Quick takes

David Rubinstein recently interviewed Philippe Laffont, the founder of Coatue (probably worth $5-10b). When asked about his philanthropic activities, Laffont basically said he’s been too busy to think about it, but wanted to do something someday. I admit I was shocked. Laffont is a savant technology investor and entrepreneur (including in AI companies) and it sounded like he literally hadn’t put much thought into what to do with his fortune. Are there concerted efforts in the EA community to get these people on board? Like, is there a google doc with a six degrees of separation plan to get dinner with Laffont? The guy went to MIT and invests in AI companies. In just wouldn’t be hard to get in touch. It seems like increasing the probability he aims some of his fortune at effective charities would justify a significant effort here. And I imagine there are dozens or hundreds of people like this. Am I missing some obvious reason this isn’t worth pursuing or likely to fail? Have people tried? I’m a bit of an outsider here so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on what I’m sure seems like a pretty naive take! https://youtu.be/_nuSOMooReY?si=6582NoLPtSYRwdMe

Marcus Daniell appreciation note @Marcus Daniell, cofounder of High Impact Athletes, came back from knee surgery and is donating half of his prize money this year. He projects raising $100,000. Through a partnership with Momentum, people can pledge to donate for each point he gets; he has raised $28,000 through this so far. It's cool to see this, and I'm wishing him luck for his final year of professional play!

Effective giving quick take for giving season This is quite half-baked because I think my social circle contains not very many E2G folks, but I have a feeling that when EA suddenly came into a lot more funding and the word on the street was that we were “talent constrained, not funding constrained”, some people earning to give ended up pretty jerked around, or at least feeling that way. They may have picked jobs and life plans based on the earn to give model, where it would be years before the plans came to fruition, and in the middle, they lost status and attention from their community. There might have been an additional dynamic where people who took the advice the most seriously ended up deeply embedded in other professional communities, so heard about the switch later or found it harder to reconnect with the community and the new priorities. I really don’t have an overall view on how bad all of this was, or if anyone should have done anything differently, but I do have a sense that EA has a bit of a feature of jerking people around like this, where priorities and advice change faster than the advice can be fully acted on. The world and the right priorities really do change, though; I’m not sure what should be done except to be clearer about all this, but I suspect it’s hard to properly convey “this seems like the absolute best thing in the world to do, also next year my view could be that it’s basically useless” even if you use those exact words. And maybe people have done this, or maybe it’s worth trying harder. Another approach would be something like insurance. A frame I’ve been more interested in lately (definitely not original to me) is that earning to give is a kind of resilience / robustness-add for EA, where more donors just means better ability to withstand crazy events, even if in most worlds the small donors aren’t adding much in the way of impact. Not clear that that nets out, but “good in case of tail risk” seems like an important aspect. A more

If you believe that: - ASI might come fairly soon - ASI will either fix most of the easy problems quickly, or wipe us out - You have no plausible way of robustly shaping the outcome of the arrival of ASI for the better does it follow that you should spend a lot more on near-term cause areas now? Are people doing this? I see some people argue for increasing consumption now, but surely this would apply even more so to donations to near-term cause areas?

Ray Dalio is giving out free $50 donation vouchers: tisbest.org/rg/ray-dalio/ Still worked just a few minutes ago

I'm considering my future donation options, either directly to charities or through a fund. I know EA Funds is still somewhat cash constrained but I'm also a little concerned with the natural variance in grant quality.  I'd be interested in why others have or have not chosen to donate to EA Funds, and if so, would they again in the future? I respect people may prefer to answer this by DM, so please do feel free to drop me a message there if posting here feels uncomfortable.

Welcome to the effective giving subforum! This is a dedicated space for discussions about effective giving.  Get involved: * ❤️  Donate via Giving What We Can * Join the discussion * Share where you're donating this giving season — and why! * Start a new thread in this subforum[1] * Ask questions about donation decisions * Discuss strategic considerations about giving * Explore other opportunities for donating or raising money * Explore updated giving recommendations from GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Giving What We Can, and Happier Lives Institute * Book an effective giving talk at your workplace * Give the Forum team feedback about this beta subforum * Reach us at forum@centreforeffectivealtruism.org  or comment on this post. 1. ^ Threads can be casual! This will only appear in this subforum or for people who've joined the subforum. 

The Effective Ventures Foundation UK’s Full Accounts for Fiscal Year 2022 has been released via the UK companies house filings (August 30 2023 entry - it won't let me direct link the PDF).  * Important to note that as of June 2022 “EV UK is no longer the sole member of EV US and now operate as separate organizations but coordinate per an affiliation agreement (p11).”  * It’s noted that Open Philanthropy was, for the 2021/2022 fiscal year, the primary funder for the organization (p8).  * EVF (UK&US) had consolidated income of just over £138 million (as of June 2022). That’s a ~£95 million increase from 2021. * Consolidated expenses for 2022 were ~ £79 million - an increase of £56 million from 2021 (still p8).  * By end of fiscal year consolidated net funds were just over £87 million of which £45.7 million were unrestricted.  * (p10) outlines EVF’s approach to risk management and mentions FTX collapse. * A lot of boiler plate in this document so you may want to skip ahead to page 26 for more specific breakdowns * EVF made grants totaling ~£50 million (to institutions and 826 individuals) an almost £42 million increase in one year (p27) * A list of grant breakdowns (p28) ; a lot of recognizable organizations listed from AMF to BERI and ACE  * also a handful of orgs I do not recognize or vague groupings like “other EA organizations” for almost £3 million * Expenses details (p30) main programs are (1) Core Activities (2) 80,000 Hours (3) Forethought and (4) Grant-making  * Expenses totaled £79 million for 2022 (a £65 million increase from 2021) which seems like a huge jump for just one year * further expense details are on (p31-33) and tentatively show a £23.3 million jump between 2021 and 2022 [but the table line items are NOT the same across 2021/2022 so it’s hard to tell - if anyone can break this down better please do in the comments] * We may now have a more accurate number of £1.6 million spent on marketing for What We Owe The Future (which i