Nice comment. One follow-up.

The only cases I see where I deviated heavily from the process and it went well was when I had worked extensively with the person before and knew them quite well 

Do you think this basically supports "hiring people you know to be good" and using your network and previous interactions with people not in an interview setting to seek out good candidates?

I feel like I might pull back on (1) by maybe 20% or so but the general ethos I still want to convey.

The part I didn't do as good a job of conveying is that most people won't donate out of risk aversion or keeping their options open and I think people are also far overestimating their odds of pivoting their career into a government role, especially in the next 3 years.

Even if you accept that the Trump administration wouldn't hire anyone who has ever donated to a Democrat, this is the first time this has happened and thus you shouldn't assume this type of thing is going to be common. 

All in all, I think it's going to be quite rare that someone shouldn't make political donations.

Thanks for not deleting the comment. Apology accepted, all good.

In what way is Canva a PfG company? They've had 7 (depending on how you count, up to 19) funding rounds from traditional venture capital firms. Equity is entirely ownership by private individuals, not charities. 

Hi Brad, appreciate the praise though it's unnecessary :). I'll reply to your points here. If there are some others you particularly want me to address, feel free to let me know.

We assert that, in expectation, a set of PFG equities should outperform an index fund. 

I don't think this has been shown. For example, the largest and most profitable companies in existence are normal for-profit companies.

That is to say, if all else is equal (same price, same quality, same convenience and other relevant factors), people would rather money go toward saving a kid from malaria than enriching a random investor. 

Maybe, though I haven't seen much/any evidence for this and I think things are very rarely ever equal like this.

In the next bit, you give several anecdotes. I think those are very easy to give. You probably don't show the failures (most of which you probably don't know of!) and I could give you millions of anecdotes about the free advertising, preferential treatment, etc. of other businesses. I agree, people wish the world were more charitable, but they don't want to pay for that.

Actually, I think there is a real-world example where what you are hoping for didn't happen, Glo dollar. They've been around for a while with a current Mcap of ~3M circulating, which is basically nothing (they can't even cover operating costs). Stablecoins are as close as one gets to a commodity/undifferentiated good, where, according to my understanding of PfG theory, they should have been able to dominate the market. The best talent should have flocked to develop Glo dollar. Stablecoin holders should have been more than happy to hold Glo dollars instead of USDC/USDT, since it's just a change of who gets the interest from treasuries. There should have been several compounding advantages and such.

I suppose my overall point about PfG would be that we should basically invest in good companies insofar as our discount rate is less than our expected returns, and we should seek to invest in good companies that will maximize our (risk-adjusted) returns. Focusing on so-called PfG companies will cause us to deviate from good investment strategies because people are going to see imaginary gains.

As a thought, why do we need to "start new companies" with this strategy, why can't we just buy up the stock of a random public company and then tell people, "you will further our philanthropic goals if you choose company A over company B since philanthropic holders own company A stock"?

Ill reply to a few points. If there is one you feel is very strong you want me to address, let me know. Again, I want to say that I think you clearly have great intentions with BOAS and PFG.

I do share monthly KPI's in our investor newsletter 

Yes, I meant that usually a pitch like this would have this if numbers were great. I do have some of the investor updates you sent me and I wouldn't disclose them without permission but I had them in mind.

2023 Revenue/Net Profit 30K/-47K. 2024 225K/-151K. 2025 450K/-170K.

I think you should just post 2025 revenue/gross profit/net profit to date. I guess a thing I have seen somewhat persistently is some rather large "expectations of growth" that are called conservative but frankly, aren't at all. From the OP,

• 10-year cumulative: €10M+ to EA causes + 195,000 tCO₂e avoided

From one €232k grant.

This type of thing is often presented as "happening" when it's more like you hope it to happen.

People can make up their own minds on benefits for PFG's existing or not. I can only anecdotally share that I have had many benefits of being a PFG.

I worry that this is going to come off a bit too negative but, I agree. Many people who wouldn't invest in this under normal circumstances are going to because it feels like a good cause and aren't looking at it as rigorously.

I want to be careful with the criticism here since I generally want to appreciate people working hard on things they believe in but I want to recommend against people donating to this on any kind of cost-effectiveness grounds. I've followed and received investor updates (though I have never given them any money) to BOAS for maybe ~2 years now seeing their operations ~4 years and have also read up on the Profit-For-Good stuff.

You shouldn't expect PfG companies to be great vs. alternatives.

If you want to make an investment that gives capital to philanthropic causes every year to, in the words of PfG, create a philanthropic multiple, you can simply invest in the stock market or in bonds and give the profits/dividends/appreciation to charity. If you do this, less money goes to the charities in year 1 but you get this "sustained over time". Similar things happen with endowments, certain trusts, etc. I don't see great evidence for any kind of special or magical

BOAS in particular doesn't seem like a great investment

BOAS has existed for several years now and, to put it bluntly, the numbers aren't great. Without the kind of philanthropic support it has received from seemingly non-economic actors, I think it would have died a while ago. This isn't to impune Vincent; most businesses fail and these types of consumer recycling marketplaces are just difficult and fail extremely frequently despite good intentions.

Any normal pitch for funding from a company this old would be showing a lot of metrics like monthly revenue, monthy net profit, etc. I think the fact that it isn't there is fairly telling.

Just donate directly or invest+donate

If BOAS isn't giving to your preferred cause areas, it obviously makes more sense to donate there directly. If Global Health is your preferred cause area, you should simply, donate there directly and/or invest money and give away returns.

I still think Brad and Vincent are fighting, with valour, for an idea they believe in and I commend them for this but I just don't think this idea is working. When this is the case, it's better that they get the sign "from the market" rather than continue to fund their project.

Something that came to mind while reading this was that this is probably a somewhat common (though by no means majority) experience. EA isn't about helping other EAs, though this is often an instrumental goal; it's about doing good for the world and thus I'd expect some people to be a bit bored by it sometimes and such.

I appreciate this post, upvoted. I agree with basically all the reasons for donating. Alex Bores is one of the few potential politicians who has shown any care at all about existential risk from AI, has great EA-minded staff around him, cares about other EA priorities (like AW), and rare for a politician, seems like he might be an overall decent person.

I want to push back on the career implications/career capital costs of making a donation like this. I think EAs are, by in large, far too paranoid about these kind of risks and stress out about analyzing them so I want to give the following points.

1. Nobody cares. People in practice simply don't look up this type of stuff. They just don't. Have you ever done checked the political donations of even your closest friends/family? If you've ever hired somebody, have you ever looked into them on this type of thing on a background check? Nobody is following your life that attentively other than you. Everyone else is like you, they don't look up random people's political donations. You can dance and donate like nobody's watching because nobody is.
2. This type of donation is extremey defensible and justifiable. When asked about it, you simply say "yes, existential risk from AI is one of my top priorities and Alex was one of the few politicians taking it seriously at the time". If he does something bad in the future you just say "yes, at the time he seemed to care about AI safety. Unfortunately I was wrong".

3. People forget and change their minds. The current President, Donald Trump is not someone who most would consider to be accepting of criticism and dissent, to put it lightly. With that in mind, here are some things JD Vance has said about Trump prior to become Vice President:

   “My god, what an idiot.”

   “America’s Hitler” or a “cynical asshole like Nixon.”

   “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy. I never liked him.”

   “Trump is cultural heroin.”

   Other Trump appointees have said similar things. In practice, this type of stuff just doesn't matter. The half life of the importance of donations/speech on careers is extremely short, if it even matters in the first place

Here are some more additional reasons to make this donation:

1. There's a limit to who can donate and how much they can donate. Only US citizens and permanent residents can donate up to a certain amout.
2. As much as possible, it'd be good for there to be a political coalition for people that care about AI safety. Showing that this exists will make AI safety a more politically salient issue, somewhat like environmentalism.