In the past the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) has supported a wide range of charities and university-affiated researchers focusing on EA issues like existential risks, and has had a relatively high acceptance rate, so I encourage anyone working on related projects to apply.
From the announcement post:
SFF is organizing another S-Process grant round in collaboration with Jaan Tallinn and Jed McCaleb to distribute funds at the end of November 2021. We estimate between $8-$12 million will be distributed in this round.
Applications are due on August 23rd, via the following form: SFF-2021-H2 Grant Application.
Our largest funder in this round has given a statement of priorities for areas which he is more interested in funding:
- Jaan Tallinn’s priorities: Jaan’s philanthropy
More information about the grant round can be found on the application form above. If you have any further questions, please contact julia@survivalandflourishing.org or sff-contact@googlegroups.com.
NB! Late submissions are welcome, however the recommenders do not have an obligation to consider such applications.
You might also be interested in the innovative delegation system used to evaluate grant applications:
We call the recommendation process used in this grant round the “S-process”, for “Simulation Process”, because it involves allowing the Recommenders and funders to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, funders specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the funders to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts.
Having been involved in the past I'm happy to attempt to answer any general questions you might have about how it works.
The S-Process is fascinating to me! Do you know of any proper write-ups of how it works? I'm especially interested in code or pseudocode, as I might want to try applying something similar to one of my projects
Unfortunately I don't think so. Here is a rough summary, based on my recollections, but I was only involved in one part of it so my memory or understanding might be awry:
There were also some other 'social' elements like disclosure and conflict of interest policies and the like.
This has a number of properties:
A bit late here but I was looking into it and found this (https://survivalandflourishing.fund/s-process):