Robert Van Buskirk
Bio
I am an early-retired Harvard Ph.D Physicist and Clean Energy Policy Analyst and charity entrepreneur. I have been organizing and experimenting with clean energy projects in Africa for 30 years. Currently, I am lead organizer of a social venture that consists of a small US non-profit and a local Malawian for-profit partner.
How others can help me
To make my work sustainable, replicate and scaleable, I need to develop a system where our projects can sell "development credits" which are sort of like high integrity carbon credits, but easier to verify. And I need these to be priced at the GiveWell funding threshold of about $150/DALY-equivalent impact.
How I can help others
I am a good innovator with respect to the practicalities of very cost-efficient distribution of solar tech to low-income rural Africa.
Posts 1
Comments3
I would like to offer a suggestion for how to manage the potential funding gaps from the perspective of a grassroots volunteer organizer that might apply to the funds.
Good project organizers with uncertain funding often have several contingent versions of their project that they can implement at various funding levels.
The application process does this already to some extent, but the fund could more aggressively respond to a project with a "We like the project, we have funding gaps, can you send us a version of the project at 1/3 of the initially proposed funding level." From my perspective as an applicant, this would be a perfectly fine, positive response as an organizer.
Also as a small-scale EA-minded organizer, I am constantly trying to increase the "impact- productivity" of my projects (i.e. impact per donated dollar). This can be done by leveraging and cultivating non-cash resources (e.g. volunteer labor) or selectively cutting the least productive component costs of a project. If your interaction with applicants can help preserve the most productive pieces of the applicant projects during times of low funding, then by keeping more good projects in your funding pool (albeit at lower per-project funding), then the projects can increase their "impact productivity" over time.
The impact of the EA movement grows over time both through funding growth, and increasing the productivity and efficiency of the funds spent. IMHO, as much effort should be spent increasing the productivity of donated fund spending, as is spent marketing for increased donations. EA donors are a pretty limited pool. Many donations that might be received could counterfactually have been spent on other high priority EA causes.
Maybe I missed it, but I did not see in the post any mention of how funding productivity might be increased in response to some of the forecasted funding limitations.
There are of course both upside risks and downside risks on the price. But even with a price drop of 5X to 10X, in rural Malawi it could still be a very interesting resource.
I recommend reading the Worldcoin tokenomics white paper: https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/tokenomics
They have a very aggressive set of adoption goals, and the vast majority of the world has incomes that are 10X to 100X higher than rural Malawi and many other parts of rural Africa, so to keep the adoption rates high, they will have to keep the adoption incentives significant relative to rural Africa's very low incomes. This bodes well for the future prospect of the incentive retaining a significant value for rural Africans.
Worldcoin also has produced 1500 Orbs, and obviously will be expanding to many more countries. Of course, part of the whole project for Malawi would include setting up Orb operators in Malawi.
Thank you for your response. I find this piece of the response interesting:
"we want to be mindful of not underfunding projects or leaving grantees with deals they would rather turn down but feel uncomfortable doing so due to grantmaker-grantee power imbalances."
As someone on the grantee side of the equation (though I don't apply to this particular fund), I would much prefer an under-funded response of 30% of initial budget request rather than a rejection which is effectively an offer of 0% of the request. But I have pretty thick skin.
I think what I am asking for is for as much communication and negotiation between the grantmaker and grantee as possible in adjusting the project offer to better match the resources request (demand) from the grantee to the resources supply available to the grantor. A better match and greater information exchange increases systemic supply/demand efficiency.
This also allows the grantee to design a better project ask the next time so that grant-giving productivity increases over time. 100% rejection can lead to disengagement. I think it is better for the EA movement if innovating project organizers who are proposing fundable projects can stay engaged.
Though I understand that grant evaluation time is a constraint, so there may not be resources for the extra grantor/grantee communication.
I also understand your point that fundraising is underprioritized. But given that donors may already be giving to other high-impact areas, this might be somewhat OK.