Coming Around To Political Donations

Five years ago I read a post on the EA Forum arguing that "election campaign contributions might be a way in which you can have a substantial impact as a small donor". It struck me as weird but plausible: a combination that you see a lot of on the Forum.

A few months later I read another post, a case for Carrick Flynn in particular. It made a lot of sense, but while I don't remember my specific reservations I do remember not being convinced initially. After a lot of talking with Julia and others, however, this campaign did seem like a really promising opportunity. Six days later we made the donation:

We hadn't donated to a political campaign since college, but Julia was impressed with this candidate's work on pandemic preparedness, which is an area we've both thought was important for a long time. In general, we prefer to donate through funds because they are able to put a lot more time and attention into identifying excellent donation opportunities, but campaign finance rules mean this model doesn't work for political donations.

Flynn lost, and not for lack of funding. People took away a range of lessons (see the comments too!) from the attempt; personally my largest was that it's really important to assess early on whether the candidate is resonating with voters, and proxies like "previously elected to local office here" are super valuable.

The argument for individuals donating to support candidates still made sense to me, and I would still have been willing to do it for the right opportunity. For the next few years, however, I didn't come across any that were sufficiently compelling. And with a lot of other things going on in my life I didn't seek these out.

In Fall 2025 friends started discussing political donations more, and I met Eric Neyman who was putting together a working group to identify and rank political donation opportunities from the perspective of "making the long-term future go well." I read his analysis of cost-effectiveness of donating to Alex Bores' campaign, talked to friends, and talked with Bores himself briefly when I was in NYC for EAG. Not wanting to repeat earlier mistakes, I was glad to see he's already been evaluated by the electorate in becoming a state legislator. Which is not to say he'll definitely win: it's a competitive field and he's at 42% on Manifold. Still, I decided to donate, and later donated to several other people that some combination of Neyman's group, the Secure AI Project, and politics-focused EAs recommended. They've mostly been Democrats so far, but party isn't my goal: it's about what I expect the candidates will do if elected.

After continuing to think about this, I actually think I should make political donations my primary method of giving. The vast majority of charitable dollars legally can't go to candidates, and I don't expect this to change. Donors with a lot of money to distribute have the same lowish hard-dollar limits I have, and much of the remainder, including a lot of likely-forthcoming Anthropic employee funding, is in donor advised funds. This means my money is unusually well-suited to help fill what I see as one of the highest priority gaps.

This is not the full case (see Ozy, Lincoln, and Scott) but it's the part that took longest to click for me.

Overall I feel pretty mixed about this. On the one hand, for years I've wanted to apply my comparative advantage as an independent individual to make more impactful donations, and it's great to finally really be doing this. On the other, it's kind of depressing. It's a familiar feeling: when I moved from primarily funding global poverty to trying to reduce catastrophic risk I felt the same way: more distance from helping the world's poorest people in the present, when they would very clearly benefit a lot from my money. But I do think it's here my money will do the most good, and that's what drives me.