Utility Farm donations received

This is an online portal with information on donations that were announced publicly (or have been shared with permission) that were of interest to Vipul Naik. The git repository with the code for this portal, as well as all the underlying data, is available on GitHub. All payment amounts are in current United States dollars (USD). The repository of donations is being seeded with an initial collation by Issa Rice as well as continued contributions from him (see his commits and the contract work page listing all financially compensated contributions to the site) but all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies belongs to Vipul Naik. Current data is preliminary and has not been completely vetted and normalized; if sharing a link to this site or any page on this site, please include the caveat that the data is preliminary (if you want to share without including caveats, please check with Vipul Naik). We expect to have completed the first round of development by the end of July 2024. See the about page for more details. Also of interest: pageview data on analytics.vipulnaik.com, tutorial in README, request for feedback to EA Forum.

Table of contents

Basic donee information

ItemValue
Country United States
Websitehttps://www.utility.farm/
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Utility+Farm
Key peopleAbraham Rowe|Ari Benjamin
Launch date2017-04-05

Donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 2 20,000 30,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 40,000 40,000 40,000 40,000 40,000
Animal welfare 2 20,000 30,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 40,000 40,000 40,000 40,000 40,000

Donation amounts by donor and year for donee Utility Farm

Donor Total 2018
Effective Altruism Funds: Animal Welfare Fund (filter this donee) 60,000.00 60,000.00
Total 60,000.00 60,000.00

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (4 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Effective Altruism Foundation: Plans for 2020 (GW, IR)2019-12-23Jonas Vollmer Effective Altruism FoundationOpen Philanthropy Effective Altruism Foundation Raising for Effective Giving Wild-Animal Suffering Research Utility Farm Wild Animal Initiative Sentience politics Donee periodic updateEffective altruism/movement growth/s-risk reductionThe document includes the 2019 review and plans for 2020 of the Effective Altruism Foundation (EAD). Key highlights: EAD plans to change its name in 2020 as a rebranding effort to highlight its focus on s-risk reduction, rather than the effective altruism; as part of this, the Foundational Research Institute brand will also be deprecated. Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm merged to form Wild Animal Initiative, which is now completely separate from EAF. Raising for Effective Giving and Sentience Politics continue to be housed under EAF. The post also describes communication guidelines developed along with Nick Beckstead of the Open Philanthropy Project (that also made a $1 million grant to EAF). The guidelines "recommend highlighting beliefs and priorities that are important to the s-risk-oriented community" and "recommend communicating in a more nuanced manner about pessimistic views of the long-term future by considering highlighting moral cooperation and uncertainty, focusing more on practical questions if possible, and anticipating potential misunderstandings and misrepresentations." The post also says the guidelines will soon be made public, and that it was a mistake to not announce the guidelines earlier; doing so might have addressed https://www.simonknutsson.com/problems-in-effective-altruism-and-existential-risk-and-what-to-do-about-them/ and related concerns
Announcing Wild Animal Initiative2019-01-25Abraham Rowe Persis Eskander Wild Animal Initiative Wild Animal Initiative Utility Farm Wild-Animal Suffering Research MergerAnimal welfare/wild animal sufferingThe post announces that two organizations focused on wild animals, namely Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm, are merging into one organization called the Wild Animal Initiative. Cross-posted to https://was-research.org/blog/announcing-wild-animal-initiative/ on the Wild-Animal Suffering Research blog and to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jzikTHMSpckYg9ZPp/announcing-wild-animal-initiative (GW, IR) on the Effective Altruism Forum. See also the associated discussion on Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/ajr27e/announcing_wild_animal_initiative_wildanimal/
Building Support for Wild Animal Suffering2018-11-02Ozy Brennan Kieran Grieg Abraham Rowe Persis Eskander Effective Altruism Global Utility Farm Review of current state of cause areaAnimal welfare/wild animal welfareThis is a video, with transcript, of a panel moderated by Persis Eskander at Effective Altruism Global 2018, with participants zy Brennan, Kieran Greig, and Abraham Rowe. The panel discusses strategies around research and outreach to improve the welfare of wild animals
Reducing Wild Animal Suffering Ecosystem & Directory (GW, IR)2018-10-31Evan Gaensbauer Effective Altruism Forum Effective Altruism Foundation Wild-Animal Suffering Research Animal Ethics Utility Farm Rethink Priorities The Hedonistic Imperative The Abolitionist Project Qualia Research Institute Sentience Politics Sentience Institute Animal Charity Evaluators Review of current state of cause areaAnimal welfare/wild animal welfareThe post covers the current state of the ecosystem of efforts to reduce wild-animal suffiering. It includes a diagram depicting the relations between organizations mentioned in the post

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (2 donations)

Graph of top 10 donors (for donations with known year of donation) by amount, showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
DonorAmount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 2)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Effective Altruism Funds: Animal Welfare Fund20,000.0022018-12-30Animal welfare/wild animal welfarehttps://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare/payouts/2uyvubn8KUCoqOQS6A4ayWLewis Bollard Natalie Cargill Toni Adleberg Jamie Spurgeon Grant for researching tractable interventions to improve wild animal welfare. Utility Farm is a research organization that takes a practical approach, prioritizing the research of potentially tractable interventions. For example, they published a report on humane insecticides and they are currently research interventions to reduce the suffering of birds and small mammals caused by feral and free-ranging cats. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 5.87%.
Effective Altruism Funds: Animal Welfare Fund40,000.0012018-07-31Animal welfare/wild-animal sufferinghttps://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare/payouts/4Bianu30diUQeWGU2Oiq8ELewis Bollard Grant proposed along with two other grants related to the wild animals space; the amount of the grant was chosen based on the estimated room for more funding. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 3.32%.