Survival and Flourishing Projects donations made (filtered to cause areas matching Effective altruism)

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
Best overview URLhttps://survivalandflourishing.org/
LinkedIn username Survival and Flourishing Fund
Websitehttps://survivalandflourishing.org/
Donations URLhttps://survivalandflourishing.org/
GitHub usernamesaf_is_tweeting
PredictionBook usernamehttps://survivalandflourishing.org/
Page on philosophy informing donationshttps://survivalandflourishing.org/
Grant application process pagehttps://survivalandflourishing.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 datayears
Lag with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update)years
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)

Brief history: Survival and Flourishing (SAF) started as a sister organization to the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF). Both focus on grantmaking in similar cause areas (promoting the survival and long-term flourishing of humanity). However, whereas SFF focuses on grantmaking to charitable organizations, SAF focuses on grantmaking to individuals. As of December 1, 2021, SAF has publicly announced two grantmaking rounds https://survivalandflourishing.org/saf-2020-q4 and https://survivalandflourishing.org/saf-2021-q2-announcement and published grants resulting from the first.

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: SAF focuses on grantmaking to individuals that further the survival and long-term flourishing of humanity. Past grants have been in AI safety, other global catastrophic risks, epistemic institutions, and other work such as institutional design. https://survivalandflourishing.org/saf-2020-q4 says that SAF is not intended to fund existing organizations or ongoing work, as it is expected that the existing organization or past funders of the ongoing work would be in a better position to continue support of the work. However, SAF is open to applications for people at existing organizations and/or doing ongoing work who can provide reasoning that helps overcome the presumption.

Notes on grant decision logistics: SAF runs grantmaking rounds as competitions (they have announced a competition https://survivalandflourishing.org/saf-2020-q4 for 2020 Q4, along with results, and a competition https://survivalandflourishing.org/saf-2021-q2-announcement for 2021 Q2, with no public results). Applicants to the competition for each round must submit a proposed amount of funding between $5,000 and $200,000, a period of time between 1 month and 2 years over which they expect to spend the funding, and a purpose and plan for spending the funding. The applicants compete for a fixed pool of funding per grant round; this amount was $300,000 to $350,000 in the two grant rounds so far. https://survivalandflourishing.org/saf-2020-q4#selection says: "Winning applicants will be selected by a Selection Committee comprising at least three people appointed by SAF’s Governance Committee. The Selection Committee will rank-order projects and award funding and project contracts to the top-ranked projects falling within our budget for this round. We may adjust our total budget for the round based on the quality of applications."

Notes on grant publication logistics: At some point after the grant round decisions are finalized, grants are published on the SAF website. https://survivalandflourishing.org/saf-2020-q4 says: "Winners will appear on this page gradually, as their project paperwork is finalized"; so far, only a (partial) list of winners is available for 2020 Q4; no winners for 2021 Q2 have been published on the SAF website.

Notes on grant financing: The SAF website does not include information on where it gets its grant money.

Miscellaneous notes: Since the published list of grants on the SAF website is incomplete, we do not have a full picture of SAF's grantmaking.

Donor donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 1 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333
Effective altruism 1 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333 43,333

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 2020
Effective altruism (filter this donor) 1 1 43,333.00 43,333.00
Total 1 1 43,333.00 43,333.00

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 2020
Effective altruism/research guidance 1 1 43,333.00 43,333.00
Classified total 1 1 43,333.00 43,333.00
Unclassified total 0 0 0.00 0.00
Total 1 1 43,333.00 43,333.00

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 2020
Effective Thesis (filter this donor) 43,333.00 43,333.00
Total -- -- 43,333.00 43,333.00

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

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 (1 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 1)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Effective Thesis (Earmark: David Janků)43,333.0012020-11Effective altruism/research guidancehttp://survivalandflourishing.org/sfp-2020-q4-- Donation process: The grant page says: "In 2020 Q4, SAF hosted a competition for individuals seeking a fixed amount of funding for projects benefitting SAF’s mission. We expected this competition to allocate between $300k and $350k in funding. [...] Winning applicants will be selected by a Selection Committee comprising at least three people appointed by SAF’s Governance Committee. The Selection Committee will rank-order projects and award funding and project contracts to the top-ranked projects falling within our budget for this round. We may adjust our total budget for the round based on the quality of applications."

Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: Continuing the development of https://effectivethesis.org/

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): While reasons for the amount for individual grants are not given, SAF provides guidance on the ranges it allows for amounts. Amounts must be between $5,000 and $200,000, for a time frame of up to 2 years. The amount is also capped at {$300,000} times {the applicant’s percentage time commitment to the project} times {the duration of the project in years}.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by the timing of the 2020 Q4 grant round
Intended funding timeframe in months: 11

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: While no thoughts are included on followup donations for individual grants, SAF says on the grant page that it usually does not fund ongoing work, making followup grants unlikely. However, Effective Thesis itself is ongoing work, so it is an exception, and therefore may be able to get further SAF grants.

Similarity to other donors

Sorry, we couldn't find any similar donors.