Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund donations made (filtered to cause areas matching Forecasting)

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 Kingdom
Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions)Centre for Effective Altruism
Websitehttps://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community
Donations URLhttps://app.effectivealtruism.org/
Regularity with which donor updates donations datairregular
Regularity with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update)irregular
Lag with which donor updates donations datamonths
Lag with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update)days
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)

Brief history: This is one of four Effective Altruism Funds that are a program of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). The creation of the funds was inspired by the success of the EA Giving Group donor-advised fund run by Nick Beckstead, and also by the donor lottery run in December 2016 by Paul Christiano and Carl Shulman (see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WvPEitTCM8ueYPeeH/donor-lotteries-demonstration-and-faq (GW, IR) for more). EA Funds were introduced on 2017-02-09 in the post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/a8eng4PbME85vdoep/introducing-the-ea-funds (GW, IR) and launched on 2017-02-28 in the post http://effective-ahttps://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iYoSAXhodpxJFwdQz/ea-funds-beta-launch The first round of allocations was announced on 2017-04-20 at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MsaS8JKrR8nnxyPkK/update-on-effective-altruism-funds (GW, IR) The funds allocation information appears to have next been updated in November 2017; see https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/1606722932717391/ for more. This particular fund was previously called the Community Fund; in October 2018, the blog post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yYHKRgLk9ufjJZn23/announcing-new-ea-funds-management-teams (GW, IR) announced that it was renamed to the Meta Fund to more accurately reflect its use for funding activities (such as cause prioritization) that are "meta" but not necessarily tied to community-building

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: As the name suggests, the Fund's focus area is "meta" activities related to effective altruism. This includes some activities that directly and explicitly relate to effective altruism, as well as other activities that are related more broadly to promoting a culture of more and smarter philanthropy. It also covers cause prioritization and foundational research work. At inception, the Fund had Nick Beckstead of Open Philanthropy its sole manager. Beckstead stepped down in August 2018, and October 2018, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yYHKRgLk9ufjJZn23/announcing-new-ea-funds-management-teams (GW, IR) announces a new management team for the Fund, comprising Luke Ding (chair), Denise Melchin, Matt Wage, Alex Foster, and Tara MacAulay as members, and Nick Beckstead as advisor

Notes on grant decision logistics: Money from the fund is supposed to be granted about thrice a year, with the target months being November, February, and June. Actual grant months may differ from the target months. The amount of money granted with each decision cycle depends on the amount of money available in the Fund as well as on the available donation opportunities. Grant applications can be submitted any time; any submitted applications will be considered prior to the next grant round (each grant round has a deadline by which applications must be submitted to be considered)

Notes on grant publication logistics: Grant details are published on the EA Funds website, and linked to from the Fund page. Each grant is accompanied by a brief description of the grantee's work (and hence, the intended use of funds) as well as reasons the grantee was considered impressive

Notes on grant financing: Money in the Meta Fund only includes funds explicitly donated for that Fund. In each grant round, the amount of money that can be allocated is limited by the balance available in the fund at that time

This entity is also a donee.

Donor donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 2 73,500 154,022 73,500 73,500 73,500 73,500 73,500 73,500 234,543 234,543 234,543 234,543 234,543
Epistemic institutions 2 73,500 154,022 73,500 73,500 73,500 73,500 73,500 73,500 234,543 234,543 234,543 234,543 234,543

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 2021
Epistemic institutions (filter this donor) 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00
Total 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00

Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.

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 2021
Epistemic institutions/forecasting 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00
Classified total 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00
Unclassified total 0 0 0.00 0.00
Total 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00

Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.

Donation amounts by donee and year

Donee Cause area Metadata Total 2021
Metaculus (filter this donor) 308,043.00 308,043.00
Total -- -- 308,043.00 308,043.00

Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.

Donation amounts by influencer and year

If you hover over a cell for a given influencer 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.

Influencer Number of donations Number of donees Total 2021
Michael Aird|Max Daniel|Michelle Hutchinson|Buck Shlegeris|Chi Nguyen 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00
Classified total 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00
Unclassified total 0 0 0.00 0.00
Total 2 1 308,043.00 308,043.00

Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.

Donation amounts by disclosures and year

Sorry, we couldn't find any disclosures information.

Donation amounts by country and year

Sorry, we couldn't find any country information.

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (0 documents)

There are no documents associated with this donor.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (2 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 2)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Metaculus234,543.0012021-07Epistemic institutions/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/may-august-2021-ea-infrastructure-fund-grantsMichael Aird Max Daniel Michelle Hutchinson Buck Shlegeris Chi Nguyen Donation process: Part of a set of grants that were decided between May and August 2021. This includes grant applications from the Q2 grant cycle as well as rolling applications since then; the exact timing of this particular grant is not stated.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: The grant page lists the grant purpose as "Salaries for Metaculus staff to support EA-related forecasting, assessing the impact of their work, and other activities." Activities that might be funded by the grant include: "(1) Running ~10 forecasting tournaments on EA-relevant topics in partnership with relevant stakeholders, as part of their Epistemic institutions/forecasting Causes program. Examples of the topics these tournaments may focus on include biosecurity, animal welfare, artificial intelligence, climate change, and global poverty. (2) Improving Metaculus’s processes so that these tournaments get better results and require less work from the organizations with whom they partner. (3) Building features and tools to help forecasters make forecasts, and to help decision-makers interpret those forecasts. (4) Conducting and publishing an annual impact survey."

Other notes: Within two months of this grant, the Infrastructure Fund makes another grant to Metaculus for $73,500 (the order between the grants is not clear, but the grant page says they are separated by two months). In a quick take comment https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pwnvva4AHfxYZmaGM/ea-infrastructure-fund-may-august-2021-grant-recommendations?commentId=YkLKFcrkLrYvPYbHL (GW, IR) Ozzie Gooen writes: "Seems pretty safe and I look forward to the results. One small point is that I think Metaculus might be a c-corp startup; if this is the case, it could be neat if future donations come with equity. (Mainly a concern if donations increase, and the investment is general-purpose)". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 13.79%.
Metaculus73,500.0022021-07Epistemic institutions/forecastinghttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/may-august-2021-ea-infrastructure-fund-grantsMichael Aird Max Daniel Michelle Hutchinson Buck Shlegeris Chi Nguyen Donation process: Part of a set of grants that were decided between May and August 2021. This includes grant applications from the Q2 grant cycle as well as rolling applications since then; the exact timing of this particular grant is not stated.

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Grant for "1-year salary for an EA Question Author + [$20,000 for] prize pools for EA-related competitions." The competitions include a fortified essay competition as https://metaculus.medium.com/aligning-incentives-for-forecast-accuracy-relevance-and-efficacy-a-new-paradigm-for-metaculus-26b0e79616cb describes. The EA Question Author's tasks include: "(1) Helping to determine which cause areas and topics to run tournaments on. (2) Developing EA-relevant forecasting questions. (3) Writing summaries and reports on EA-relevant forecasting questions developed by others. (4) Liaising with EA organizations and local groups."

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount is chosen as the sum of the cost of the two things being funded: the 1-year salary and the $20,000 prize pool.
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 4.32%

Other notes: Within two months of this grant, the Infrastructure Fund makes another grant to Metaculus for $73,500 (the order between the grants is not clear, but the grant page says they are separated by two months). In a quick take comment https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pwnvva4AHfxYZmaGM/ea-infrastructure-fund-may-august-2021-grant-recommendations?commentId=YkLKFcrkLrYvPYbHL (GW, IR) Ozzie Gooen writes: "Seems pretty safe and I look forward to the results. One small point is that I think Metaculus might be a c-corp startup; if this is the case, it could be neat if future donations come with equity. (Mainly a concern if donations increase, and the investment is general-purpose)". Intended funding timeframe in months: 12.

Similarity to other donors

Sorry, we couldn't find any similar donors.