections where talking about work-struggles works really well) among women is much higher than among men and I expect this to be true for many other women as well.

Dale

I think at least some women would still prefer female mentors.

That makes perfect sense to me. But a co-ed mentoring group would presumably be able to offer female mentors to those who wanted them, leaving it equally good for those who preferred women and superior for those who were open-minded or preferred men. I guess some women might be too shy to specify "and I would like a women" in a mixed group, so having WANBAM allows them to satisfy their preference more discretely.

D_M_x

In short: yes, we are open to funding other mentorship programmes, including ones open to men.

I would be pretty sad if people felt less motivated to start a mentorship programme because we already funded another. I am hoping for the opposite effect. I agree that mentorship is very valuable.

My intuition is that people consider us willing to fund a project with one target audience as positive evidence for us willing to fund a similar project with a different target audience, as it provides proof of concept that we are willing to fund such projects in principle. For example, we have funded fundraising & tax-deductibility initiatives in different countries so far and we keep seeing applications for them.

If someone wants to start a mentorship programme with a different target audience to WANBAM, I am keen for them to apply to the Meta Fund.

agdfoster

I agree with Denise. Although it's worth noting that our bar for a mentorship program worth funding does have to be quite high.

Kirsten

I am not the meta fund, but I'd be excited to see a variety of quality mentoring schemes in EA with different goals (just like I'd be excited to see a variety of career coaching organisations and charity evaluators)

KMF

Hi, I am the CEO of WANBAM. I would be delighted to welcome and support emerging EA mentorship programs with lessons learnt and advice. You can reach me at [email protected]. One of the things I love about WANBAM is we are experimenting with what works (and doesn't)! I hope as we dial it in we will add value to emerging projects with lots of different communities and purposes. Be in touch! :)

weeatquince🔸

Thank you for the excellent write up. And thank you for all the good work you do.

My gut reaction to this post is that the Future of Humanity Foundation feels like the kind of project I'd expect to come under the Long Term Future Fund rather than the EA Meta Fund.

I would be curious to hear more about how the meta fund decides on projects that are meta in scope but cause area specific. (How do such grants align with donors' expectations? Do the grantmakers have expertise in domain specific issues? Is there an attempt to balance across cause areas? Etc)

Jonas_

I think FHF can be argued to fall within the scope of either fund. I'm sure you saw this part of the above report:

We see this as a promising meta initiative because The Future of Humanity Foundation is aiming to leverage FHI’s operations and increase its overall impact. (FHI itself also acts as a meta initiative to some degree, because it provides scholarships, promotes important ideas through popular science books, and trains early-career researchers through its Research Scholars Programme.)

I perceive this grant to be worldview-specific rather than cause-area-specific: there are several longtermist cause areas (AI safety, pandemic prevention, etc.) that FHI contributes to. Other grants (e.g., Happier Lives Institute, Charity Entrepreneurship) are also based on particular worldviews or even cause areas, so this is not unprecedented.

In general, I think it makes sense for the EA Infrastructure Fund (EAIF) to support both cause-neutral and cause-specific projects, as long as they have a meta component and the EAIF fund managers are well-placed to evaluate the projects.

I personally actually think it's pretty unclear what the EAIF's funding threshold and benchmark should be. The GHDF aims to beat GiveWell top charities, the AWF should match/beat OP's animal welfare grantmaking, the LTFF aims to beat OP's last longermist dollar, but there's no straightforward benchmark for the EAIF given that it's kind of cause-agnostic. I plan to work with the fund managers to define this more clearly going forward. Let me know if you have any ideas.

MichaelA🔸

Thanks for this write-up! Sounds like a bunch of cool projects.

Since 2015, over $19m has been given to high-impact charities recommended by FP. FP estimates that their research and advice played a significant role in $8m out of this total.

Do you mean that over $19m has been given to high-impact charities FP recommends by people FP talked to, but $11m might have been given to the same places anyway? That would seem to suggest a surprisingly high proportion of these people would've given anyway, and to the same places.

Or do you mean that the total amount given by anyone to all charities FP recommends is (presumably) around $19-20m? That would seem surprisingly little total donations, given the number of charities FP recommends, and that this is over a span of 5 years. And then that'd imply FP influenced about 40% of that total, which seems a surprisingly high proportion.

Also, do you actually just mean "high-impact charities", or high-impact organisations/recipients more broadly? I ask because I believe some of the orgs FP recommends aren't actually charities (e.g., in the existential risk area), though I could be wrong about that.

agdfoster

FP aren't a straight forward advisory group, they have a pledge and a community, so the $19m is the total to high-impact charities within their pledger community. FP's research team have attempted to estimate which of those donations happened as a result of FP advisory / marketing work, which is hard, and as with any self-reporting, open to becoming a KPI that ends up drifting and becoming misreported. My current view of the FP individuals that did this estimate work though is that they have high intellectual honesty and thoroughness, that they are aware of their own misincentives and when I spot-checked a number of their figures in 2018-19 they were good estimates, perhaps even on the conservative side.

MichaelA🔸

Ok, so it’s that the people who’ve taken FP‘s pledge have given an estimated >$19m over 5 years to high-impact charities (which includes e.g. charities that GiveWell recommends but FP doesn’t recommend in its cause are reports), and FP estimates it influenced whether or where ~$8m of that was donated?

That makes more sense than either of the things I guessed the sentence meant. Thanks for clarifying :)

agdfoster

High-impact, for simplicity, (they have a very large total number of grants) is set just as the rough status quo of groups on GiveWell, funded by Open Phil, ACE charities etc., FP manage their own list and we >90% are in agreement on what is in that list. None of the largest grants in the list are groups we feel conflicted about.

In an ideal world we would of course evaluate every group their pledgers have counterfactually funded but that's not really tractable. And we try to only use their quantitative outcomes as one of several signals as to how well they're doing (it's very tempting to fall into a rabbit hole of data analysis for a group with such clear and measurable first order outcomes)

Jonas_

I think it's the former of the two. Regarding the last paragraph, I think this refers to high-impact recipients (I think mostly or exclusively charities). But someone from the Meta Fund could answer these questions in more detail.

Comments

EA Meta Fund Grants – July 2020

EA Meta Fund Grants – July 2020

Grant rationale:

Applications

Questions

80,000 Hours - $300k

Founders Pledge - $200k

The Future of Humanity Foundation - $200k

WANBAM (Women and Non-Binary Altruism Mentorship) - $80k

gieffektivt.no - $30k

RC Forward - $15k

EA Netherlands (Lisa Gotoh and Jan-Willem van Putten) - workshops for professionals involved in policymaking - $13k