Thanks for sharing this, wonderful writing! Have you thought about sending this to Emma Goldberg? :-)

It might also be the safest way to "incubate" an AI Safety organisation (for all the Entrepreneurs out there).

Can you expand on this a bit? Do you mean field-building orgs, or any AIS org in general? :)

Thanks for mentioning all of these! Bluedot has put out so much awesome stuff for the broader fieldbuilding community!

We tried this before with a few groups, and found that adding a third party to organizing a course (especially for smaller courses) can actually add more work than it saves.

Could you expand on this a bit more? This is basically the main crux for us to be running this kind of program, or at least for including groups who would otherwise be able to put up their own courses. Can you think of some specific failure modes that we should be mindful of?

Someone mentioned to me that the problem they see with AISC is that its scope is way too broad. 

I think it's great that you can accommodate a lot of different projects, but I would guess this does make it harder for you to make the case for funding. 

Would you consider giving the option to funders to only fund certain types of projects? I could imagine many people wanting to fund technical research, but not advocacy, and vice versa. 

Thank you for asking, I edited to post to make this clearer. This program is intended for AIS fieldbuilders who would like to run courses in the near future, as well as potential course facilitators who would like to help us with this initiative.

Thanks for the post, Jamie!

Given the call for the Ask me Anything, I was wondering if you would be able to share additional context on the following from your application form:

Important Note: The EA Infrastructure Fund and the Long-Term Future Fund are currently unable to make grants with an end date after August 31st 2025, and any applications to these funds must have a grant period which ends on or before this date. We are working on a solution to this, and hope to be able to remove this restriction as soon as possible. If you were intending to apply for a grant past this date, you are welcome to apply for funding up until August 31st 2025, and once we’re able to make grants past this date again you will be able to apply again for the remaining period.

I'm specifically interested in asking about:

once we’re able to make grants past this date again you will be able to apply again for the remaining period

Is there a risk that EAIF will have to pause grantmaking after August if the issue is not solved, or do you expect this not to be a problem by then?

Thanks for providing such a quick update, Joris! 

we are not currently setting up the systems to provide part-time organizer financial support, but we are exploring whether to offer financial support for part-time organizers in the future

Would you recommend that uni group organisers in need of a part-time salary apply for funding from elsewhere in the meantime, such as EAIF?

new introductory resource for AI risk

Is there a public link to this? :)

On a related note, if all of these grants were rejected, would the applicants asking for 10-25% less funding would make them pass your bar? Do you often end up funding the "MVP" version of a project as opposed to the "mainline budget" they propose?

Thanks for sharing this, I have been really enjoying reading the comms coming from EAIF/LTFF lately! Here are some observations/feedback on the post:

Below is a fictionalized list of grants the Long-term Future Fund (LTFF) narrowly rejected or accepted in the last 6 months. We aim to broadly convey which grants we barely rejected, while anonymizing any individual one.
[...]
As the grants we’ve fictionalized are grants LTFF narrowly accepted or rejected

After reading the post, I feel like I really miss knowing which of these did or did not pass your bar. I understand that these are fictional examples that are all very close to the bar, but I think others might feel the same way. If you think it might be worth spelling out why you don't think it makes sense to give explicit verdicts.

The above fictionalized examples illustrate grants that are at or just below our current funding threshold

Or perhaps this means all of them were rejected? (It might just be my English, but it's not clear to me if something is at your funding bar, then you would accept or reject it)