Appealing to the Public
post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-10-23T19:00:07.669Z · LW · GW · 0 commentsContents
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Let's say you run a non-profit, and you and some of your co-workers are there for EA reasons. The EA Forum is going to be hosting a Marginal Funding Week and you're trying to decide whether to post an appeal. How do you decide whether you're ready to raise funds from the EA community?
At a high level, I think you should go ahead if you can explain what you'd do with the money and are willing to share the details that will let people determine if your overall case is strong enough. As a community I think we should generally have higher standards for projects that have been running longer, and for ones trying to raise larger amounts of money.
New projects, both in the for-profit and non-profit world, generally get off the ground with the engagement of a small number of funders who are comfortable with the risk-reward tradeoffs of early-stage work. Sometimes these funders are highly engaged and provide advice and connections, other times they're giving some start-up funds and hoping it works out, but either way they're taking a substantial risk of failure on each bet in the hope of getting some hits.
In the for-profit world societies worry that most people not being sufficiently sophisticated to make this kind of investment, and generally draw some sort of line between accredited investors (who can be assumed to know the risks they're taking with early-stage ventures) and the rest of us (who might be dazzled into putting our life savings into a scam). To sell your stock to the general public you need to first disclose a lot of information about your business: detailed financial statements, risks, what you'll do with the money, etc.
The non-profit world is pretty different: while you do have to make some limited information public, the disclosure requirements are relatively minimal. There's no obligation to share facts that a reasonable donor would want to consider.
While I wouldn't advocate extending public-company-level regulation to the non-profit world, this is a place where the EA community has historically tried to shift norms in the direction of more transparency, and I think we should continue to do this:
One of the biggest flaws of the non-profit approach is how much weaker the feedback loops are than in for-profit work. There are many ways altruistically-motivated work can become disconnected from the ends it's intended to advance. A culture of sharing and critically evaluating this information can help keep organizations focused, and keep the money going to the organizations that can best apply it.
If we become a community where people can raise substantial funds by simply saying they're EAs working on an important problem we'll end up with lots of people who make the right noises but don't actually put funds to good use.
Even if most people reading an appeal don't think hard about whether it all checks out, having this information out there allows dedicated independent people to make comparisons and share their results. This amplifies both effects above.
The things I'd most like to see in public funding requests are:
What will you do with the money? Not just what do you do in general, but what will you be able to do if you raise these additional funds. Note that describing the work you'd do on the margin means that they work you're describing is, well, marginal. If instead you made the case for your strongest work, the work that you'd only cut if your funding dropped off dramatically, this would lead donors to overestimate the benefit of funding you and so allocate their funds less well.
What's your track record? Funding early-stage projects typically involves a good amount of evaluating the team as people, figuring out how much you trust them to take your money in a new direction. But if you're "going public" this kind of interpersonal evaluation breaks down: you can't have dozens of EAs on the Forum booking slots on your calendar to get a sense of whether you seem to know your stuff and be the kind of person who will execute well on your vision. Instead, point at concrete accomplishments.
What is your financial situation? What are your main expenses and sources of income? Anything people wouldn't expect? How much money do you currently have? How long is your runway?
Additionally, it's pretty valuable to also share:
Why is this worth doing? While this isn't information donors can get only from you it's probably something you're especially well positioned (and incentivized) to provide. What problem are you addressing? Why is it important? How will success at your planned efforts improve the situation?
Where does your work fit in? What are the other organizations trying to solve this problem? Why are you taking your specific approach? Are some of these other groups a better fit for donors with certain outlooks or values?
What are the key risks? What are the most likely reasons you might fail to make progress? Could your work actually be harmful? If there are major uncertainties on your path to impact, what are they and how are you addressing them?
What's your longer-term model? Are you hoping to be philanthropically funded indefinitely? Is this funding that will get you to a place where you can instead convince governments, private companies, or consumers to fund you or others to do this work? Is this the kind of project that needs long-term investment to be worth it?
How can people tell if you're succeeding? If you're posting again in Fall 2025 saying that you had a great year and asking for money for 2026, how will we be able to tell whether you actually had a great year? This is closely related to "what will you do with the money?", but instead of focusing on impact it's focusing on evaluation: how will you and others be able to tell if your efforts are working. Are there specific milestones you expect to hit? Measurable outcomes we'll be able to observe?
If you're not ok including this information in your funding request, or at least answering these and similar questions as they come up in the comments, then it's worth considering whether you're in a good position to solicit funds from the community.
Another consideration in making a public request for funding is that by putting your org out there like this you're opening yourself up to more criticism. Asking the EA community for funding is, in some sense, quite audacious: it's a claim that your organization is one of the very best ways to turn money into a better world. That's a high bar and the EA community can be a critical group! I think on balance EA's critical outlook is positive: if I make what I think is a solid and relatively complete case for my work, and other people who've thought hard about how to make the world better don't think it measures up, that certainly hurts, but it's an important check. The history of non-profit work includes many people who've overestimated the value of their work and would have been able to have much more impact if they'd taken a different approach.
On the other hand, it's easier to criticize than than do, and it's important to nurture transparency by recognizing when people are sharing information they could have kept internal. It's important to recognize that there are real people with feelings behind each organization, who in many cases have poured a substantial portion of themselves into these vessels for positive change. We need the critical side of our culture to keep us focused on impact, but we need to balance it with empathy, kindness, and a sense that we're on one big team pulling together.
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