Gwern Branwen 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
Facebook username gwern.branwen
Websitehttp://www.gwern.net/
Twitter usernamegwern
LessWrong usernamegwern
Effective Altruism Forum usernamegwern
GitHub usernamegwern
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?person=Gwern+Branwen

Donor donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 10 20 469 0 0 0 6 20 20 50 50 540 1,000 3,000
Global health 2 0 1,500 0 0 0 0 0 0 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000
AI safety 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Digital preservation 3 20 342 6 6 6 6 20 20 20 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000
Technology 1 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
Life sciences 2 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50
Global poverty 1 540 540 540 540 540 540 540 540 540 540 540 540 540

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 2015 2012 2011
Global health (filter this donor) 2 1 3,000.00 0.00 3,000.00 0.00 0.00
Digital preservation (filter this donor) 3 1 1,026.00 0.00 1,000.00 6.00 20.00
Global poverty (filter this donor) 1 1 540.00 0.00 540.00 0.00 0.00
Life sciences (filter this donor) 2 1 100.00 0.00 50.00 50.00 0.00
Technology (filter this donor) 1 1 20.00 20.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
AI safety (filter this donor) 1 1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 10 6 4,686.00 20.00 4,590.00 56.00 20.00

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 2012 2011
Global health 2 1 3,000.00 0.00 3,000.00 0.00 0.00
Digital preservation 3 1 1,026.00 0.00 1,000.00 6.00 20.00
Global poverty 1 1 540.00 0.00 540.00 0.00 0.00
Life sciences 2 1 100.00 0.00 50.00 50.00 0.00
Technology 1 1 20.00 20.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
AI safety 1 1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Classified total 10 6 4,686.00 20.00 4,590.00 56.00 20.00
Unclassified total 0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total 10 6 4,686.00 20.00 4,590.00 56.00 20.00

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 2015 2012 2011
Against Malaria Foundation (filter this donor) Global health/malaria FB Tw WP Site GW CN GS TW 3,000.00 0.00 3,000.00 0.00 0.00
Internet Archive (filter this donor) WP Site 1,026.00 0.00 1,000.00 6.00 20.00
GiveDirectly (filter this donor) Cash transfers FB Tw WP Site GW 540.00 0.00 540.00 0.00 0.00
Brain Preservation Foundation (filter this donor) 100.00 0.00 50.00 50.00 0.00
Danbooru (filter this donor) 20.00 20.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (filter this donor) AI safety FB Tw WP Site CN GS TW 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Total -- -- 4,686.00 20.00 4,590.00 56.00 20.00

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

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 (10 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 10)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Danbooru20.0062017-03-13Technologyhttps://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/commit/3ecb1f524eb709a19594247ff98627618db15a07#diff-1c8eb878291c544f4f935b3dfcac9641R163-- Donation given via account upgrade, as a way to offset the use of resources from crawling the website.
Internet Archive1,000.0022015-11-18Digital preservationhttps://twitter.com/gwern/status/667082325637914625--
GiveDirectly540.0032015-11Global povertyhttps://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/commit/9df40516566c42249a374a143d2c8d5b5de96149#diff-e96709060d038c15656ffed1e89f630dR434-- In a LessWrong comment Gwern mentions the amount as $500 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YEo5cysddE27bEd5B/bragging-thread-december-2015#3hW8Nci3LW36enwLT (GW, IR).
Brain Preservation Foundation50.0042015-11Life scienceshttps://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/commit/9df40516566c42249a374a143d2c8d5b5de96149#diff-e96709060d038c15656ffed1e89f630dR434--
Against Malaria Foundation3,000.0012015-11Global healthhttps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YEo5cysddE27bEd5B/bragging-thread-december-2015#3hW8Nci3LW36enwLT (GW, IR)--
Against Malaria Foundation----2015Global healthhttps://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/418xqw/foldinghome_linuxmasterrace_team/cz0zp7e/-- Gwern writes that more than 10% of his 2015 income was donated to AMF. On LessWrong he mentions the November 2015 $3000 donation to AMF, but does not make clear whether that is his only donation to AMF in 2015. The same comment mentions donating to GiveDirectly, but that might just be the November 2015 donations that is entered separately.
Brain Preservation Foundation50.0042012-06-18Life scienceshttps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/whgNqLq2tJiri3GdY/plastination-is-maturing-and-needs-funding-says-hanson#W6ixDfwCTCK9mzR2q (GW, IR)-- Gwern donated specifically to the Evaluation Fund.
Internet Archive6.0082012-01Digital preservationhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1sek9w/web_archive_is_asking_for_donations_they_accept/cdx551u/?context=2-- Currency info: donation given as 1.00 BTC (conversion done on 2012-01-15 via Coindesk).
Internet Archive20.0062011-08Digital preservationhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1sek9w/web_archive_is_asking_for_donations_they_accept/cdx551u/?context=2--
Machine Intelligence Research Institute----2009-09-22AI safetyhttps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XSqYe5Rsqq4TR7ryL/the-finale-of-the-ultimate-meta-mega-crossover#6T24xqkJotPQTJL5R (GW, IR)-- Gwern mentions that he is a past donor to MIRI in this discussion thread, but gives neither a date nor an amount.

Similarity to other donors

Sorry, we couldn't find any similar donors.