Coefficient Giving is one of the worst name changes I’ve ever heard:
Coefficient Giving sounds bad while OpenPhil sounded cool and snappy.
Coefficient doesn’t really mean anything in this context, clearly it’s a pun on “co” and “efficient” but that is also confusing. They say “A coefficient multiplies the value of whatever it’s paired with” but that’s just true of any number?
They’re a grantmaker who don’t really advise normal individuals about where to give their money, so why “Giving” when their main thing is soliciting large philanthropic efforts and then auditing that
Coefficient Giving doesn’t tell you what the company does at the start! “Good Ventures” and “GiveWell” tell you roughly what the company is doing.
“Coefficient” is a really weird word, so you’re burning weirdness points with the literal first thing anyone will ever hear you say, this seems like a name which you would only thing is good if you’re already deep into rat/ea spaces.
It sounds bad. Open Philanthropy rolls off the tongue, as does OpenPhil. OH-puhn fi-LAN-thruh-pee. Two sets of three. CO-uh-fish-unt GI-ving is an awkward four-two with a half-emphasis on the fish of coefficient. Sounds bad. I’m coming back to this point but there is no possible shortening other than “Coefficient” which is bad because it’s just an abstract noun and not very identifiable, whereas “OpenPhil” was a unique identifier. CoGive maybe, but then you have two stressed syllables which is awkward. It mildly offends my tongue to have to even utter their name.
Clearly OP wanted to shed their existing reputation, but man, this is a really bad name choice.
Apparently the thing of “people mixed up openphil with other orgs” (in particular OpenAI’s non-profit and the open society foundation) was a significantly bigger problem than I’d have thought — recurringly happening even in pretty high-stakes situations. (Like important grant applicants being confused.) And most of these misunderstandings wouldn’t even have been visible to employees.
And arguably this was just about to get even worse with the newly launched “OpenAI foundation” sounding even more similar.
Coefficient Giving doesn’t tell you what we do, but neither did Open Philanthropy. And fwiw, neither does Good Ventures, IMO—or many nonprofits, e.g. Lightcone Infrastructure, Redwood Research, the Red Cross. Agreed that GiveWell is a very descriptive and good name though.
Setting aside whether “coefficient” is a weird word, I don’t think having an unusual word in your name “burns weirdness points” in a costly way. Take some of the world’s biggest companies—Nvidia (“invidious,”) Google (“googol”), Meta—these aren’t especially common words, but it seems to have worked out for them.
The emphasis of “coefficient” is on the “fish.” So it’s not an “awkward four-two,” it’s three sets of two, which seems melodic enough (cf. 80,000 Hours, Lightcone Infrastructure, European Union, Make-A-Wish Foundation, etc).
On the no possible shortening, again, time will tell, but my money is on “CG,” which seems fine.
On a different level, “philanthropy” is less weird in the name of a philanthropy org. It’s also doing work. If someone has to look up what “philanthropy” means, then they become less confused. If they do that for “coefficient” then they’re just even more confused. It’s also the case that basically anyone can understand what “philanthropy” means given a one-sentence description, which isn’t as easily the case for “coefficient” (I actually don’t know a good definition for “coefficient” off the top of my head, despite the fact that I can name several coefficients).
As a non-native English speaker, OpenPhil was sooo much easier to pronounce than Coefficient Giving. I’m sure this shouldn’t play a big part in the naming decision, but still...
I think this is a case of a curb cut effect. If it’s easy (vs hard) to pronounce for non-native speakers, it’s also easy (vs hard) to get the point across at a noisy party, or over a crackly phone line, or if someone’s distracted.
At least their website now explains what their do. It took me a very long time to understand what OpenPhil does and where they get the money from. Now it’s all finally explained on the front page.
Oh yeah and as my partner pointed out to me today. While “Coefficients multiply whatever they are next to” lots of things called “coefficients” we commonly encounter have values smaller than 1 (e.g. the coefficient of friction, drag coefficient, coefficient of restitution all commonly have values <1)
From what I understand, the issue was mostly with the “Open” part (because of mis-association with OpenAI and also because OP is no longer “open” in the sense that they decided not to disclose some of their donations (for whatever reasons)), but then they could just go for something like, idk, MaxiValPhil, which is less pleasant to pronounce and less pleasantly sounding than OpenPhil, but:
it doesn’t sound as bad as Coefficient Giving
is easier to pronounce
doesn’t spend weirdness points by using an uncommon word “coefficient”
communicates what it’s about (even people who are not used to thinking in terms of expected value will mostly correctly guess what “Maximum Value Philantropy” wants to do)
(As a very minor thing, algebraists / category theorists will be making jokes that they’re the opposite of efficient.)
“Coefficient Giving sounds bad while OpenPhil sounded cool and snappy.”—OpenPhil just sounds better because it’s shorter. I imagine that instead of saying the full name, Coefficient Giving will soon acquire some similar sort of nickname—probably people will just say “Coefficient”, which sounds kinda cool IMO. I could also picture people writing “Coeff” as shorthand, although it would be weird to try and say “Coeff” out loud.
I could also get used to saying “cGive” pronounced similar to “sea Give” which has nice connotations spoken aloud and has c as coefficient right in the written version. But I agree that “Coefficient” has a good sound compared to which “cGive” seems more generic
I like Gradient Giving. “A gradient is the direction of fastest increase” would have also been a good explanation and literally reflects what they’re trying to do. It rhymes with “radient,” which sounds optimistic.
I feel like they’re trying to brand more in the direction of being advisors for others’ money, but aren’t willing to go all the way? I’m not sure why, I guess they want to keep more relative power in the relationships they build.
Coefficient Giving is one of the worst name changes I’ve ever heard:
Coefficient Giving sounds bad while OpenPhil sounded cool and snappy.
Coefficient doesn’t really mean anything in this context, clearly it’s a pun on “co” and “efficient” but that is also confusing. They say “A coefficient multiplies the value of whatever it’s paired with” but that’s just true of any number?
They’re a grantmaker who don’t really advise normal individuals about where to give their money, so why “Giving” when their main thing is soliciting large philanthropic efforts and then auditing that
Coefficient Giving doesn’t tell you what the company does at the start! “Good Ventures” and “GiveWell” tell you roughly what the company is doing.
“Coefficient” is a really weird word, so you’re burning weirdness points with the literal first thing anyone will ever hear you say, this seems like a name which you would only thing is good if you’re already deep into rat/ea spaces.
It sounds bad. Open Philanthropy rolls off the tongue, as does OpenPhil. OH-puhn fi-LAN-thruh-pee. Two sets of three. CO-uh-fish-unt GI-ving is an awkward four-two with a half-emphasis on the fish of coefficient. Sounds bad. I’m coming back to this point but there is no possible shortening other than “Coefficient” which is bad because it’s just an abstract noun and not very identifiable, whereas “OpenPhil” was a unique identifier. CoGive maybe, but then you have two stressed syllables which is awkward. It mildly offends my tongue to have to even utter their name.
Clearly OP wanted to shed their existing reputation, but man, this is a really bad name choice.
Apparently the thing of “people mixed up openphil with other orgs” (in particular OpenAI’s non-profit and the open society foundation) was a significantly bigger problem than I’d have thought — recurringly happening even in pretty high-stakes situations. (Like important grant applicants being confused.) And most of these misunderstandings wouldn’t even have been visible to employees.
And arguably this was just about to get even worse with the newly launched “OpenAI foundation” sounding even more similar.
On the flip side the OpenAI foundation now have the occasion to do the funniest thing.
Other commenters have said most of what I was going to say, but a few other points in defense:
On it sounding bad, I think time will tell. We are biased towards liking familiar stimuli.
Coefficient Giving doesn’t tell you what we do, but neither did Open Philanthropy. And fwiw, neither does Good Ventures, IMO—or many nonprofits, e.g. Lightcone Infrastructure, Redwood Research, the Red Cross. Agreed that GiveWell is a very descriptive and good name though.
Setting aside whether “coefficient” is a weird word, I don’t think having an unusual word in your name “burns weirdness points” in a costly way. Take some of the world’s biggest companies—Nvidia (“invidious,”) Google (“googol”), Meta—these aren’t especially common words, but it seems to have worked out for them.
The emphasis of “coefficient” is on the “fish.” So it’s not an “awkward four-two,” it’s three sets of two, which seems melodic enough (cf. 80,000 Hours, Lightcone Infrastructure, European Union, Make-A-Wish Foundation, etc).
On the no possible shortening, again, time will tell, but my money is on “CG,” which seems fine.
“coefficient” is 10x more common than “philanthropy” in the google books corpus. but idk maybe this flips if we filter out academic books?
also maybe you mean it’s weird in some sense the above fact isn’t really relevant to — then nvm
Filter for fiction and they’re about the same which I was actually surprised by.
On a different level, “philanthropy” is less weird in the name of a philanthropy org. It’s also doing work. If someone has to look up what “philanthropy” means, then they become less confused. If they do that for “coefficient” then they’re just even more confused. It’s also the case that basically anyone can understand what “philanthropy” means given a one-sentence description, which isn’t as easily the case for “coefficient” (I actually don’t know a good definition for “coefficient” off the top of my head, despite the fact that I can name several coefficients).
Just call it the Factor Fund.
As a non-native English speaker, OpenPhil was sooo much easier to pronounce than Coefficient Giving. I’m sure this shouldn’t play a big part in the naming decision, but still...
(FWIW, I do think that ease of pronunciation for the intended public should play a moderate role in choosing the name.)
Well yes, but I’m not sure if non-native speakers are in the “intended public”, since they operate in the US mostly
I think this is a case of a curb cut effect. If it’s easy (vs hard) to pronounce for non-native speakers, it’s also easy (vs hard) to get the point across at a noisy party, or over a crackly phone line, or if someone’s distracted.
Guy-stand-up.jpg
I dunno I think Coefficient Giving sounds fine.
At least their website now explains what their do. It took me a very long time to understand what OpenPhil does and where they get the money from. Now it’s all finally explained on the front page.
Oh yeah and as my partner pointed out to me today. While “Coefficients multiply whatever they are next to” lots of things called “coefficients” we commonly encounter have values smaller than 1 (e.g. the coefficient of friction, drag coefficient, coefficient of restitution all commonly have values <1)
From what I understand, the issue was mostly with the “Open” part (because of mis-association with OpenAI and also because OP is no longer “open” in the sense that they decided not to disclose some of their donations (for whatever reasons)), but then they could just go for something like, idk, MaxiValPhil, which is less pleasant to pronounce and less pleasantly sounding than OpenPhil, but:
it doesn’t sound as bad as Coefficient Giving
is easier to pronounce
doesn’t spend weirdness points by using an uncommon word “coefficient”
communicates what it’s about (even people who are not used to thinking in terms of expected value will mostly correctly guess what “Maximum Value Philantropy” wants to do)
(As a very minor thing, algebraists / category theorists will be making jokes that they’re the opposite of efficient.)
“Coefficient Giving sounds bad while OpenPhil sounded cool and snappy.”—OpenPhil just sounds better because it’s shorter. I imagine that instead of saying the full name, Coefficient Giving will soon acquire some similar sort of nickname—probably people will just say “Coefficient”, which sounds kinda cool IMO. I could also picture people writing “Coeff” as shorthand, although it would be weird to try and say “Coeff” out loud.
I could also get used to saying “cGive” pronounced similar to “sea Give” which has nice connotations spoken aloud and has c as coefficient right in the written version. But I agree that “Coefficient” has a good sound compared to which “cGive” seems more generic
I like Gradient Giving. “A gradient is the direction of fastest increase” would have also been a good explanation and literally reflects what they’re trying to do. It rhymes with “radient,” which sounds optimistic.
But this would make it sound too much like AI-related philanthropy is all they do...
I feel like they’re trying to brand more in the direction of being advisors for others’ money, but aren’t willing to go all the way? I’m not sure why, I guess they want to keep more relative power in the relationships they build.