EA - EA Funds organisational update: Open Philanthropy matching and distancing by calebp

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: EA Funds organisational update: Open Philanthropy matching and distancing, published by calebp on August 2, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.We want to communicate some changes that are happening at EA Funds, particularly on the EA Infrastructure Fund and the Long-Term Future Fund.In summary:EA Funds (particularly the EAIF and LTFF) and Open Philanthropy have historically had overlapping staff, and Open Phil has supported EA Funds, but we (staff at EA Funds and Open Philanthropy) are now trying to increase the separation between EA Funds and Open Philanthropy. In particular:The current chairs of the LTFF and the EAIF, who have also joined as staff members at Open Philanthropy, are planning to step down from their respective chair positions over the next several months. Max Daniel is going to step down as the EAIF's chair on August 2nd, and Asya Bergal is planning to step down as the LTFF's chair in October.To help transition EA Funds away from reliance on Open Philanthropy's financial support, Open Philanthropy is planning to match donations to the EA Infrastructure and Long-Term Future Fund at 2:1 rates, up to $3.5M each, over the next six months.The EAIF and LTFF have substantial funding gaps - we are looking to raise an additional $3.84M for the LTFF and $4.83M for the EAIF. over the next six months. By default, I expect, the LTFF to have ~$720k, and the EAIF to have ~$400k by default.Our relationship with Open PhilanthropyEA Funds started in 2017 and was largely developed during CEA's time at Y Combinator. It spun out of CEA in 2020, though both CEA and EA Funds are part of the Effective Ventures Foundation. Last year, EA Funds moved over $35M towards high-impact projects through the Animal Welfare Fund (AWF), EA Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), Global Health and Development Fund (GHDF), and Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF).Over the last two years, the EAIF and LTFF used some overlapping resources with Open Philanthropy in the following ways:Over the last year, Open Philanthropy has contributed a substantial proportion of EAIF and LTFF budgets and has covered our entire operations budget.[1] They also made a sizable grant in February 2022. (You can see more detail on Open Philanthropy's website.)The chairs of the EAIF and LTFF both joined the Longtermist EA Community Growth team at Open Philanthropy and have worked in positions at EA Funds and Open Philanthropy simultaneously. (Asya Bergal joined the LTFF in June 2020, has been chair since February 2021, and joined Open Philanthropy in April 2021; Max Daniel joined the EAIF in March 2021, has been chair since mid-2021, and joined Open Philanthropy in November 2022.)As a board member of the Effective Ventures Foundation (UK), Claire Zabel, who is also the Senior Program Officer for EA Community Growth (Longtermism) at Open Philanthropy and supervises both Asya and Max, has regularly met with me throughout my tenure at EA Funds to hear updates on EA Funds and offer advice on various topics related to EA Funds (both day-to-day issues and higher-level organisation strategy).That said, I think it is worth noting that:The majority of funding for the LTFF has come from non-Open Philanthropy sources.Open Philanthropy as an organisation has limited visibility into our activities, though certain Open Philanthropy employees, particularly Max Daniel and Asya Bergal, have a lot of visibility into certain parts of EA Funds.Our grants supporting our operations and LTFF/EAIF grantmaking funds have had minimal restrictions.Since the shutdown of the FTX Future Fund, Open Phil and I have both felt more excited about building a grantmaking organisation that is legibly independent from Open Phil. Earlier this year, Open Phil staff reached out to me proposing some steps to make this happen, and have worked with me closely ...