Announcing Nonlinear Emergency Funding

[EDIT: I'd like to clarify that, strictly speaking, the comment below is gossip without hard substantiating evidence. Gossip can have an important community function - at the very least, from this comment you can conclude that things happened at Nonlinear which induced people (in fact, many people) to negatively gossip about the organization - but should also be treated as different from hard accusations, especially those backed by publicly available evidence. In the wake of the FTX fiasco, I think it's likely that people are more inclined to treat gossip of the sort I share below as decisive.

That said, I do think that the gossip below paints a basically accurate picture. I also have other reasons to distrust Nonlinear that I don't feel comfortable sharing (more gossip!). I know this is hard epistemic territory to work in, and I'm sorry. I would feel best about this situation if someone from, e.g., CEA would talk to some of the people involved, but I'm sure anyone who could deal with this is swamped right now. In the meantime, I think it's fine for this gossip to make you unsure about Nonlinear, but still e.g. consider applying to them for emergency funding. I personally wouldn't, but I have different information from you, and a community which overindexes on gossip will have problems.]

Considering recent events, I feel that I ought to share the following:

Based on things I've heard from various people around Nonlinear, Kat and Emerson have a recent track record of conducting Nonlinear in a way inconsistent with EA values. More specifically, they have a history of mistreating their employees and interns, and of not fulfilling obligations to them, including financial obligations and mentorship they promised to provide. I have general sense that they had a pattern of taking on young, idealistic interns with poor ability to stand up for themselves and exploiting them to a standard many would consider unacceptable (e.g. manipulating them into accepting unreasonably little pay, and sometimes not following through on payment when they thought they could get away with it).

As I understand things, in July 2022 a group of Nonlinear employees and interns quit because they were unhappy with either their own treatment or the treatment of their coworkers.

I've also heard that Emerson can be retributive, and that some people around Nonlinear were scared about Emerson finding out they'd spoken badly about him. (Generally speaking, to the extent that things were bad at Nonlinear, I have the general sense that Emerson, and not Kat, was the main source of bad behavior.)

I feel quite conflicted about posting this because:

• The people I've spoken to also think that Nonlinear has done a lot of good, despite their mistreatment of employees and interns. But I've recently become quite weary of this "ends justify the means"-type reasoning.
• I can't share any specifics because anything specific was told to me in confidence; I also have no way of knowing whether the things I've heard were exaggerated. Additionally, a lot of what I was told I remember only vaguely.
• Given that none of the people wronged spoke up, it's not clear that I should (due to concerns about the reliability of secondhand knowledge, for example).
• The EA community certainly doesn't need any more drama right now.

But I decided to post anyway because I like to think that I've learned the hazards of waiting until after misbehavior is publicly revealed to write about the evidence that I had all along. Sorry for any unfortunate consequences of this comment.

If someone trusted would like to verify my identity and that I could plausibly have knowledge about this, I'd be willing to share my identity in a direct message.

I'm curious about what's the original source of the funding you're giving out here. According to this Nonlinear received $250k from Future Fund and $600k from Survival and Flourishing Fund. Is the funding being distributed here coming solely from the SFF grant? Does Nonlinear have other funding sources besides Future Fund and SFF? 

(I didn't do any deeper dive than looking at Nonlinear's website, where I couldn't find anything about funding sources.)

Hm, how could this interact with hypothetical clawbacks?

E.g.

1. your org has $0
2. your org receives $100 from FTXF, now your org has $100
3. your org spends $50 of that money, and then decides to stop
4. your org receive $10 from Nonlinear, now your org has $60
5. the clawback effort comes to your org and says "hey we need $100". org say "I don't have $100, I only have $50"
6. Does the clawback effort then say "No actually you have $60, we're taking all $60" because of money fungibility?

Hi! Just a few questions:

I remember hearing that Emerson/Nonlinear invested quite a lot into crypto - presumably with the current markets, his/Nonlinear's portfolio must've taken a hit? 

Secondly,  Nonlinear received a Future Fund grant: https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/?_search=nonlinear

Are you potentially concerned about clawbacks to the money you hand out, especially if you're dispersing small amounts to several people who could then be affected?

Also, will additional funders top you up, or will the money go directly to the people affected? 

If funders top you up, would that potentially commingle FTX money with non-FTX funders' money? 

What was apparently a good intentioned move seems to be getting sidetracked by the majority of anonymous (and non anonymous) comments. Quite unfortunate.

Can't we all just kiss and make up? We are supposed to be altruists, right? RIGHT??? 

On a more serious note, I don't personally know and have never worked personally with Kat or Emerson but I've been a member of one of the Nonlinear/Superlinear discords for some weeks now and have interacted with Drew and a few others and that place feels more or less like a family where everyone's opinion is valued and respected. 

They are very open, helpful and supportive people and one of the most welcoming of all the EA communities I've been in so far (I'm quite new to EA, about three months old in the community). I've never felt any negative vibes interacting with them and I am of the strong opinion that the work being done there is highly impactful and relevant to EA.

All the same I believe "there is no smoke without fire" as they say and I believe some kind of official investigation should be made into these allegations (if possible). But I don't think this thread is the best place to discuss this issue as it distracts from the import of the original post (which would be beneficial to a lot of people in the community given the current situation of things).

The anonymous accuser should have created a different post and linked to it in a brief comment here for a more robust discussion of that issue without distracting from the original purpose of this thread.

And on the issue of forum voting, I think posters and commenters should NOT be able to vote on their own posts and comments. I believe the effects of being able to vote on one's own post/comment are net negative.

Hi!

I’m Minh, current intern at Nonlinear. Since this thread is clearly picking up again, I’d like to provide my perspective as someone who’s worked at Nonlinear, and on the Emergency Fund. First, context: 

1. All this is my own experience and opinion. The fact that I had overall positive experiences does not invalidate someone else’s negative experience. I admit it’s … not a good look to have such a high rate of strong negative sentiment.
2. I’ve been working with Nonlinear for ~3 months. About 80% of my interaction is with Drew Spartz ^[1]and Luca (the other intern). The other 20% is Kat who I’ve had one 2-hour meeting with when planning the Nonlinear Emergency Fund and text correspondence/coordination as Nonlinear processes applications. I have never interacted with Emerson. 

What I can do is provide additional context. So far, we’ve received ~40 applications for the Nonlinear Emergency Fund. Kat has been personally following up on requests, coordinating with external funders and handling relevant documents for dozens of grantees. To my knowledge, ~10 of the most time-sensitive requests have been approved. The responsibility is kind of insane, since improper follow-up/delay has immediate consequences on the grantee’s end. About 8 requests indicated they needed to hear back in less than a week, and the shortest was less than three days.

Motivations behind the Emergency Fund
Keep in mind that none of this is something Nonlinear actually has to do. There’s practically no direct impact to us, and the emergency funding we give out are, to my knowledge, unconditional. I did see one grant that stipulated additional non-emergency funding contingent on producing policy-actionable research, but that doesn’t benefit Nonlinear either.

During the 2-hour call when Kat, Luca and I discussed the Emergency Fund, the 2 main focuses were:

1. Prioritising immediate financial/personal emergencies of grantees
2. Prioritising counterfactual impact on EA work This means bridge-funding projects/work that would otherwise have to be stopped as grantees have to cease their work. I won’t give names, but let’s just say I was very surprised to see projects I’d used before/applied to.

At no point did I hear ulterior motives. And frankly, I feel like launching an emergency fund of your own money, when you don’t have to, isn’t the kind of thought process a selfish opportunist jumps at.

Implications
Also, keep in mind that, at the time:

1. Nonlinear also lost $250k in funding from FTX Future Fund. I have been told some of the team also had larger personal funds on FTX. If anything, FTX is paying Nonlinear if clawbacks occur.
2. Kat was entirely focused on the community. Video calling someone on a treadmill while she earnestly details plans to distribute six figures in emergency funding, right after a third of EA funding vanished overnight, is a very surreal experience.
3. Kat had no reassurance that any other funders would also step up for any of the grantees. Hence the explicit assumption was that Nonlinear’s founders would self-fund the grantees out of their own pockets. I distinctly recall her saying “If we need to fund them, that’s a good thing to do.”

Conclusion
I’ve told this story because:

1. This thread about the Nonlinear Emergency Fund has gotten wildly off tangent, so I might as well update the community with positive news. Hi!
2. I wanted to provide a contrasting perspective. The team I’ve interacted with has been talking about helping the EA community this entire time, actively coordinating and willingly paid out of pocket for people directly. While this doesn’t invalidate or excuse alleged mistreatment, I just figured my perspective would be significantly belief-updating to people who have only read accusations of morally unscrupulous behaviour for the past month.

1. ^{^}

   Drew is great btw, but the accusations so far aren’t directed at him.