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 2025. 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 States |
| Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions) | Centre for the Study of Existential Risk |
| Wikipedia page | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaan_Tallinn |
| Best overview URL | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ |
| Facebook username | jaan.tallinn |
| Website | https://jaan.online/ |
| Donations URL | https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ |
| LessWrong username | jaan |
| Regularity with which donor updates donations data | annual refresh |
| 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) | months |
| Data entry method on Donations List Website | Manual (no scripts used) |
| Org Watch page | https://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
We do not have any donee information for the donee Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund in our system.
Full donee page for donee Effective Altruism Funds: Long-Term Future Fund
| 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 | 2 | 675,000 | 1,046,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 |
| Longtermism | 2 | 675,000 | 1,046,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 675,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 | 1,417,000 |
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 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Longtermism (filter this donor) | 2 | 2,092,000.00 | 2,092,000.00 |
| Total | 2 | 2,092,000.00 | 2,092,000.00 |
Skipping spending graph as there is at most one year’s worth of donations.
There are no documents associated with this combination of donor and donee.
Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations
| Amount (current USD) | Amount rank (out of 2) | Donation date | Cause area | URL | Influencer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,417,000.00 | 1 | Longtermism | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h2-recommendations | Survival and Flourishing Fund Beth Barnes Oliver Habryka Zvi Mowshowitz | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 H2 grants 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 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. [...] [The] system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every recommender is excited to fund." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) explains the process from a recommender's perspective. Intended use of funds (category): Regranting Donor reason for selecting the donee: Zvi Mowshowitz, one of the recommmenders in this grant round, writes in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kuDKtwwbsksAW4BG2/zvi-s-thoughts-on-the-survival-and-flourishing-fund-sff (GW, IR) "They have some clear wins on their book (e.g. John Wentworth) and my notes indicate I thought the bulk of their targets seemed reasonable, although on reflection that makes me worry about the extent to which ‘seem reasonable’ was an optimization target. It’s another case of ‘find individuals and other places to put small amounts in ways that seem plausibly good and do it’ and it seems like something like SFF should be able to do better but if the applicant pool is this shallow maybe we can’t. As an isolated thing, almost all small grants of these types that are issued without forcing people to apply first seem like they’re net good, but they also end up warping the space and culture around the seeking of such grants, whether or not formal applications have to be involved. Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round; this is SFF's sixth grant round and the second one with a grant to the grantee. Other notes: Jaan Tallinn's philanthropy goals as described in https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ set targets in terms of the total amount of endpoint grants, i.e., grants spent on actual grantees and not for regranting. It is not clear how grants to the Long-Term Future Fund are counted, but since the LTFF tends to spend most of its balance in its grant rounds, Tallinn likely expects that the bulk of the money will become endpoint grants shortly. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 16.00%; announced: 2021-11-20. |
|
| 675,000.00 | 2 | Longtermism | https://survivalandflourishing.fund/sff-2021-h1-recommendations | Survival and Flourishing Fund Ben Hoskin Katja Grace Oliver Habryka Adam Marblestone | Donation process: Part of the Survival and Flourishing Fund's 2021 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 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): Regranting 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 and the first with a grant to this grantee. Donor retrospective of the donation: In the next grant round, Tallinn would make an even bigger grant of $1,417,000 to the grantee, suggesting continued satisfaction with the strategy of donating money to the Long-Term Future Fund for regranting. Other notes: As explained at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nLxpFeEs6kAdgjRWz/the-long-term-future-fund-has-room-for-more-funding-right?commentId=9cBRWH9L6BDhd5TCF (GW, IR) the grantee is applying because the total volume of quality applications it would like to fund exceeds its own funds available. Although Jed McCaleb also participates as a funder in this grant round, he does not make any grants to this grantee (Center for Applied Rationality). Jaan Tallinn's philanthropy goals as described in https://jaan.online/philanthropy/ set targets in terms of the total amount of endpoint grants, i.e., grants spent on actual grantees and not for regranting. It is not clear how grants to the Long-Term Future Fund are counted, but since the LTFF tends to spend most of its balance in its grant rounds, Tallinn likely expects that the bulk of the money will become endpoint grants short. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 7.10%. |