Benjamin Hoffman donations made

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 donor information

ItemValue
Country United States
Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions)GiveWell
Facebook username benjamin.r.hoffman
LinkedIn username benjaminrhoffman
Websitehttp://benjaminrosshoffman.com/
LessWrong usernameBenquo
Effective Altruism Forum usernameBenHoffman
Effective Altruism Hub usernameben-hoffman
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)

Donor donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 5 100 2,686 3 3 3 100 100 100 100 1,000 1,000 12,229 12,229
AI safety 3 100 4,111 3 3 3 3 100 100 100 12,229 12,229 12,229 12,229
1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Life sciences 1 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000

Donation amounts by cause area and year

If you hover over a cell for a given cause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

Note: Cause area classification used here may not match that used by donor for all cases.

Cause area Number of donations Number of donees Total 2017 2016 2015 2014 2012
AI safety (filter this donor) 3 1 12,332.00 100.00 0.00 3.00 12,229.00 0.00
Life sciences (filter this donor) 1 1 1,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,000.00
(filter this donor) 1 1 100.00 0.00 100.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 5 3 13,432.00 100.00 100.00 3.00 12,229.00 1,000.00

Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by subcause area and year

If you hover over a cell for a given subcause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.

For the meaning of “classified” and “unclassified”, see the page clarifying this.

Subcause area Number of donations Number of donees Total 2017 2015 2014 2012
AI safety 3 1 12,332.00 100.00 3.00 12,229.00 0.00
Life sciences 1 1 1,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,000.00
Classified total 4 2 13,332.00 100.00 3.00 12,229.00 1,000.00
Unclassified total 1 1 100.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 5 3 13,432.00 100.00 3.00 12,229.00 1,000.00

Graph of spending by subcause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by subcause area and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by donee and year

Donee Cause area Metadata Total 2017 2016 2015 2014 2012
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (filter this donor) AI safety FB Tw WP Site CN GS TW 12,332.00 100.00 0.00 3.00 12,229.00 0.00
Brain Preservation Foundation (filter this donor) 1,000.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,000.00
Donor lottery (filter this donor) 100.00 0.00 100.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total -- -- 13,432.00 100.00 100.00 3.00 12,229.00 1,000.00

Graph of spending by donee and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by donee and year (cumulative)

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Donation amounts by influencer and year

Sorry, we couldn't find any influencer information.

Donation amounts by disclosures and year

Sorry, we couldn't find any disclosures information.

Donation amounts by country and year

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Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (6 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Why I am no longer supporting REACH2018-11-15Benjamin Hoffman Compass Rose Berkeley REACH Third-party case against donationRationality communityHoffman gives an update to his previous post (which was in support of REACH). Hoffman accuses REACH of banning a close friend of his without detailing the conduct that resulted in the ban or the evidence for the ban. REACH founder Sarah Spikes responds in comments.
Humans need places (GW, IR)2018-04-19Benjamin Hoffman LessWrong Berkeley REACH Third-party case for donationRationality communityHoffman brings up REACH in the context of one of his older posts, “Why I am not a Quaker (even though it often seems as though I should be)”, and presents a case for funding REACH.
Claim explainer: donor lotteries and returns to scale (GW, IR)2016-12-30Benjamin Hoffman LessWrong Donor lottery Miscellaneous commentaryHoffman explains donor lotteries, explaining both the "selfish" and "greater good" reasons for entering donor lotteries
Donor lotteries: demonstration and FAQ (GW, IR)2016-12-07Carl Shulman Effective Altruism ForumTimothy Telleen-Lawton Gregory Lewis Ajeya Cotra Rohin Shah Helen Toner Nicole Ross Howie Lempel Rebecca Raible Pablo Stafforini Aaron Gertler Brayden McLean Benjamin Hoffman Catherine Olsson Eric Herboso Ian David Moss Glenn Willen Jacob Steinhardt Brandon Reinhart Donor lottery Donee donation caseCarl Shulman announces a donor lottery coordinated/sponsored by Paul Christiano, and provides a FAQ discussing questions people might have for participating in the lottery
CFAR - Second Impression and a Bleg2013-12-26Benjamin Hoffman Center for Applied Rationality Evaluator review of doneeEpistemic institutionsReview of CFAR along with suggestion that people donate to it for its fundraiser. Also links to official CFAR funding ask https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JjGs6mDZxeCWkg3ii/why-cfar (GW, IR) (published after original version of post was published
A First Impression Review of the CFAR NY Workshop2013-11-04Benjamin Hoffman Center for Applied Rationality Evaluator review of doneeEpistemic institutionsInitial impressions of CFAR workshop. See http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/cfar-second-thoughts-and-a-bleg/ for updated thoughts

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (5 donations)

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

Graph of donations and their timeframes
DoneeAmount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 5)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Machine Intelligence Research Institute100.0032017AI safetyhttps://web.archive.org/web/20170204024838/https://intelligence.org/topdonors/--
Donor lottery100.0032016-12-24--http://effective-altruism.com/ea/14d/donor_lotteries_a_stepbystep_guide_for_mall/--
Machine Intelligence Research Institute3.0052015AI safetyhttps://web.archive.org/web/20150507195856/https://intelligence.org/donortools/topdonors.php--
Machine Intelligence Research Institute12,229.0012014AI safetyhttp://archive.today/2014.10.10-021359/http://intelligence.org/topdonors/--
Brain Preservation Foundation1,000.0022012Life scienceshttps://archive.is/2018.04.06-190728/http://www.brainpreservation.org/donors/-- Donation given specifically to the Evaluation Fund.

Similarity to other donors

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