Carl Shulman money moved

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

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

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Risk-neutral donors should plan to make bets at the margin at least as well as giga-donors in expectation (GW, IR)2016-12-31Carl Shulman Effective Altruism Forum Donor lottery Miscellaneous commentaryCarl Shulman argues that using a "donate to a giga-donor or its marginal charities" approach, a donor should be able to do at least as well as a giga-donor, if risk-neutral. This post comes while Shulman has been promoting a donor lottery sponsored by Paul Christiano, which is inspired by thinking Shulman articulates in the post
Donor lotteries: demonstration and FAQ (GW, IR)2016-12-07Carl Shulman Effective Altruism ForumTimothy Telleen-Lawton Gregory Lewis Ajeya Cotra Rohin Shah Helen Toner Nicole Ross Howie Lempel Rebecca Raible Pablo Stafforini Aaron Gertler Brayden McLean Benjamin Hoffman Catherine Olsson Eric Herboso Ian David Moss Glenn Willen Jacob Steinhardt Brandon Reinhart Donor lottery Donee donation caseCarl Shulman announces a donor lottery coordinated/sponsored by Paul Christiano, and provides a FAQ discussing questions people might have for participating in the lottery

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

DonorDoneeAmount (current USD)Donation dateCause areaURLNotes
Eliezer YudkowskyCarrick Flynn for Congress2,900.002022-03-29Biosecurity and pandemic preparednesshttps://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1509034366403432449 Donor reason for selecting the donee: The tweet announcing the donation says: "Donated $2900 to the campaign of Carrick Flynn, a Congressional candidate who previously worked with Nick Bostrom, on the recommendation of Carl Shulman among others." It links to https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-217 that talks about the reasons many effective altruists are excited to support Flynn's campaign.

Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Donations to United States political campaigns are limited to $2,900 per donor per campaign. This donation hits the limit and applies to the primary campaign. Many other donors would simultaneously donate $2,900 to the general campaign, but this donation seems limited to the primary campaign.

Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): The timing is determined by the timing of https://www.carrickflynnfororegon.com/ (the political campaign). https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-217 also says: "If you do donate, it would be extra helpful if the money came in before a key reporting deadline March 31."

Donor retrospective of the donation: Yudkowsky would continue advocating for donating to the campaign; see for instance the tweet https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1523780262718361605 (2022-05-09) that would be cited by Rob Bensinger for a $2,900 donation https://twitter.com/robbensinger/status/1523802187939287042 made shortly afterward.
Jacob SteinhardtDonor lottery4,000.002017-01-04--http://effective-altruism.com/ea/14d/donor_lotteries_a_stepbystep_guide_for_mall/ See https://jsteinhardt.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/donations-for-2016/ for more context; the announcement was 2016-12-28, before the actual transaction. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 40.00%.

Donation amounts by donee and year

Donee Donors influenced Cause area Metadata Total 2022 2017
Donor lottery Jacob Steinhardt (filter this donor) 4,000.00 0.00 4,000.00
Carrick Flynn for Congress Eliezer Yudkowsky (filter this donor) 2,900.00 2,900.00 0.00
Total ---- -- 6,900.00 2,900.00 4,000.00

Graph of spending by donee and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Donation amounts by donor and year for influencer Carl Shulman

Donor Donees Total 2022 2017
Jacob Steinhardt (filter this donee) Donor lottery (filter this donee) 4,000.00 0.00 4,000.00
Eliezer Yudkowsky (filter this donee) Carrick Flynn for Congress (filter this donee) 2,900.00 2,900.00 0.00
Total -- 6,900.00 2,900.00 4,000.00

Graph of spending by donee and year (incremental, not cumulative)

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Graph of spending by donee and year (cumulative)

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