Crossposted from my blog
I am very fortunate to have my job in many ways – I get to talk to, learn from, and give money to amazing people and nonprofits all around the world. I get to allocate a modest amount of resources to incredible organisations that I think are doing some of the best work to improve the world. I don’t have to fundraise for my or my team's salaries anymore. However, there are some things I’ve learned since becoming a philanthropic grantmaker that were either surprising or affected me more strongly than I expected.
I will outline some of these below. These are not meant to invoke feelings of “oh poor grantmakers who have access to money and influence” but rather “oh, I never considered things from that perspective”. Hopefully, they will also lead to more productive working relationships between funders and advocacy groups.
Here, I discuss:
- How challenging the trade-offs are that funders face
- The extremely poor feedback mechanisms that nonprofits have
- How people treat you differently once you have access to funding, and how that changes you
- The weight of saying no to good groups
- Some things that make me feel cynical
Trade-offs [...]
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Outline:
(01:18) Trade-offs are hard and money is scarce
(06:35) Nonprofits have bad feedback mechanisms
(13:00) How people treat you differently (and how that changes you)
(14:52) Its hard to say no to people
(16:08) Its easy to become cynical
(19:38) Wrapping up
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First published:
March 11th, 2026
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/umicYzuRsm6okFRKA/what-i-didn-t-expect-about-being-a-funder
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
