The Nonlinear Library EA - Rethink Priorities needs your support. Here's what we'd do with it. by Peter Wildeford
Nov 21, 2023
33:25
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Rethink Priorities needs your support. Here's what we'd do with it., published by Peter Wildeford on November 21, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
In honor of
"Marginal Funding Week" for
2023 Giving Season on the EA Forum, I'd like to tell you what Rethink Priorities (RP) would do with funding beyond what we currently expect to raise from our major funders, and to emphasize that
RP currently has a significant funding gap even after taking these major funders into account.
A personal appeal
Hi. I know it's traditional in EA to stick to the facts and avoid emotional content, but I can't help but interject and say that this fundraising appeal is a bit different. It is personal to me. It's not just a list of things that we could take or leave, it's a fight for RP to survive the way I want it to as an organization that is intellectually independent and serves the EA community.
To be blunt, our funding situation is not where we want it to be. 2023 has been a hard year for fundraising. A lot of what we've been building over the past few years is at risk right now. If you like RP, my sense is donating now is an unusually good time.
We are at the point where receiving $1,000 - $10,000 each from a handful of individual donors would genuinely make an important difference to the future trajectory of RP and decide what we can and cannot do next year.
We are currently seeking to raise at least $110K total from donors donating under $100K each. We are already ~$25K towards that goal, so there's $85K remaining towards our goal. We also hope to receive more support from larger givers as well.
To be clear, this isn't just about funding growth. An RP that does not receive additional funding right now will be worse in several concrete ways. Funding gaps may force us to:
Focus more on non-published, client-driven work that will never be released to the community (because we cannot afford to do so)
Stop running the EA Survey, survey updates about FTX, and other community survey projects
Do fewer of our own creative ideas (e.g.,
CURVE sequence,
moral weights work)
Be unable to run several of our most promising research projects (see below)
Reduce things we think are important - like opportunities for research teams to meet in person and opportunities for staff to do further professional development.
Spend significant amounts of time fundraising next year, distracting from our core work
For unfamiliar readers, some of our track and impact to date includes:
Contributing significantly to burgeoning fields, such as invertebrate welfare.
Led the way in exploring novel promising approaches to help trillions of animals, by launching the
Insect Institute and uncovering the major scale of
shrimp production
Completing
the Moral Weight Project to try to help funders decide how to best allocate resources across species.
Producing >40 reports commissioned by Open Philanthropy and GiveWell answering their questions to inform their global health and development portfolios.
Producing the
EA Survey and
surveys on the impact of FTX on the EA brand that were used by many EA orgs and local groups
Conducting over 200 tailored surveys and data analysis projects to help many organizations working on global priorities.
Launching projects such as
Condor Camp and fiscally sponsoring organizations like
Epoch and
Apollo Research via our Special Projects team, which provides operational support.
Setting up an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance and Strategy team and evolving it into a think tank that has already published multiple influential reports.
Please help us keep RP impactful with your support.
Why does RP need money from individuals when there are large donors supporting you?
It's commonly assumed that RP must get all the money it needs from large institutions. But this is not the case - we've histor...
In honor of
"Marginal Funding Week" for
2023 Giving Season on the EA Forum, I'd like to tell you what Rethink Priorities (RP) would do with funding beyond what we currently expect to raise from our major funders, and to emphasize that
RP currently has a significant funding gap even after taking these major funders into account.
A personal appeal
Hi. I know it's traditional in EA to stick to the facts and avoid emotional content, but I can't help but interject and say that this fundraising appeal is a bit different. It is personal to me. It's not just a list of things that we could take or leave, it's a fight for RP to survive the way I want it to as an organization that is intellectually independent and serves the EA community.
To be blunt, our funding situation is not where we want it to be. 2023 has been a hard year for fundraising. A lot of what we've been building over the past few years is at risk right now. If you like RP, my sense is donating now is an unusually good time.
We are at the point where receiving $1,000 - $10,000 each from a handful of individual donors would genuinely make an important difference to the future trajectory of RP and decide what we can and cannot do next year.
We are currently seeking to raise at least $110K total from donors donating under $100K each. We are already ~$25K towards that goal, so there's $85K remaining towards our goal. We also hope to receive more support from larger givers as well.
To be clear, this isn't just about funding growth. An RP that does not receive additional funding right now will be worse in several concrete ways. Funding gaps may force us to:
Focus more on non-published, client-driven work that will never be released to the community (because we cannot afford to do so)
Stop running the EA Survey, survey updates about FTX, and other community survey projects
Do fewer of our own creative ideas (e.g.,
CURVE sequence,
moral weights work)
Be unable to run several of our most promising research projects (see below)
Reduce things we think are important - like opportunities for research teams to meet in person and opportunities for staff to do further professional development.
Spend significant amounts of time fundraising next year, distracting from our core work
For unfamiliar readers, some of our track and impact to date includes:
Contributing significantly to burgeoning fields, such as invertebrate welfare.
Led the way in exploring novel promising approaches to help trillions of animals, by launching the
Insect Institute and uncovering the major scale of
shrimp production
Completing
the Moral Weight Project to try to help funders decide how to best allocate resources across species.
Producing >40 reports commissioned by Open Philanthropy and GiveWell answering their questions to inform their global health and development portfolios.
Producing the
EA Survey and
surveys on the impact of FTX on the EA brand that were used by many EA orgs and local groups
Conducting over 200 tailored surveys and data analysis projects to help many organizations working on global priorities.
Launching projects such as
Condor Camp and fiscally sponsoring organizations like
Epoch and
Apollo Research via our Special Projects team, which provides operational support.
Setting up an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance and Strategy team and evolving it into a think tank that has already published multiple influential reports.
Please help us keep RP impactful with your support.
Why does RP need money from individuals when there are large donors supporting you?
It's commonly assumed that RP must get all the money it needs from large institutions. But this is not the case - we've histor...