Gratipay for Funding EAs

By Ozzie Gooen @ 2014-12-24T21:39 (+5)

EA experimentation is fantastic, but it’s really difficult to set up an official nonprofit for each experiment.  Therefore if we want to help fund experimentation, it’s good to do so at earlier stages than official nonprofit registration.

A few of us at .impact have started experimenting with Gratipay to put money the hands of EAs. Gratipay works by providing a system for some people to make weekly donations to individuals or projects.  The founders of Gratipay are themselves paid for on Gratipay, so there they take no financial cut (they do charge around 3% for credit card fees).  So far it does not support charity deductions, but it’s not meant for that.  It’s meant to share money with people.

We’ve started an ‘Effective Altruist’ community of 30 people with profiles and donations.  While there haven’t been many donors yet, there have been several people who posted profiles of what they are up to and they intend to continue doing.  There are larger groups such as Charity Science , new ones like Effective Altruism Berkeley, and many individuals like Diego Caleiro, Tom Ash, and Justin Shovelain.  A few professionals are there who don’t request funding, but still appreciate tokens of appreciation.  

If you’re interested in helping funding some EA groups or people, it’s super easy to get started.  If you have a project and want funding, it’s super easy to make a page.  If you’re just curious what’s going on, there are many profiles to look through.

There are some limitations.  Gratipay is not great for one-time payments, group ‘Kickstarter’ payments, or incentivized ‘unlock’ payments, registered charity payments, and I’m sure a long list of other things.  That said, Gratipay is a really simple way for us to get started.

null @ 2014-12-25T03:21 (+3)

In most cases I don't see a compelling reason to fund an individual rather than an organization. I'm also worried about what kind of message this sends. To be crass, it makes EA look like a circlejerk.

null @ 2014-12-25T08:00 (+4)

The fear is, put bluntly that this is another way to turn EA people away from focusing on rigourously evidence backed projects for the poor to funding and supporting the lives of rich white people who they are internet friends with to work on speculative projects with no evidence backing.

So long as the amounts and numbers remain fairly small, I think that some kind of speculative VC style funding of people or projects in the EA space is fine. But if people did start to make a career out of gratipay - I think a lot more skepticism would be needed.

null @ 2014-12-25T05:36 (+3)

There are over 1k communities on Gratipay, many doing very arguably less directly important things. This isn't just money for anyone, it's supposed to be for projects done by people who haven't set up official nonprofits (very few people have done this). It also does work for organizations, such as those online.

null @ 2014-12-25T13:00 (+2)

In most cases I don't see a compelling reason to fund an individual rather than an organization.

I don't see the difference between funding individuals and organisations, since you can treat individuals as one-person organisations with a narrower range of projects, and by funding organisations you're ultimately funding individuals. Some of the things produced by .impact members, which I believe are mostly done by individuals or small groups, compare quite well with those produced by organisations.

null @ 2014-12-24T22:12 (+3)

I'm excited for this decentralized funding community, and I'm very grateful for the $248 I've personally collected through the service to date. However, I feel like individual funders need to further elaborate on what they're funding needs are, what they would do with marginal funds, and a brief sketch of how they expect to have an impact.

I just updated my profile to give an example of what I would mean (in my case, it's an example of how funding me does not lead to impact).

Diego's profile is the closest to what I'm looking for, though I'd want to know more about what he plans for each of his projects and why his living expenses are >$50K a year. (This is not meant to call out Diego in particular, so sorry if that's the case!)

null @ 2014-12-24T23:34 (+2)

I definitely would also encourage donors to add more to their profiles! Many are still quite minimal and could be improved.

On the other hand, I think that there's not too much incentive right now with so few people donating. This is a good reason for others to donate more, specifically to ones with nice profiles (if they want to specifically encourage such a thing).

Not asking you Peter, just people reading this in general.