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FTX Future Fund and Longtermism
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rhys_lindmark
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Written before the November 2022 FTX collapse, this post is now a historical artifact documenting EA funding optimism around FTX Future Fund; its projections were overtaken by events, but it offers insight into longtermism funding dynamics and ecosystem concentration risks.
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eaforum
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Building effective altruismCareer choiceEffective altruism fundingFTX FoundationFuture FundFunding opportunities
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Importance: 35/100blog postanalysis
Summary
This post analyzes the FTX Future Fund's significance within EA funding, documenting that Open Philanthropy and GiveWell controlled ~80% of EA grants and projecting growth to $1B+ annually. It argues FTX Future Fund's planned $100M+ annual giving represented a major inflection point for longtermist causes, which had previously received only ~20% of Open Phil's budget. The piece captures a pivotal moment in EA funding dynamics before the subsequent FTX collapse.
Key Points
- •Open Philanthropy and GiveWell controlled approximately 80% of EA grants at the time of writing, with total EA funding projected to exceed $1B annually by 2022-2023.
- •Longtermist causes received only ~20% of Open Philanthropy's budget, making FTX Future Fund's dedicated longtermist focus a significant shift in funding allocation.
- •FTX Future Fund's planned $100M+ annual giving was seen as a major inflection point that could reshape EA ecosystem priorities.
- •The post reflects pre-collapse optimism about FTX as a transformative funding source, making it historically significant as a document of that era.
- •Concentration of EA funding in a few major funders (Open Phil, GiveWell, FTX) raised both opportunity and dependency concerns for the ecosystem.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| FTX Future Fund | Organization | 60.0 |
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FTX Future Fund and Longtermism — EA Forum
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by rhys_lindmark Mar 17 2022 3 min read 6 145
Building effective altruism Career choice Effective altruism funding FTX Foundation Future Fund Funding opportunities Frontpage FTX Future Fund and Longtermism I. EA Funding Right Now II. FTX Future Fund and Longtermism Notes: 6 comments This is a linkpost for https://www.rhyslindmark.com/ftx-future-fund/.
Warning: Lots of napkin math below. Lending y'all an Idea That Is Not Yet Fully Formed™. But wanted to share so you get a rough map of longtermist funding.
My org is writing a grant application for FTX Future Fund's first grant round. (You should too! Apply by March 21 .)
As part of that, I wanted to research how important FTX Future Fund is for the longtermist ecosystem more generally.
In summary: It's quite important! Let's learn why.
I. EA Funding Right Now
First, let's look at EA funding over time.
Of all Effective Altruist (EA) funding, 20% comes from GiveWell and 60% comes from Open Philanthropy (Open Phil).
In 2019, here's how much each org processed:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nws5pai9AB6dCQqxq/how-are-resources-in-ea-allocated-across-issues
What about GiveWell's giving over time? Their graph is below.
They processed only $2M per year in the 2000s, then started to grow from $10M to $100M per year throughout the 2010s.
https://blog.givewell.org/2021/05/11/early-signs-show-that-you-gave-more-in-2020-than-2019-thank-you/ (this doesn't include Open Phil)
And here's Open Phil's estimate of how much they've given per year:
So, taking GiveWell and Open Phil together, here's how much EA money has been given per year throughout the 2020s:
$400M, not bad.
But this is actually going to ramp up a bunch in the coming few years. Open Phil only regranted $100M to GiveWell in 2020, but they plan to grant GiveWell $300M in 2021, $500M in 2022, and $500M again in 2023.
So how much will Open Phil be granting total?
Based on 2021 data , GiveWell granting is roughly 50% of Open Phil's budget:
So by increasing their 2022/2023 GiveWell giving to $500M, we'd roughly expect Open Phil to give $1B by that time:
GiveWell itself wants to direct $1B by 2025 . If we take all of these together:
$$ from Open Phil to GiveWell
$$ from Open Phil to not GiveWell
$$ to GiveWell from not Open Phil
Other Grantmaking
The growth of EA giving into 2025 looks like this :
In other words, we're just at the start of EA funders giving a lot more money.
Still, most of EA granting lies with Open Phil and GiveWell. And much of that is still in Global Health.
...Until now!
II. FTX Future Fund and Longtermism
Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried has been making magic inte
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