Not sure the bar for ‘common’ but I’m aware of maybe half a dozen roving donation funds that don’t disclose more about themselves than is legally required (or maybe have heard a handful of different stories from different people about the same one? Unclear).
AFAIK you have to disclose to the government, so someone at your org always knows the proximal source, and an auditable paper trail usually exists back to the ultimate source (although there are probably ways to thwart this kind of tracing, even by the government, although my guess is most of these are illegal, unethical, or both; maybe there’s some way to do it that’s ~fine).
I think categorically not accepting this money might basically surrender whole cause areas to the CG brain trust, since many of the bets of anonymous donors are uncorrelated w CG grant making, which makes them especially valuable if you’re in a position to receive them (eg have already been rejected by CG, or don’t want to ask them for some other reason). It may also cause less in-community dollars to go to philanthropy, since it’s relatively common to want to bet against yourself via donation, which can create weird optics for people who are otherwise well-known to hold a particular view, but is actually just a totally coherent strategy. (Eg imagine if you’re a grant maker at CG but also independently wealthy and want to make some unrestricted calls with your own money from time to time without it changing perception of CG’s house view or your own personal view to the extent that it’s publicly known; this is an entirely fictional example, but maybe illustrates one use case for anonymous giving).
For the avoidance of doubt/admitting a COI on my part: MIRI received a sizable anonymous donation a few years ago, and another (smaller one) a few months ago. This doesn’t bother me, because MIRI has refused funding from certain sources in the past (eg Epstein), and I’ve generally seen a lot of costly high-integrity moves behind the scenes. I don’t now and probably will never know where that money came from, but Malo does and that’s good enough for me.
[importantly these are reasons it doesn’t bother ME; I’m not confident I could convince someone who doesn’t already trust Eliezer and Malo that it shouldn’t bother THEM]
@Elizabeth Disclosing funding sources enables the public to identify conflicts of interest. On the balance, I think it’s better to prevent conflicts of interest than it is to provide grantmakers with optical cover for bet-hedging (re: yams post, perhaps I don’t understand the pressures on grantmakers here).
Is it a common thing in the EA philanthropy sphere for grantees to take funding without disclosing its source? This strikes me as very bad.
Not sure the bar for ‘common’ but I’m aware of maybe half a dozen roving donation funds that don’t disclose more about themselves than is legally required (or maybe have heard a handful of different stories from different people about the same one? Unclear).
AFAIK you have to disclose to the government, so someone at your org always knows the proximal source, and an auditable paper trail usually exists back to the ultimate source (although there are probably ways to thwart this kind of tracing, even by the government, although my guess is most of these are illegal, unethical, or both; maybe there’s some way to do it that’s ~fine).
I think categorically not accepting this money might basically surrender whole cause areas to the CG brain trust, since many of the bets of anonymous donors are uncorrelated w CG grant making, which makes them especially valuable if you’re in a position to receive them (eg have already been rejected by CG, or don’t want to ask them for some other reason). It may also cause less in-community dollars to go to philanthropy, since it’s relatively common to want to bet against yourself via donation, which can create weird optics for people who are otherwise well-known to hold a particular view, but is actually just a totally coherent strategy. (Eg imagine if you’re a grant maker at CG but also independently wealthy and want to make some unrestricted calls with your own money from time to time without it changing perception of CG’s house view or your own personal view to the extent that it’s publicly known; this is an entirely fictional example, but maybe illustrates one use case for anonymous giving).
For the avoidance of doubt/admitting a COI on my part: MIRI received a sizable anonymous donation a few years ago, and another (smaller one) a few months ago. This doesn’t bother me, because MIRI has refused funding from certain sources in the past (eg Epstein), and I’ve generally seen a lot of costly high-integrity moves behind the scenes. I don’t now and probably will never know where that money came from, but Malo does and that’s good enough for me.
[importantly these are reasons it doesn’t bother ME; I’m not confident I could convince someone who doesn’t already trust Eliezer and Malo that it shouldn’t bother THEM]
@Elizabeth Disclosing funding sources enables the public to identify conflicts of interest. On the balance, I think it’s better to prevent conflicts of interest than it is to provide grantmakers with optical cover for bet-hedging (re: yams post, perhaps I don’t understand the pressures on grantmakers here).