Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund donations made to Center for Applied Rationality

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/far-future
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 in the post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iYoSAXhodpxJFwdQz/ea-funds-beta-launch (GW, IR) on 2017-02-28. The first round of allocations was announced at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MsaS8JKrR8nnxyPkK/update-on-effective-altruism-funds (GW, IR) on 2017-04-20. 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 Far Future Fund; it was renamed to the Long-Term Future Fund to more accurately reflect the meaning.

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: As the name suggests, the Fund's focus area is activities that could significantly affect the long term future. Historically, the fund has focused on areas such as AI safety and epistemic institutions, though it has also made grants related to biosecurity and other global catastrophic risks. 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 chair Matt Fallshaw, and team Helen Toner, Oliver Habryka, Matt Wage, and Alex Zhu, with advisors Nick Beckstead and Jonas Vollmer.

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. In April 2019, the write-up for each grant at https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future/payouts/6vDsjtUyDdvBa3sNeoNVvl had just one author (rather than group authorship), likely the management team member who did the most work on that particular grant. Grant write-ups vary greatly in length; in April 2019, the write-ups by Oliver Habryka were the most thorough.

Notes on grant financing: Money in the Long-Term Future 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.

Full donor page for donor Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund

Basic donee information

ItemValue
Country United States
Facebook page AppliedRationality
Websitehttp://rationality.org/
Donate pagehttp://rationality.org/donate
Donors list pagehttp://rationality.org/about/top-donors
Transparency and financials pagehttp://rationality.org/about/official-records
Donation case pagehttp://lesswrong.com/lw/n39/why_cfar_the_view_from_2015/
Twitter usernamecfarnews
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Applied_Rationality
Open Philanthropy Project grant reviewhttp://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/center-applied-rationality-general-support
Timelines wiki pagehttps://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Center_for_Applied_Rationality
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Center+for+Applied+Rationality
Key peopleJulia Galef|Anna Salamon
Launch date2012

Full donee page for donee Center for Applied Rationality

Donor–donee relationship

Item Value

Donor–donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 2 150,000 162,011 150,000 150,000 150,000 150,000 150,000 150,000 174,021 174,021 174,021 174,021 174,021
Epistemic institutions 2 150,000 162,011 150,000 150,000 150,000 150,000 150,000 150,000 174,021 174,021 174,021 174,021 174,021

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 Total 2019 2018
Epistemic institutions (filter this donor) 2 324,021.00 150,000.00 174,021.00
Total 2 324,021.00 150,000.00 174,021.00

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

There are no documents associated with this combination of donor and donee.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (2 donations)

Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
Amount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 2)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
150,000.0022019-03-20Epistemic institutionshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/april-2019-long-term-future-fund-grants-and-recommendationsOliver Habryka Alex Zhu Matt Wage Helen Toner Matt Fallshaw Donation process: Donee submitted grant application through the application form for the April 2019 round of grants from the Long-Term Future Fund, and was selected as a grant recipient (23 out of almost 100 applications were accepted)

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: The grant is to help the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) survive as an organization for the next few months (i.e., till the next grant round, which is 3 months later) without having to scale down operations. CFAR is low on finances because they did not run a 2018 fundraiser. because they felt that running a fundraiser would be in bad taste after what they considered a messup on their part in the Brent Dill situation

Donor reason for selecting the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka thinks CFAR intro workshops have had positive impact in 3 ways: (1) establishing epistemic norms, (2) training, and (3) recruitment into the X-risk network (especially AI safety). He also thinks CFAR faces many challenges, including the departure of many key employees, the difficulty of attracting top talent, and a dilution of its truth-seeking focus. However, he is enthusiastic about joint CFAR/MIRI workshops for programmers, where CFAR provides instructors. His final reason for donating is to avoid CFAR having to scale down due to its funding shortfall because it didn't run the 2018 fundraiser

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant amount, which is the largest in this grant round from the EA Long-Term Future Fund, is chosen to be sufficient for CFAR to continue operating as usual till the next grant round from the EA Long-Term Future Fund (in about 3 months). Habryka further elaborates in https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-recommendations#uhH4ioNbdaFrwGt4e (GW, IR) in reply to Milan Griffes, explaining why the grant is large and unrestricted
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 16.25%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, as well as by CFAR's time-sensitive financial situation; the grant round is a few months after the end of 2018, so the shortfall of funds raised because of not conducting the 2018 fundraiser is starting to hit on the finances
Intended funding timeframe in months: 3

Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: Grant investigator and main influencer Oliver Habryka writes: "I didn’t have enough time this grant round to understand how the future of CFAR will play out; the current grant amount seems sufficient to ensure that CFAR does not have to take any drastic action until our next grant round. By the next grant round, I plan to have spent more time learning and thinking about CFAR’s trajectory and future, and to have a more confident opinion about what the correct funding level for CFAR is."

Other notes: The grant reasoning is written up by Oliver Habryka and is available at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-decisions (GW, IR) In the comments, Milan Griffes asks why such a large, unrestricted grant is being made to CFAR despite these concerns, and also what Habryka hopes to learn about CFAR before the next grant round. There are replies from Peter McCluskey and Habryka, with some further comment back-and-forth.
174,021.0012018-08-14Epistemic institutionshttps://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/payouts/july-2018-long-term-future-fund-grantsNick Beckstead Donation process: The grant from the EA Long-Term Future Fund is part of a final set of grant decisions being made by Nick Beckstead (granting $526,000 from the EA Meta Fund and $917,000 from the EA Long-Term Future Fund) as he transitions out of managing both funds. Due to time constraints, Beckstead primarily relies on investigation of the organization done by the Open Philanthropy Project when making its 2018 grant https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/center-applied-rationality-general-support-2018

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Intended use of funds: Beckstead writes "I recommended these grants with the suggestion that these grantees look for ways to use funding to trade money for saving the time or increasing the productivity of their employees (e.g. subsidizing electronics upgrades or childcare), due to a sense that (i) their work is otherwise much less funding constrained than it used to be, and (ii) spending like this would better reflect the value of staff time and increase staff satisfaction. However, I also told them that I was open to them using these funds to accomplish this objective indirectly (e.g. through salary increases) or using the funds for another purpose if that seemed better to them."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page references https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/center-applied-rationality-general-support-2018 for Beckstead's opinion of the donee.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant page says "The amounts I’m granting out to different organizations are roughly proportional to the number of staff they have, with some skew towards MIRI that reflects greater EA Funds donor interest in the Long-Term Future Fund." Also: "I think a number of these organizations could qualify for the criteria of either the Long-Term Future Fund or the EA Community Fund because of their dual focus on EA and longtermism, which is part of the reason that 80,000 Hours is receiving a grant from each fund."
Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 18.98%

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by the timing of this round of grants, which is in turn determined by the need for Beckstead to grant out the money before handing over management of the fund

Donor retrospective of the donation: Even after the fund management being moved to a new team, the EA Long-Term Future Fund would continue making grants to CFAR.