EA Funds hands out money very infrequently - should we be worried?

One issue is that the longer the fund holds on to donations, the more likely it is for the donor's intention and the fund's direction to diverge.

I might donate to the Animal Welfare fund expecting the money will be handed out to vegan advocacy and clean meat charities (and trust the fund manager to pick the best ones amongst these), but if the money isn't disbursed for two years, well, maybe wild animal suffering research will be the new hotness by then, and that's where my donation will end up going.

If I just want my donation to go to the expert's choice, then that might be fine. But if I had something more specific in mind (and in line with what the fund had recently donated to), this might not be ideal.

I also find it more instructive to think of it in terms of percentages -- the Global Development fund still holds 49% of all money it has received all time, the far future fund holds 95%, and the community fund holds 71%.

There can definitely be good reasons for this (such as more merits for giving later vs. giving now, or saving up to give a larger grant in one big batch). I don't know whether it's an intentional application of one of those two things or just that Nick and Ellie are exceptionally busy and have more important priorities than the EA Funds, but it would be nice for more transparency as to why funds are distributed the way they are. (Lewis does a good job at this.)

Is the money held invested at all?

I wanted to quickly answer a few questions about the Global Development Fund.

How quickly do I expect to allocate funds in the future?

I'm planning to consider allocating funds each time GiveWell allocates the funds it has received for granting at our discretion (by donors who choose to give to "Grants to recommended charities at GiveWell's discretion"). We normally allocate these funds four times each year, though the exact schedule can vary depending on staff capacity. My best guess is that, going forward, I'll allocate at the same time as GiveWell and likely follow GiveWell's allocation because we expect that our top charities will have more room for funding than we are able to fill with our discretionary funds.

This page shows how we've allocated funds given to us for granting at our discretion in the past: https://www.givewell.org/about/FAQ/discretionary-grantmaking.

What are the pros and cons of giving to this fund vs. (a) giving to GiveWell for granting at our discretion or (b) giving directly to one of GiveWell's top charities?

Pros:

• Giving to this fund could result in donations going to opportunities that I believe are more cost-effective than GiveWell's top charities because I can direct them to more speculative opportunities. I think this possibility is relatively unlikely in the near-term. Good Ventures, a large foundation with which we work closely, has supported GiveWell's Incubation program (https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants), our work to support the development of future top charities, in the past, and I think it's likely that it will support more speculative opportunities we identify and believe to be more cost-effective than our top charities. To be clear, it's possible that we find opportunities that we believe are outstanding and Good Ventures won't support them, or that we find so many opportunities that it exceeds Good Ventures appetite for Incubation Grants, but I think that's relatively unlikely to happen in the near future.

• Giving to this fund signals an interest in more speculative opportunities. It's helpful to me to know that there's significant interest in giving to global health and development opportunities that may not meet GiveWell's criteria. Some donors signal that interest by emailing / talking to me or others at GiveWell, but giving to this fund is a good way to directly signal that preference.

Cons:

• GiveWell has a fairly developed process for (a) answering questions that come in from donors and (b) proactively reaching out to donors to see if they have questions. Because EA Funds don't flow directly through us, EA Funds donors aren't part of that process. in my opinion, that gives those donors a worse donation experience than they'd have if they gave through GiveWell and gives us less ability to follow up with them and learn about their values and goals with their giving.

A request

If you're a donor to the fund and have preferences about (a) and (b) below, please let me know. I don't have information about the fund's donors or their preferences. Would you prefer that I:

• allocate money held in this fund when GiveWell allocates its funds unless I have another specific opportunity in mind.

• retain some funding (perhaps ~$500k) in case I identify something that I can't easily fund otherwise.

I also feel that, perhaps not now but if they grow much more, it would be worth sharing the responsibility among more than just one person per fund. They don't have to disagree vociferously on many subjects, just provide a basic sanity check on controversial decisions (and spreading the work might speed things up if research time is a limiting factor)

Update: The funds have now committed to a regular schedule of giving. link

I understand the desire of the fund to ensure the money is being handed out optimally, but there's two issues that worry me. First, like investing, there is often a compounding effect to altruism - you help someone locally and they are able to improve the local economy, help others, etc. We may be missing out on the benefits of donating now the current fund system. While there is an argument for giving later vs giving now, Assuming the money isn't properly invested and compounding (it may well be), then we're certainly losing out. People would be better off investing the money and giving it when people are ready to receive it.

Another issue is that by giving large grants there's a greater risk than many small donations. Over or underestimated project costs, inefficiencies, and the like contribute to a chance a donation ends up misallocated or wasted. These mistakes will certainly happen, but with large one-time grants, the risk is larger. Isn't the whole point of the fund to diversify and reduce risk and inefficiencies?

It seems like it's less risky and more efficient to just donate directly to the charities in the index. In fact, couldn't the fund just list where they recommended donations go at any given moment?