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.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions) | Centre for Effective Altruism |
| Website | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community |
| Donations URL | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/ |
| Regularity with which donor updates donations data | irregular |
| Regularity with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update) | irregular |
| Lag with which donor updates donations data | months |
| Lag with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update) | days |
| Data entry method on Donations List Website | Manual (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
Full donor page for donor Effective Altruism Funds: Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Facebook page | CentreforEffectiveAltruism |
| Website | https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/ |
| Donate page | https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/donate/ |
| Donation case page | https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/fundraising/ |
| Org Watch page | https://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Centre+for+Effective+Altruism |
| Key people | William MacAskill |
Full donee page for donee Centre for Effective Altruism
| Item | Value |
|---|
| Cause area | Count | Median | Mean | Minimum | 10th percentile | 20th percentile | 30th percentile | 40th percentile | 50th percentile | 60th percentile | 70th percentile | 80th percentile | 90th percentile | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 3 | 15,000 | 25,354 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 56,061 | 56,061 | 56,061 | 56,061 |
| Effective altruism | 3 | 15,000 | 25,354 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 56,061 | 56,061 | 56,061 | 56,061 |
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 | Total | 2019 | 2018 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Effective altruism (filter this donor) | 3 | 76,061.00 | 5,000.00 | 71,061.00 |
| Total | 3 | 76,061.00 | 5,000.00 | 71,061.00 |
Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)
Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)
Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations
| Amount (current USD) | Amount rank (out of 3) | Donation date | Cause area | URL | Influencer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5,000.00 | 3 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/3pxoLG7aRWtETC1lECC6LK | Luke Ding Alex Foster Denise Melchin Matt Wage | Donation process: Part of the July 2019 EA Meta Fund grants round. The grant page says: "7 of the 9 grantees in this round applied through this process." CEA is not a direct grantee, but an intermediary for part of a grant; it did not apply in this application process Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses Intended use of funds: Grant for CEA to use to pay Rethink Charity for "bespoke analysis of the results" of the 2019 EA Survey. This accompanies a separate $15,000 grant to Rethink Charity for the 2019 EA Survey. Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "This financial structure is meant to ensure that a significant fraction of Rethink's analysis will be directly relevant to what CEA is looking to learn from the survey." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The amount of $5,000, compared to $15,000 directly granted to Rethink Charity to conduct the survey, probably reflects the nature of power balance that the Meta Fund managers want to engineer between CEA and Rethink Charity, in terms of the extent to which they control the priorities of the EA Survey Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.07% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round. Also, the grant page says: "We think part of the benefit of the survey is ensuring data that is collected on a regular basis to allow for consistent year-on-year comparisons. Funding at this stage will allow the survey and analysis to be carried out this year in line with the annual publishing cycle." Intended funding timeframe in months: 12 |
|
| 15,000.00 | 2 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/2dyBJqJBSIq6sAGU6gMYQW | Luke Ding Alex Foster Denise Melchin Matt Wage Tara MacAulay | Grant write-up talks of the strong track record of the CEA and their success at introducing EA concepts to a large number of people. The write-up concludes: "CEA is aiming to raise $3 million for their 2019 budget, and currently has significant room for more funding due to expansion efforts. At the margin, this grant is expected to contribute towards CEA’s expansion of their events, technology and community health teams.". Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.63%. | |
| 56,061.00 | 1 | Effective altruism/movement growth | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community/payouts/6M8SQFdecEm0WuAYweO2UQ | Nick Beckstead | Funding from the Effective Altruism Community Fund; an accompanying payment from the Long-Term Future Fund of $162,537 was also made. Beckstead recommended that the grantee spend the money to save time and increase productivity of employees (for instance, by subsidizing childcare or electronics). Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 10.66%. |