Another donation opportunity came up recently, which I responded to with a big long list of questions and I’ll put the answers up when I get them. People seemed to like this approach—can we do something similar for the FHI?
Some thoughts:
Are the people at FHI going to be too busy to answer this kind of stuff?
Are they likely to be limited in how candid they can be with their answers if the answers are going to be made public?
I’m guessing Stuart or Sean would be the people you’d recommend talking to?
I’ll give a small attempt at answering some of the questions (I know little from the financial side, alas)
1 What would you do with different funding levels?
Hire more people, put current people on longer contracts, not have current people writing grant applications or slavishly following the requirements of the grants they currently are on (which would probably mean an increased AI-risk focus)
2 How much money are you expecting?
No idea.
3 Which is more useful, regular donations or lump sums?
Generally interchangeable; regular donations with a definite timeline (“I will donate at least until the date of XXXX”) are equivalent with a particular lump sum. Regular donations with no commitment are a bit more iffy, as they increase uncertainty.
4 If you had funds to hire an extra person, do you know how that person would be?
We have some people in mind (eg Nick Beckstead, for instance). In general, the FHI gets far more high quality applications than we have places, so we can select from the best.
5 Where do you see the delineation between what FHI does and what other effective altruist orgs do?
Others have commented on this; I’ll simply point out that the FHI is in a totally unique position, being a university research institute with some political contacts. No other org could easily replicate this.
6 How much personal connection and communication is there between FHI and these orgs?
Not much. We have “giving what we can” on staff, and interact with SIAI and (to some extent) with 80KH, but the FHI tends to interact with specific individuals (Robin Hanson, Eric Drexler, Milan Circovic...) rather than organisations.
7 How do you assess the credibility of money pledged?
The University probably has a policy on that.
8 How are you measuring money moved/pledged?
I don’t know this side of things, sorry!
9 You do a bunch of different but related things—website content, speaker events, career counseling,
Not really relevant to the FHI—our two main things are academic research (with all the presenting, publishing and so on that that entails) and outreach/policy efforts. We won’t be giving up either any time soon.
10 I have very little idea about what the FHI community is like or how exactly you invest in it
We’re rather conventional in organisation: a standard university research institute, people pursuing their own projects and meeting to coordinate and exchange a lot of ideas.
11 Is FHI planning activity in any new physical locations?
We want to move downstairs in our building. This isn’t really relevant to donors.
12 What does FHI plan in the way of self-evaluation?
13 What are you planning in the way of financial transparency?
This is more a question for Sean or Nick. Being part of the university, we follow their criteria for transparency, and a lot of the self-evaluation is based on other-evaluation: seeing how much of our papers are accepted, the attendance at conferences, and similar.
Oh wow, totally wasn’t expecting you to go ahead and answer that particular list of questions. Thanks for being so proactive!
Questions 7-11 aren’t really relevant to FHI. Question 16 is relevant (at least the the “are there other orgs similar to you?” part) but I’m guessing you’d answer no to that?
Other orgs similar: SIA, the group in Cambridge which may be founded, some governmental and corporate future-predicting think tanks. But none of them are really that similar.
Another donation opportunity came up recently, which I responded to with a big long list of questions and I’ll put the answers up when I get them. People seemed to like this approach—can we do something similar for the FHI?
Some thoughts:
Are the people at FHI going to be too busy to answer this kind of stuff?
Are they likely to be limited in how candid they can be with their answers if the answers are going to be made public?
I’m guessing Stuart or Sean would be the people you’d recommend talking to?
I’ll give a small attempt at answering some of the questions (I know little from the financial side, alas)
Hire more people, put current people on longer contracts, not have current people writing grant applications or slavishly following the requirements of the grants they currently are on (which would probably mean an increased AI-risk focus)
No idea.
Generally interchangeable; regular donations with a definite timeline (“I will donate at least until the date of XXXX”) are equivalent with a particular lump sum. Regular donations with no commitment are a bit more iffy, as they increase uncertainty.
We have some people in mind (eg Nick Beckstead, for instance). In general, the FHI gets far more high quality applications than we have places, so we can select from the best.
Others have commented on this; I’ll simply point out that the FHI is in a totally unique position, being a university research institute with some political contacts. No other org could easily replicate this.
Not much. We have “giving what we can” on staff, and interact with SIAI and (to some extent) with 80KH, but the FHI tends to interact with specific individuals (Robin Hanson, Eric Drexler, Milan Circovic...) rather than organisations.
The University probably has a policy on that.
I don’t know this side of things, sorry!
Not really relevant to the FHI—our two main things are academic research (with all the presenting, publishing and so on that that entails) and outreach/policy efforts. We won’t be giving up either any time soon.
We’re rather conventional in organisation: a standard university research institute, people pursuing their own projects and meeting to coordinate and exchange a lot of ideas.
We want to move downstairs in our building. This isn’t really relevant to donors.
This is more a question for Sean or Nick. Being part of the university, we follow their criteria for transparency, and a lot of the self-evaluation is based on other-evaluation: seeing how much of our papers are accepted, the attendance at conferences, and similar.
Questions 14-16 not relevant to the FHI.
Hope this brief answer helps!
Oh wow, totally wasn’t expecting you to go ahead and answer that particular list of questions. Thanks for being so proactive!
Questions 7-11 aren’t really relevant to FHI. Question 16 is relevant (at least the the “are there other orgs similar to you?” part) but I’m guessing you’d answer no to that?
The other answers are helpful, thanks!
Other orgs similar: SIA, the group in Cambridge which may be founded, some governmental and corporate future-predicting think tanks. But none of them are really that similar.
Always! But we can try...
Probably not. We don’t have any interesting secrets.
Sean is even more busy than me, so I’d recommend—gulp—talking to me.