Jaan Tallinn donations made to Charter Cities Institute

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
Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions)Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaan_Tallinn
Best overview URLhttps://jaan.online/philanthropy/
Facebook username jaan.tallinn
Websitehttps://jaan.online/
Donations URLhttps://jaan.online/philanthropy/
LessWrong usernamejaan
Regularity with which donor updates donations dataannual refresh
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)months
Data entry method on Donations List WebsiteManual (no scripts used)
Org Watch pagehttps://orgwatch.issarice.com/?person=Jaan+Tallinn

Brief history: Tallinn is a co-founder of Skype and Kazaa and one of the earlier wealthy supporters of organizations working in AI safety, along with Peter Thiel. In 2011, he had a conversation with Holden Karnofsky sharing his thoughts on AI safetyand in particular the work of the Singularity Institute (SI), the former name of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. See https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/givewell/conversations/topics/287 and https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6SGqkCgHuNr7d4yJm/thoughts-on-the-singularity-institute-si (GW, IR) for details. Tallinn played a significant role in financing the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI)'s grantmaking operations, and later funding the Survival and Flourising Fund (SFF). In 2020, Tallinn prepared a philanthropy pledge https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ for his grantmaking for the next five years, and also indicated a plan to switch more to making direct grants using SFF's S-process, rather than giving funds to organizations such as BERI and SFF.

Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ says: "the primary purpose of my philanthropy is to reduce existential risks to humanity from advanced technologies, such as AI. i currently believe that this cause scores the highest according to the framework used in effective altruism: (1) importance [...] (2) tractability [...] (3) neglectedness. [...] i'm likely to pass on all other opportunities — especially popular ones, like supporting education, healthcare, arts, and various social causes. [...] i'm considering (as of 2020) a few exceptions — eg, donating to more neglected climate interventions [...] i should also mention that i'm especially fond of software projects as philanthropic targets [...]"

Notes on grant decision logistics: Tallinn plans to use the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF)'s S-process (simulation process) to direct most of his grantmaking, as described e.g. at http://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2019-q4-recommendations and other grant rounds. He may also make one-off direct grants (at most $100,000 per grant) for funding needs that are time-sensitive but encourages grantees to also apply for the next SFF grant round. Tallinn has historically donated money to BERI and SFF for regranting, but does not expect to make similar donations for regranting in the future. Tallinn may also engage in small amounts of individual regranting and individual gifts.

Notes on grant financing: Tallinn donates his own money, but not always directly; in most cases (particularly when donating to US-based nonprofits) he donates money via (donor-advised funds managed by) Founders Pledge or Silicon Valley Community Foundation. He has also made direct gifts in cryptocurrency when not donating to US nonprofits.

Full donor page for donor Jaan Tallinn

Basic donee information

We do not have any donee information for the donee Charter Cities Institute in our system.

Full donee page for donee Charter Cities Institute

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 3 261,000 237,667 137,000 137,000 137,000 137,000 261,000 261,000 261,000 315,000 315,000 315,000 315,000
Alternate governance 3 261,000 237,667 137,000 137,000 137,000 137,000 261,000 261,000 261,000 315,000 315,000 315,000 315,000

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 2023 2022 2021
Alternate governance (filter this donor) 3 713,000.00 315,000.00 261,000.00 137,000.00
Total 3 713,000.00 315,000.00 261,000.00 137,000.00

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 (1 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Zvi’s Thoughts on the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) (GW, IR)2021-12-14Zvi Mowshowitz LessWrongSurvival and Flourishing Fund Jaan Tallinn Jed McCaleb The Casey and Family Foundation Effective Altruism Funds:Long-Term Future Fund Center on Long-Term Risk Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters The Centre for Long-Term Resilience Lightcone Infrastructure Effective Altruism Funds: Infrastructure Fund Centre for the Governance of AI Ought New Science Research Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative AI Objectives Institute Topos Institute Emergent Ventures India European Biostasis Foundation Laboratory for Social Minds PrivateARPA Charter Cities Institute Survival and Flourishing Fund Beth Barnes Oliver Habryka Zvi Mowshowitz Miscellaneous commentaryLongtermism|AI safety|Global catastrophic risksIn this lengthy post, Zvi Mowshowitz, who was one of the recommenders for the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grant round based on the S-process, describes his experience with the process, his impressions of several of the grantees, and implications for what kinds of grant applications are most likely to succeed. Zvi says that the grant round suffered from the problem of Too Much Money (TMM); there was way more money than any individual recommender felt comfortable granting, and just about enough money for the combined preferences of all recommenders, which meant that any recommender could unilaterally push a particular grantee through. The post has several other observations and attracts several comments.

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (3 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 3)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
315,000.0012023-04Alternate governance/charter citieshttps://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2023-h1-recommendationsSurvival and Flourishing Fund Olle Häggström Steve Omohundro Daniel Kokotajlo Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2023 H1 grants based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios. In each simulation, Recommenders specify a marginal value function for funding each application, and an algorithm calculates a table of grant recommendations by taking turns distributing funding recommendations from each Recommender in succession, using their marginal value functions to prioritize. The Recommenders then discuss their evaluations and update the simulation with their new opinions, using approval voting to prioritize discussion topics, until the end of the last meeting when their inputs are finalized. Similarly, funders specify and adjust different value functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's ninth grant round.

Other notes: In this grant round, there are two funders: Jaan Tallinn and Future of Life Institute, and the breakdown of each grant by funder is not provided. We are inferring that the entirety of the amount is being funded by Jaan Tallinn, since https://futureoflife.org/grant-program/2023-grants/ does not include the grant. However, as of 2023-11-26, https://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.html does not include the grant either.
261,000.0022022-06-23Alternate governance/charter citieshttps://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.htmlSurvival and Flourishing Fund Nell Watson Malo Bourgon Catherine Olsson Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2022 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2022-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal value functions. Recommenders specified a marginal value function for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different value functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's eighth grant round.

Other notes: The grantee is recorded as "Center for Innovative Governance Research" in Jaan Tallinn's donation log; this is the organization's formal name.
137,000.0032021-07-16Alternate governance/charter citieshttps://jaan.online/philanthropy/donations.htmlSurvival and Flourishing Fund Ben Hoskin Katja Grace Oliver Habryka Adam Marblestone Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H1 grants https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations based on the S-process (simulation process) that "involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a spreadsheet of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts."

Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's fifth grant round. In a previous grant round (2019 Q4), SFF had made a grant to the grantee, but Tallinn had not made any direct grants.

Donor retrospective of the donation: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommenders participating in SFF's next grant round (2021 H2) writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff#Orthogonal_Applications (GW, IR) shedding light on why he considered the Charter Cities Institute's application orthogonal to SFF's grantmaking goals: "I talked to them hoping it would be aligned with the mission. [...] What I was looking for on that call was the ability to do things you can’t do in First World countries. In particular, challenge trials seemed like a strong litmus test. If your charter city allows the world to do challenge trials, then it’s super valuable. If it doesn’t, then you might be helping the particular people, but you’re not mostly doing the thing I care about. [...] To fight the blight."

Other notes: Although Jed McCaleb also participates in this grant round as a funder, he does not make any grants to this grantee. In Jaan Tallinn's donation log, the donation shows up as being to the "Center for Innovative Governance Research" (this is the organization's formal name); the SFF website states it as being to the Charter Cities Institute. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 1.44%.