{"items": [{"author": "Randy", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/102251509192760989541", "anchor": "gp-1500653997033", "service": "gp", "text": "Have you considered working for the Mass government?  It's not the USDS (USDS == High Stress, Intense Work, Stellar coworkers, and a Lot of Impact, Mass scales all of that back) but government really could use more competent IT people.  I can give you a fuller impression privately and connect you with the person in the Mass effort I connected with if you want.", "timestamp": 1500653997}, {"author": "Sheannal", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/888997504752?comment_id=889012364972", "anchor": "fb-889012364972", "service": "fb", "text": "Good post. Thanks", "timestamp": "1500656274"}, {"author": "Vipul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/888997504752?comment_id=889142329522", "anchor": "fb-889142329522", "service": "fb", "text": "Interesting post. I think the Open Phil graph is off for a variety of reasons. Although I think the basic conclusion of ramp-up followed by stabilization is a reasonable description of things, a number of factors are ignored, both Open Phil's explicit statements and what we can infer from their actions.<br><br>* Estimates of past granting and potential future granting *<br><br>The Open Philanthropy Project's grants database is misleading for two reasons: (a) it combines Open Philanthropy Project's in-house grants with the Good Ventures grants to GiveWell top charities, which are guided by GiveWell's research, made mostly annually, and where Open Phil's role is limited to setting an overall budget and signing off rather than spending direct person-hours on the opportunities, and (b) the grant dates listed are often several months after the decision date. See http://www.openphilanthropy.org/.../september-2016.../... for some related discussion, which notes that although the total amount of grant decisions increased from $20 million in 2015 to $100 million in 2016, the total amount of grants in the database increased from about $7 million in 2015 to $45 million (now $58 million, with more old grants included) in 2016.<br><br>In the specific case of the GiveWell top charity grants, the amounts for these are generally decided in Novenmber of an year, but the listed grant dates are usually in December or January. Whether those listed grant dates happen to fall in December or January has a big effect on what the total amount donated in the year comes out to be in your chart, and it's particularly important since the grant amounts for GiveWell top charities are way larger than the typical Open Phil grant. It so happened that the biggest grants decided in November 2015 show in 2016.<br><br>For the GiveWell top charities, we *know* there is no doubling from 2016 (really, November 2015) to 2017 (really, November 2016): the amount allocated to top + standout charities at year-end went up from $45.4 million to $50 million, about a 10% increase. And, $5 million of the November 2016 $50 million happened to be registered for the year 2016, so the amounts that Open Phil shows for GiveWell top charities for the two years are almost equal. Moreover, the Open Philanthropy Project has explicitly said that they don't expect to give a budget different from $50 million for GiveWell top charities for the next few years; see http://blog.givewell.org/.../updated-top-charities.../ \"\"\"Due to the growth of the Open Philanthropy Project this year and its increased expectation of the size and value of the opportunities it may have in the future, we expect Good Ventures to set a budget of $50 million for its contributions to GiveWell top charities.\"\"\"<br><br>For donations outside of GiveWell recommendations, the post http://www.openphilanthropy.org/.../our-progress-2016-and... says \"\"\"We expect to be able to continue recommending grants at a pace of $100+ million per year (though with considerable year-to-year variation) and maintaining current quality (i.e. grants that we consider reasonably well-investigated and good expected value for money).\"\"\" This suggests that the stabilization point for non-GiveWell Open Phil grants, based on current predictions from them, is at a little over $100 million per year. Holden also says, later in the same post: \"\"\"For 2017, we don\u2019t plan to focus on scaling up our program staff or grantmaking. Instead, we expect to maintain them at roughly the same level while making significant progress on the items listed in the previous point.\"\"\" This again suggests no ramp-up from 2016 to 2017 in grant decisions, though the grants database would be expected to continue showing a ramp-up till mid-2017 primarily due to the lag between decision and allocation.<br><br>Based on this information I would expect that the total amount for a given year would be in the range of $100 to $150 million for actual Open Phil donations plus $50 million for GiveWell top charities, with considerable year-to-year variation based on where some large grants happen to fall across the boundary.<br><br>* Spend rate needed to exhaust resources *<br><br>Open Phil has set a total budget (including both Open Phil money and GiveWell top charities) at 5% of available capital. See http://www.openphilanthropy.org/.../good-ventures-and... \"\"\"We are still using a budget of 5% of available capital. (The percentage will rise at some point in the future.) Current grantmaking is still well short of our budget for the year, though grantmaking will be much higher for 2016 than it was for 2015.\"\"\" However, this is a cap, not a target that they seem bent on meeting. It seems like they are already stopping their scale-up process despite still being below the 5% cap. Basically the 5% cap says that until that amount, they will not be cash-constrained in granting, but above that they'll only donate if they think a giving opportunity is outstanding. Their rationale for 5% is described more here: http://blog.givewell.org/.../good-ventures-and-giving.../... where they explicitly say that setting this cap means that they will, in expectation, never run out of money: \"\"\"5% is a reasonable approximation to the (real) investment return Cari and Dustin might expect over time, so recommending grants totaling 5% a year might be expected to maintain their capital at a roughly constant level over time.\"\"\"<br><br>So it's pretty clear that they are not planning to scale up in the near term to a level where they would be exhausting the total money available to them. Why not, and how is this reconciled with Dustin Moskovitz's and Cari Tuna's decision to give away most of their wealth in their lifetime? Partly, it seems that they expect that some much larger, bigger giving opportunities will present themselves over time, most likely within the space of cause areas they are already exploring, and as a result of their continued exploration of these cause areas. From http://www.openphilanthropy.org/.../good-ventures-and... \"\"\"The points above list several possible ways in which we might later come to believe that there are billions of dollars\u2019 worth of giving opportunities that we would prefer over further support of GiveWell\u2019s top charities. I don\u2019t think any one of them is highly likely to play out, but I think there are reasonable odds that at least one of them does. One very rough way of thinking about this is to imagine that there are four such possibilities (one featuring our views about the moral value of the far future; one featuring our views about the moral significance of helping animals; one featuring our estimated \u201croom for more funding\u201d for some outstanding cause such as potential risks from advanced AI or biosecurity and pandemic preparedness; and \u201cunknown unknowns\u201d), each with an independent 10% chance of leading to a \u201clast dollar\u201d that seems 5x as good as GiveWell\u2019s current top charities. In aggregate, this would imply a 34% chance1that there is some way to spend the \u201clast dollar\u201d 5x as well as GiveWell\u2019s current top charities. This would imply that GiveWell\u2019s current top charities should be considered less cost-effective in expectation than the \u201clast dollar.\u201d\"\"\"", "timestamp": "1500702302"}, {"author": "Vipul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/888997504752?comment_id=889142329522&reply_comment_id=889142603972", "anchor": "fb-889142329522_889142603972", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;You can get clearer information on the history of grants by cause area and year at https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php...", "timestamp": "1500702582"}, {"author": "Vipul", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/888997504752?comment_id=889142329522&reply_comment_id=889142608962", "anchor": "fb-889142329522_889142608962", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;and https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donor.php...", "timestamp": "1500702587"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/888997504752?comment_id=889142329522&reply_comment_id=931541097052", "anchor": "fb-889142329522_931541097052", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Vipul: \"This again suggests no ramp-up from 2016 to 2017 in grant decisions, though the grants database would be expected to continue showing a ramp-up till mid-2017 primarily due to the lag between decision and allocation.\"<br><br>In late July 2017 I estimated they would grant an additional $79M in the rest of the year, but checking now it looks like they granted $142M.  Overall, I see $133M for 2016, rising to $282M for 2017, so 2.1x.  It looks like we saw the opposite of what I think you were predicting?", "timestamp": "1520888072"}]}