Meta Charity Funders: Third round retrospective

By Joey🔸, Meta Charity Funders @ 2024-12-18T16:46 (+51)

Meta Charity Funders (MCF) is a funding circle that aims to fund charitable projects working one level removed from direct impact. 

We think this post will be relevant for people who want to apply to MCF in the future and people who want to better understand the EA Meta funding landscape.  

Summary

We received 69 applications and ultimately funded 10 projects. In total, our members granted $362,893 in this round. The next grant round will open in late February 2025, and we welcome similar applications as we did in the last round. 

Information for the next round

We expect the next round will open in late February, with grants given out in late May. The application form will remain open but don’t expect your application to be processed before March. 

If you want to join Meta Charity Funders as a donor, please fill in this form. Note that the minimum expected annual donation is $100,000. However, there is no obligation to donate if you don’t think the opportunities presented are good enough, and during your first year, you are free to observe. If you have any questions, please contact us at metacharityfunders@gmail.com.

Check out our website to learn more about Meta Charity Funders and stay up-to-date with the new funding round.

Comments on applications and funding amount

We generally think the quality of applications has gone up considerably since the first round of MCF - Thank you, it makes our jobs easier. As such, we won’t make any observations on this round as we think the major learnings are summarized in the post we made earlier this year to aid you in the application process. 

On the funding amount: While charities usually see an influx of money towards the end of the year during “giving season”, the trend is inversed for us. The reason is that our members tend to have a charity budget set aside for each year, which inevitably gets smaller as the year progresses, thus, there is usually less money to deploy during the fall round than during the spring round. We won’t do anything to counteract this, but think it’s good to be transparent about it.

Grants we made

Below we will provide a summary (as stated by the applicants themselves) of the projects we ended up funding , the extent to which we have chosen to fund them, their request, and our reasoning. Note that all funding decisions are made by individual members, and therefore do not necessarily reflect the priorities of the funding circle in its entirety.

General comments:

• We are excited about initiatives that expand the funding streams within the EA community. Such initiatives not only enable more good things to happen by expanding the available funding pool, but also make the community as a whole more robust.
  • UHNW advising: We believe the most likely way to seriously expand EA funding is by reaching out to wealthy people excited about making the world a better place. It’s hits-based and requires the right team, but it has an asymmetric upside. To this day, most of the funding in the EA community still comes from a handful of people.
  • Effective Giving organizations: The best way to truly diversify is by increasing the number of donations. As an added bonus, effective giving can be an early on-ramp for a more serious commitment to the EA community. There are still many big/affluent countries that don’t have good alternatives for effective donations. This is being addressed by AIM’s Effective Giving Incubation program (For transparency: AIM are part of this circle) and we are happy to be part of providing early funding to test these projects.
• We include the "of $X" to indicate that grantees might still be looking for additional funds and encourage other funders to reach out to organisations that have not yet been fully funded. 

Ark Philanthropy ($10,000 of $131,500)

“Ark Philanthropy is a nonprofit dedicated to providing strategic advisory services to ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) donors, aiming for a 15x funding multiplier in five years. We seek funding to hire staff who can professionalize and expand our services, allowing us to meet the complex needs of our diverse clients and attract more clients for our pooled funds and advising. Our strengths include achieving a 1x multiplier in the first six months and developing a giving circle within an UHNW community. Additionally, August has demonstrated her ability to build relationships with UHNWIs and establish connections with influential individuals and communities.”

Reasons for funding

• The team has started to build exciting momentum
• We believe that they are reaching an audience that there hasn’t been much focus on before
• We feel the team is unusually co-operative in the effective giving space

Bedrock ($150,000 of $150,000)

“We are launching an impact management organization; a necessary component of a well functioning high-impact ecosystem.  While impact management is an established (and booming) practice in traditional philanthropy, there is still much room for growth in high-impact philanthropy (~$1bn unadvised high-impact funds). Analogous to wealth managers, we provide bespoke giving strategies, a curated portfolio of grant and investment opportunities and seamless end-to-end operational support to wealth holders who want to make a difference but lack the infrastructure or know-how. With extensive experience in both impact investing and advising philanthropists, we are uniquely positioned to offer expert guidance on high-impact strategies. Our services follow a fee-based model for two critical reasons: 1) fees provide an intelligible source of accountability to the client 2) enables sustainable organizational scaling without relying on recurring grant funding. This grant covers foundation-building expenses as we position ourselves to scale up, while servicing our first official UHNW client in Q1 2025.”

Reasons for funding

• We believe that the founding team dynamics are strong, with fundamental ingredients to a successful startup in advisory and client management: deep and complementary technical expertise, far reaching networks and very personable.
• We believe that this grant will allow them to focus their energy on building the foundation and reputation of the business, while servicing their first few clients in 2025. 

Benefficienza ($13,500 of $13,500, though still looking for funding)

“Benefficienza, incubated by AIM, aims to bring effective giving to Italy, the EU’s most generous country by % of GDP donated. In a donation market comparable to Germany’s, we plan to counterfactually raise $4.8 per dollar spent in our first year, scaling to $13.7 in five years. We request $13,500 to extend our runway by two crucial months, thus enabling us to raise more donations, encouraging additional non-EA funding, and reducing the risk of premature shutdown.”

Reasons for funding

• We share AIM’s excitement for an Italian EG organization
• Bridge funding like this seems especially valuable, thus we made the decision to fund this fairly quickly
• The team has experience from multiple startups and feel this is the most on track they’ve ever been at such an early stage

Benjamin Anderson - “Mobilising UK Community for aid consultation” ($1,000 of $1,000)

“There is a consultation on UK Aid by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. For this consultation I am coordinating individual submissions from the EA (and EA adjacent) communities via in person and online workshops across the UK. This path for impact of influencing policy through consultations has been very successful in the Australian EA community and after speaking with several experienced individuals, the consensus is this consultation could be quite impactful. I currently estimate I will coordinate 4-6 workshops and get somewhere between 100 - 200 individual submissions from the community.”

(He was already partway through the project when we started investigating the grant)

Reasons for funding

• It’s exciting to see people make bold bets without “asking for permission” as it shows a strong agentic drive and ability to get things done
• There’s a difference between submitting an idea “this is what I plan on doing” vs just doing it and then asking for funding. It shows that you can go beyond the hypothetical plan and start executing, thus erasing part of the uncertainty around the grant.
• This was exciting enough that we made a preliminary funding decision already before we talked to Ben. Obviously this is not feasible for everyone or for all projects, but generally, we’d be excited to do more retroactive/semi-retroactive grants for smaller, one-off projects. (Please note: there is no guarantee that you will get funded, so please act accordingly - don’t take any financial risks you can’t afford)

Effective Giving Ireland ($10,000 of $5,000)

“The concentration of wealth and colocation of tech HQ’s in Dublin suggests strong potential for Effective Giving in Ireland, with very low initial spend. Two of us recently completed the AIM (Charity Entrepreneurship) Effective Giving Initiatives Incubator. We put in an original proposal for EGI Ireland which had high expected impact and got very positive feedback, but was deprioritised in favour of larger markets (Italy, France, India, USA). Rather than quit, we and a team of expert volunteers have created a lean, low-investment model to start EGI Ireland. We will do this, even without funding. But even very limited funding, which we’d match with locally-sourced funding, would greatly improve our chances of success.”

Reasons for funding

• We believe that going ahead to test something out before getting funding are signals of strong commitment and grit from the team
• On the one hand, we agree with the previous funders that the markets mentioned above are larger in scale. On the other hand, there’s something to say about the potential to gain traction in an especially exciting niche. HQ-dense places like Dublin could be extra promising
• This is a cheap way to test out the feasibility of the Irish market, and we thought they could make good use of an extra $5k to be more ambitious

Ge Effektivt ($95,500 of $95,500)

“Seeking to cover 35% of its 2025 operating budget, Ge Effektivt aims to capitalize on successes and significant growth since mid-2023. With new leadership experienced in fundraising and donor relations having already nearly doubled money moved YoY, they expect to have raised $3 million by the end of 2024. They’ve secured partnerships with foundations, and increased corporate giving by 210%. Notable achievements include winning the “Swedish Donor of the Year” award and launching initiatives like a new website and donor events. Funding will support essential staff to sustain momentum and achieve a $1.8 million fundraising goal in 2025.”

Reasons for funding

• Ge Effektivt transitioned to a new staff, experienced in fundraising, last year. Over that year they’ve seen good growth, especially in 2024, raising considerable funds for high-impact charities
• Beyond money moved to high impact efforts, they’re leading other efforts that can have positive spillovers (e.g. they released a Swedish translation of The Life You Can Save)
• With strong connections and more hands on deck for 2025, they have several exciting low-hanging fruits that could be highly influential

Mieux Donner ($13,600 of $13,600)

“Mieux Donner is an effective giving organisation based in France. We were incubated by AIM in July 2024. Our ambitious goal is to raise 1 million euros in donations from French and Swiss donors in year one. Our minimal goal is to raise twice as much as we received in seed funding ($95,000). Our seed funding of $95,000 was 80% of our 12 month ‘frugal ask’. With conservative budgeting, we can pay both co-founders to run Mieux Donner until September 2025. This funding doesn’t allow us any money for paid outreach. Giving Season (November and December) is when 40% of charitable donations are made in France. We ask for $13,600 in order to fund some marketing projects and an intern we believe will be integral to success in our first Giving Season and help us prove our concept for year two.”

Reasons for funding

• France is a big market and they have landed some early wins. Especially exciting are the six 10% Pledgers
• It seems valuable to test out the strength of the market by doing a big push already this giving season, to be one year ahead in data collection
• The team seems to be thrifty and carefully prioritizing the highest-leverage projects

Mission Motor ($20,000 of $61,000)

“Without collecting reliable data, we can't determine if projects are working properly and are effective. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) generally supports evidence-based decisions, makes projects more effective, and helps to direct funding to the most effective interventions. However, M&E is still a neglected topic in the animal community and support is limited. The Mission Motor helps animal charities to gather reliable data, identify improvements, and test strategies. So far, we supported 23 organizations leading to 16 documented changes in e.g. project design or processes. We would like to build on this success and expand our work in 2025.”

Reasons for funding

• We agree that M&E is important but seems highly neglected within the AW community
• We believe there’s a potential for great value in helping good organizations reprioritize and become great. It seems unlikely that highly ineffective organizations will shut down or make sufficiently large pivots to start becoming effective. Thus they must manage to target the right type of audiences. We’re excited to support them to better understand how feasible this is

EA Nigeria ($9,293 of $9,293)

One year stipend for EA Nigeria organizer

“This project aims to improve understanding, structure, and capacity of the individuals in Nigeria in doing the most good, by supporting them to make an impact. We will do that by organizing introductory fellowship programs, retreat, career planning, mentorship, and network pairing. We will also maintain an accessible opportunity board tailored to our community members, share newsletters, and organize regular knowledge exchange calls to realize our vision and mission. We also hope to achieve this by providing some stipends for our organizers to motivate them to put in their best effort into this project.”

Reasons for funding

• We’re excited about supporting EA chapters in promising locations that are deprioritized by CEA (e.g. LMICs)
• EA Nigeria has had success expanding their community, most recently through organizing the EA Nigeria summit where they received >400 applications. They organized it mostly independently and got great feedback, indicating a highly capable team
• They offer an intro fellowship, career workshops, and a supportive network for new and existing members
• Many community members have started EA groups at universities in different states, which they are helping to coordinate

Overcome ($40,000 of $60,000)

“Cheap but effective coaching to improve the productivity and mental health of EA founders. We did a pilot with AIM. It went quite well: >90% retention and user satisfaction. We'd like to scale it up and do a more thorough evaluation. Our mean client rates life 4.5/10 at baseline. After six sessions, they rate it 6.5/10 (n>100). Our preliminary RCT results show results indistinguishable from those of professional therapists but at <10% of the cost.”

Reasons for funding

• We are usually not that excited about a third party paying for these types of services, as we believe that if the service is valuable enough, organizations should pay for it themselves. However, initial results are extremely good (almost too good) at a very low price tag and we would like to fund them to get a better understanding of their replicability and ability to scale.
• The team is strong and seems highly relevant for this type of work

Ending remarks

We would like to reiterate that all funding decisions are made personally by individual circle members and do not necessarily reflect the priorities of the funding circle in its entirety. For any information about funding or membership, please reach out to metacharityfunders@gmail.com!