It's December, and I'm trying to figure out how much to donate. This is usually a straightforward question: give 50%. But this year I'm considering dipping into savings.

There are many EAs and EA-informed employees at Anthropic, which has been very successful and is reportedly considering an IPO. The Manifold market estimates a median IPO date of June 2027:

At a floated $300B valuation and many EAs among their early employees, the amount of additional funding could be in the billions. Efforts I'd most want to support may become less constrained by money than capacity: as I've experienced in running the NAO, scaling programs takes time. This means donations now seem more valuable; ones that help organizations get into a position to productively apply further funding especially so.

One way to get a sense of the impact of donating sooner is to imagine that others will donate $1M to my preferred charity this year, and $10M next year. If I have $200k, I expect giving it all this year, for a total of $1.2M this year and $10M the next, would be more valuable than splitting it evenly, for $1.1M this year and $10.1M the next. The $100k in question would be a 9% increase in funding this year, but only a 1% increase next year.

In retrospect I wish I'd been able to support 80,000 Hours more substantially before Open Philanthropy Coefficient Giving began funding them; this time, with more ability to see what's likely coming, I'd like to avoid that mistake.

Now, Anthropic could fail, the IPO could take a long time with minimal opportunity for employees to take money off the table before then, or the employees could end up primarily interested in funding different things than I want to see funded. Still, it seems to me that EA-influenced funding likely goes a lot farther in the next few months than it will in a few years, and I think I should probably donate more this year.