We’re thrilled to announce the FTX Foundation's Future Fund: a philanthropic fund making grants and investments to ambitious projects in order to improve humanity's long-term prospects. We plan to distribute at least $100M this year, and potentially a lot more, depending on how many outstanding opportunities we find. In principle, we’d be able to deploy up to $1B this year.
We have a longlist of project ideas that we’d love to fund, but it’s not exhaustive—we’re open to a broad range of ideas. We’re particularly keen to launch massively scalable projects: projects that could grow to productively spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Our areas of interest include the safe development of artificial intelligence, reducing catastrophic biorisk, improving institutions, economic growth, great power relations, effective altruism, and more.
If you’d like to launch one of our proposed projects, or have another idea for a project in our areas of interest—please apply! Please submit your applications by March 21 to be considered in our first open funding round.
UPDATE: Our first open funding round closed on March 21, and we are no longer accepting applications. We do not currently have any plans to resume accepting applications, and we do not know if or when we will do so. If we decide to start accepting applications again, we will announce this decision on ftxfuturefund.org and with another post on the EA Forum.
We can’t wait to see your applications!
Some further details:
- On the same apply page, you can also express interest in working with us, recommend a grant or investment to us, or recommend a prize for us to launch.
- We fund non-profits and for-profits alike, so long as they are aligned with our mission. We aim to respond quickly, ask for the information that is needed and no more, and keep you posted on when to expect a final decision. We are willing to make big bets, and we respect grantee autonomy. There is no limit on how much you can apply for.
- You can read about our principles and approach to funding on our website.
In addition to our request for projects, today we’re launching:
- Our Regranting Program. We’re offering discretionary budgets to independent grantmakers. Our hope is that regrantors will fund great people and projects that weren’t on our radar! We’ve already invited the first cohort, and we’re also opening up a public process to be considered as a regrantor.
- Our Project Ideas Competition. We’re announcing a prize for new project ideas to add to our website—submit your ideas by next Monday (March 7)!
Our team is Nick Beckstead (CEO), Leopold Aschenbrenner, Will MacAskill, and Ketan Ramakrishnan.
About the FTX Foundation
The Future Fund is part of the FTX Foundation, a philanthropic foundation funded primarily by Sam Bankman-Fried. When Sam was 20 years old, he set out to to “earn to give”: make as much money as he could, in order to give away everything he earned to charity. He initially worked as a trader, then founded FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange.
FTX Foundation is also funded by major contributions from Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh.
Our 2022 plans
For people who want to follow our work closely, here is some more on our initial focus and priorities.
We are just getting started and we'd like to fund a lot of great projects quickly. So our primary goal for 2022 is to perform bold and decisive tests of highly scalable funding models. We think this is important for helping us make the most of our resources.
The initial strategies we’re testing are highly decentralized:
- The first strategy is to simply describe very clearly a broad range of projects we'd be excited to fund, and offer open applications for funding. We're hoping this generates many exciting proposals for us to fund.
- The second strategy we’re testing is a regranting program. We hope this program will help us identify great grants that we would have missed, enable new people to launch exciting projects, and find and empower people who could be strong grantmakers.
- The third strategy we're considering is offering large prizes for outputs we want to see. We hope to launch these later this year, though our approach and expectations here are less developed.
A fourth strategy we'd like to test is proactively recruiting founders for the projects that we'd like to see launched. This could well end up being our main focus for the year. Our ideas about how to pursue this are currently pretty early-stage, but we're considering: organizing workshops, direct head-hunting, and incubating the projects in-house. Depending on how we approach this, it may be necessary to do some significant prioritization in order to decide where to start.
A few elaborations on our approach:
- We're starting with highly decentralized approaches that seem like they can be tested quickly and seem like they can produce a lot of output with limited time investment from us, if they work. We also like the idea that these strategies give others opportunities to cover our blindspots.
- It's important to us that we make it fast and easy for great projects to get funded. In addition to directly serving our mission, we think this will make our experiments more decisive. This may be challenging, and over this year we’ll keep iterating on our processes with that aim in mind.
- We don't have dedicated program officers in any of our areas of interest, and we are keeping a broad focus for now. We're making this decision in part because we think it will help with our learning. A major source of uncertainty we have is how many good project ideas we would find if we investigated these areas of interest more deeply. Before strongly selecting areas to specialize in, we like the idea of testing the waters.
We hope that after these tests are completed, we will have a strong sense of how well these funding models work. If they work well, we will continue or scale them. If bold experiments fail, we hope that will give us strong conviction that we should be trying something entirely different. If decentralized approaches fail, we'd also probably update in favor of more funder-led approaches to getting the projects we care about launched.
Wrapping up
We’re happy to answer questions, though it might take us a few days to respond due to other programs and content we're launching right now.
We’re so excited to work with all of you, and we can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with!
This looks wonderful, congrats. Dumb question on my end - there seems to be a lot of overlap in some areas with causes that Openphil target. My impression was Openphil wasn’t funding constrained in these areas and had more money to deploy than projects to put it into (maybe that’s not accurate though)
If it is - what do you see the marginal add of the Future fund being? E.g will it have a different set of criteria from Openphil such that it funds thing Openphil has seen but wouldn’t fund, or are you expecting a different pool of candidate projects that Openphil wouldn’t be seeing?
Reasonable question! Our work is highly continuous with Open Phil’s work, and our background worldview is very similar. At the moment, we’re experimenting with our open call for proposals (combined with our areas of interest and project ideas) and a regranting program. We'll probably experiment with prizes this year, too. We're hoping these things will help us launch some new projects that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
I also endorse Jonas's answer that just having more grantmaking capacity in the area will probably be helpful as well.
I think Open Phil is actually doing the things you say they aren't doing. I think the main value-add of the Future Fund is additional grantmaking capacity and experimenting with different mechanisms (such as prizes and regranting pools).
This sounds incredibly exciting!
What is the reason for excluding non-human sentience?
Thank you!
We definitely include non-human sentient beings as moral patients. Future Fund focuses on humanity in our writing because we think the human trajectory is the main factor we can influence in order to benefit both humans and non-humans in the long run.
Suggestion: the Future Fund should take ideas on a rolling basis, and assess them in rounds. EA is the kind of community where potentially good ideas bubble up all the time, and it would be a real shame if those were wasted because the funders only listen during narrow windows. Having an open drop-box to submit ideas costs FF almost nothing, and makes a bias-towards-action and constant passive brainstorming much easier.
Context: this idea
The footer on your site says to post any questions as public comments on this post, so here goes (this is not directly related to the content of this post):
I noticed that a $470,000 grant to Charity Entrepreneurship, that was visible on your site as recently as August 31 (see http://web.archive.org/web/20220831210840/https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/), is now no longer visible on your grants page. What happened to the grant?
I also noticed that https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/ lists a grant to Michael Robkin, but that this grant is not listed at either https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/?_funding_stream=open-call (open call grants) or https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/?_funding_stream=ad-hoc (staff-led grants). My understanding was that everything in https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/ should be listed either as an open call grant or a staff-led grant, but this does not seem to be the case. What might be going on?
Thank you!
Interesting to see Economic Growth as an area of interest. Generally the EA movement has preferred more targeted ways to improve the far future such as working to reduce specific existential risks, or differential technological development. This seems to me to be a slight deviation from the norm.
Do you have a sense of the relative importance of work on economic growth vs working on a specific existential risk such as AI or biosecurity?
Are those areas of interest on your website in rough order of importance, or is the order random?
I love the format, but I also have to voice one concern. Having to judge a potentially large number of brief proposals in a rather quick manner with a small team might entail that the eminence of the applicants ends up being used as a significant decisive factor (e.g., well-established persons at elite institutions in the US/UK or known EA organizations having a significantly better chance).
While such a bias might partially be rational, the resulting Matthew effect ('the rich get richer') would also have negative consequences. There are diminishing returns for funding absorbed by already well-funded institutions, perceived unfairness might discourage potentially great applicants in future funding rounds, and opportunities for spreading EA-relevant work into novel communities (which can leverage novel perspectives, talent, follow-up funding) might be lost.
I'm not sure what the consequence of this is for the particular call --perhaps you are well aware of these issues and committed to avoid them anyways-- but it would probably be good to keep it in mind.
Wonderful news. Do you have an idea of when the next open funding round will be? Or how often you will be open for applications, in general? I'm trying to determine how the upcoming March 21 deadline fits into my current plans for 2022.
Hey y'all - as it's been over 14 days since the application deadline, I think most applicants are expecting to hear back by now.
I imagine the Future Fund team was overwhelmed with applications sent in right at the deadline and is working diligently to get through all of them.
Future Fund team - would it be possible to provide a broad update (via bcc email blast, twitter post, and/or post here) on where y'all are at and when folks can expect a response of some sort? I'm sure all applicants would really appreciate it :)
Hello! Is March 21st a hard deadline? If so do you plan on announcing other calls for proposals in the future and if so do you have any idea of when ( 3 months, 6 months, etc). Or is the plan to accept proposals/ideas on a rolling basis?
Love the well thought-trough approach and look forward to how it will unfold further into the future!
One of the questions in the application form reads: "How much $/yr could this project plausibly productively use at maximum scale down the road?"
I’m not sure how to interpret this question. Does the question for example refer to potential annual revenue of the initiative, to potential grant money the initiative would be able to effectively apply, or to a $ value to the social impact that the initiative generates?
From the "Areas of Interest" page:
It is unclear whether you are interested in funding organizations who set up mechanisms for funding professionals or if you are also willing to fund professionals who submit an application directly. Could you please clarify?
Exciting! On the application form, there is an instruction to upload a video "if you are launching a new organization." What counts as "new" for this purpose? And would you recommend erring on the side of making a video if there's some question about whether you fall under the requirement or not?
Good question! We've re-written the question to say:
"If you are launching a new organization (especially one less than 12 months old), please submit a link to a one-minute video (unlisted Youtube video). Please follow the Y Combinator application video guidelines: https://www.ycombinator.com/video/ "
Feel free to use your judgment about what would be informative for borderline cases!
My University requires a postal address for the FTX Foundation in order to process my application. Could you please advise?
Very exciting! Is this funding specifically targeting the development of new organizations or would this also fund new academic research on this topic (e.g., antecedents and impediments to the shifting of moral values across cultures; the psychological process of moralization (as applied to EA-relevant ideas and values); barriers to longtermism thinking and interventions amongst laypeople, organizational leaders, and policymakers; etc.)?
I have a question about the budget. Are there any costs you don't allow? In our institution we usually include overheads unless they are either a) explicitly listed by the funder as an ineligible cost, or, b) the funder sets their own limit on the max overheads we can request i.e. 5 or 10% of the total project costs. it would be really helpful to know - thanks!
Quick addition to this: For colleges and universities, indirect costs may not exceed 10% of the direct costs. On this front, Future Fund will mimic Open Philanthropy's indirect costs policy.
I'm 80% sure the following is correct:
Universities have a funding model that involves taking some percentage of money from the grants of their researchers/staff (you could characterize this as "skimming" off grants, though it's a little pejorative [1]).
This "skimming" is mechanically imposed by the university on everyone, at least nominally. These skimmed fees then go to the school and don't serve the purposes of the grant/project/impact, or any EA activity.
The rates used are high, 25%-40%, or even higher, see below.
However, you can get around these high rates by having the donor publicly declare a lower rate on their website.
So Open Phil declaring a 10% rate basically defeats the much higher "standard" rates the Universities charge. You could see this as giving the "grantee leverage" to negotiate a lower rate and keep more funds for themselves/project. You could also see it as forcing the University to accept lower rates and makes EA funds more cost effective.
For evidence of the above, see the following page from Stanford, and a similar page from from UBC. ... (read more)
This is excellent! Are there any restrictions on multiple (but discrete) proposals from a single organization? Thanks.
The application form seems to be closed.
When/how can we submit applications for the next evaluation round?
We don't know yet! We're finishing up about 30 more complicated applications (of ~1700 originally submitted), and then we're going to review the process and make a decision about this.
I've received a rejection notice but I submitted two proposals and the rejection notice does not identify the proposal. I'd like to understand whether both proposals were rejected or whether one is still in the running.
Hi FTX Future Fund,
I work at UC Santa Cruz and we recently submitted a proposal for this: https://ftxfuturefund.org/apply/
We need some information about the FTX Foundation in order to set them up as a sponsor in our database.
Could you please provide me with the following?
Thank you so much!
Kevin HagedornOperations Manager | Office of Sponsored Projects(831) 459-1574 |officeofresearch.ucs... (read more)Upvoted because this comment was on -1 karma, I suspect unfairly given that the FTX Future Fund website says "Please post any questions you might have as public comments here" in lieu of a contact form.
I put in an application on 21st March, but haven't yet heard back. Are some applications still being processed, or should I assume this is either a negative response or that I must have made some mistake in submitting?
Has anyone been accepted to this yet?
Gutted to learn today that we've not been selected. Good luck everyone else!
Ugh! I wrote my application the very week this was announced. Was very excited. I'm now reading these comments about getting a confirmation response and... can't find any confirmation in my inbox. Second guessing myself now if I really ended up pressing the final submit button. Would be heartbroken if I missed for that reason only.
-quietly sobbing over here-
Hi! I submitted an application a little over 2 weeks ago and have not received any update, do let me know if there is any additional information/update that would be needed/the status of the application.
Thanks in advance!
This was succha great read and a much-needed initiative! As a non-US national and applying from outside the US, few questions here:
1) I wonder if there are specific instructions/guidelines for projects that have international (non-US nationals) applicants submitting the application either individually or in group with US/non-US nationals?
2) Do international applicants create hurdles for their application by the virtue of being "non-US nationals"- as in is it extra hard for international applicants because of the possibly copious paperwork involved later with funding internationally if the project does go further ahead?
We're excited to share this opportunity out!
However, at our institution, we've noticed an issue with the Google application form. When we try to access it, we receive the following message: "You can't respond to Future Fund: Application for Funding. Uploading files is not permitted when data loss prevention is enabled for your domain. Contact your domain administrator if you think this is a mistake.”
According to our IT person: "It seems this is part of an all-or-nothing situation related to Google Data Loss Prevention features, with no option to bypa... (read more)
I understand Future Fund's wish to minimize overhead charges on research to be performed by universities. University of California Irvine would be happy to comply; however, we have been unable to confirm the 501(c)(3) status of the FTX Foundation, which we are required to do under State tax laws and University policy. Can you kindly email your tax exempt status letter or provide a link where we may obtain that information? In the absence of such proof, we can only submit proposals using our full federally approved F&A rate. I no
Hi Nick_Beckstead and friends
Checking in to see if there is news on timeline for hearing on recommendations and regrantor applications?
Greetings
Charlie
charliegoldsmith@cgatechnologies.org.uk
Hey! I missed the mentioned last date i.e 21st March to apply for a grant. Is there anything I can do now?
[comment no longer useful]
Some people have been discussing updates on funding decisions on Twitter. https://mobile.twitter.com/EAheadlines/status/1511294503231049732 https://mobile.twitter.com/EAheadlines/status/1511115005533564928
Hi all!
For everyone here, I found the auto-confirmation from the google form submission in my spam with the subject "Future Fund: Application for Funding." Chech there and good luck everybody!
Hi! I submitted an application but was expecting to get a copy of the application to my email - however nothing arrived. How can I check whether my application was received? Thanks!
The submission form keeps telling me "Your response is too large. Try shortening some answers." even though the total number of characters is significantly lower than 25,000. What should I do? Would you like me to share a link to a PDF with our answers to all questions or upload a single PDF with all of that information?
When should we expect to hear back about project idea proposals?
I have an ongoing project that I'm considering applying with, but figure that, if you don't like the project idea proposal (which casts a wide net containing my actual project), you won't like the project either.
Are you willing to share a list of some or all of regranting programs that were funded in the first round of the FTX Future Fund?
Really exciting news!
Is the FTX Foundation a private foundation or a public foundation? I ask because there are different rules concerning funding policy advocacy in the United States, where the distinction is relevant.
We are starting an non-profit organization which will function for many years. How many years of support should we ask for ? I assume 1 is not enough and 10 is too many. Can you offer guidance?
Will all funding applications be made public? If so, is it possible for ask for specific application not to be public? No problem if actual funding will be publicized, I'm just wondering about the applications themselves. Thanks!
Great initiative. We are likely to apply for a grant, but is is possible that this research/work could lead to revenue generating opportunities. Two questions: a) would FF have any IP rights over that work that would mean it could place limits on what could be done with the IP; and b) if the situation did arise where revenue generating opportunities arose, would FF consider investing in that at that point?
Quick question: in previous media about FTX philanthropy animal issues were mentioned, but I don't see anything animal related in these links. Is there a separate program that includes animal issues, or has Sam/team decided not to be involved in this space at all? Thanks!
Yes, it's not clear how much engagement FTX will have in animal advocacy but they have already made some grants in the space and probably will make more, via FTX Community.
Hi,
I'm expecting to hear from 3 proposals I've submitted. Since it's been 3 weeks since submission, I'm wondering if others are in the same situation as me and if this is not an omission from their part.
Thanks!
I’m seeing others who didn’t receive a confirmation response for the grant proposals but wanted to check in for additional details. I took a screenshot that it was submitted on the 21st. Nothing in junk mail. Today is day 14 so was curious if results are out or still in process. Thank you for such an amazing opportunity to partner and create massive impact.
I submitted two proposals and got only 1 acknowledgement in my spam response. I know you guys are too busy to respond to each request, but could you advise if the grants will be announced via email or twitter or what and when? Thank you so much for innovating in philanthropy.
Hi,
Really great initiative with the Future Fund!
I have 2 questions:
Thanks in advance!
Best Regards,
David
I submitted my proposal on March 19th which marks today as the end of the 14 day “deadline” that was aimed for by the ftx team. I’ve been anxiously waiting and researching for the past two weeks, and I just found this forum yesterday! I really hope to hear something soon, even if it’s a rejection email— this is an incredible opportunity and I understand if the wait time is a little longer than expected. I hope someone sees this and can provide a response that may help others as well!
Hi, I submitted a proposal to the Future Fund on Sunday 20th. The Google Form said it was accepted. However, other than that, I didn’t receive a copy of my responses from the form or any other communication confirming it was sent. Can you confirm that it was received? Thank you.
We submitted our application via the google forms on Monday-- but did not receive confirmation via a copy of our responses. Is there a way to confirm receipt of our submission? Thanks!
Will grant awards to nonprofits be in dollars or crypto?
Hi! Hope all is wonderful! Just a quick question I submitted my application but never received a confirmation email. is there a way to know all was submitted safe and sound? So grateful! Rebecca Foon
I submitted a proposal on someone's behalf today. It all seemed straightforward and I really appreciate the simplicity of the process!
However, the form said that “A copy of your responses will be emailed to the address you provided” and no such email was received. (It did not get caught in a spam filter, as far as we can tell. I'm part of a team and pasted in the email address of the designated leader.)
I got the ‘Your response has been recorded’ screen, so I am pretty sure that submission worked, but I cannot help wondering if I made some strange err... (read more)
I'm interested in submitting an application but I would need to know precisely which entity would provide the money (for complicated reasons) Can someone indicate this as soon as possible please?
Is the March 21 deadline to be interpreted as 23.59 on 21 March Eastern Standard Time?
I have a simple clarification question on the application form. Does your question "what's the most impressive thing you've done?" refer to the applicant's entire career or their work on the project only? I assume that it is the former but the context in which the question is asked makes it slightly ambiguous.
I have multiple project ideas that fall within the Future Fund's areas of interest. Can I submit multiple separate applications? If so, would submitting a second application significantly reduce the chances that the first application is funded even if taking on the second project would not interfere with my work on the first project? Relatedly, would being listed as a collaborator on somebody else's proposal reduce the chances that my own submission(s) get funded?
Assuming that applying for funding for multiple projects is possible, would it be better to submit a separate application for each project or to mention multiple projects in the same application?
This is really great to see and just wanted to quickly say that the website looks fantastic. Great design.
Your twitter cards don't work. This means content won't share as well.
Hmm, haven't bothered to change their website yet. Doesn't it even exist?
https://ftxfuturefund.org/about/
When will you next be open for applications?
Do you except outside crypto donations for funding your initiatives?
Nick and Team,
RE: Effective Altruism Project Ideas (from the global SD sector)
Good-day,
For the past 20 years I have been training and working in global Sustainable Development (SD) and Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation around the planet, and within all 5 major sectors (e.g., public, private, IO, NGO, and academic). Your efforts, and the efforts of your group and the EA movement, were recently brought to my attention – and I am quite excited to learn more about what you are all doing and how I may play an active role in helping foster your ef... (read more)
Intriguing, passionate and timely initiatives.
I am curious how you are thinking about the psychology of the present/future (as informed by the past) in terms of EA.
For example, the future value of positively impacting how people think about the present and future could multiply the ostensibly more pragmatic use of funds, encourage individuals to think differently about risk-benefit, and lead to changes in decision-making.
In addition to understanding the psychology and working on decision-making, the threat from distortions in the current information ... (read more)
Is or will there be a way for me to sign up for notification when Grant Applications open up again, if they do?
Seena Hawley
Berkeley, CA https://www.thebbbp.org The Berkeley Baby Book Project
I believe that with the birth of every child unimaginable potential is born in that body's brain and it is our job to maximize that potential. Right now this is not happening for all our children. We KNOW how to do so: wealthy communities and families do it ALL THE TIME: clean water, good food, shelter, safety and then -- in line wit... (read more)
This is a wonderful idea.
I have an idea that I would like to submit for a grant but when I click on apply I see that the form is no longer taking submissions. Does this mean that the grants have been paused for the moment? Are they planned to be resumed?
Thank you!
Team, noticed in your blog your disappointment on space governance proposals. Would like to connect to understand deficiencies and see if we can help. Our foundation has been working with anothe foundation for months about space governance and has even partnered with the Paris Peace Forum to either prepare grants or regrant initiatives.
Is there any way I can connect with someone to further discuss ?
Jose
Hi!
I got the following message after pressed Apply:
"The form Future Fund: Application for Funding is no longer accepting responses.
Try contacting the owner of the form if you think this is a mistake." at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScp_pbbqS2OeecQlo_perE6Vz8mcKBivtRAfBSfKyDicZkEiQ/closedform
Is your program closed or it is an error from my side? I wanted to apply on the topic Infrastructure to recover after catastrophes
any ideas when the next application cycle will be?
Dear team at FTX Foundation,
A few weeks ago, I submitted an application for a regranting partnership in the area of innovative ideas in education with Ashoka and Leap. Are you considering that application or was I too late?
Best,
Odin
Hello!
Just a suggestion, maybe the Fund could provide a means to for the public to contact recipients to express interest in working on their funded idea?
I imagine a lot of EAs are open to working on these project ideas, and formalising this process would also help the grant recipients find talent to work with. Y Combinator, for comparison, has ycombinator.com/jobs . I wouldn't expect the Fund's small team to build a full feature, but maybe just a contact option/list would be nice?
While I like the mission of the future fund, some of these grants seem wasteful. For example, the $150k Moncef Slaoui grant. Isn't that person already able to afford to write their own memoir? $150K could fund an actual project or fund 15 $10K projects. Perhaps evaluating whether or not the applicant is likely to be able to accomplish their proposal without future fund funding should be incorporated into the review process. Also, some of the grants seem unnecessarily large. Maybe many smaller proposals being funded initially and then doubling down on promising ones would be a better approach.
Hey FTX Future Fund,
I am a web3 native that studied social entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley inspired by the EA community. I would love to offer my time as a volunteer to help with anything from due diligence to operations to social media and community building!
Hello! What's the best way to get a status update on a proposal that's been submitted? (I have no idea if this is the best, or even an appropriate place to ask this question, so please feel free to redirect me if this isn't the spot.)
Thanks!
I have the same idea, we need to make something to change the world and make this a better future for all, I have a well structured plan with a really good idea that will help us to do that, where can I send it I know this can make a change In many city's and countries all around the world, we can make this dream come true together
Amazing initiative!
Having psychology background and MSc degree from Imperial College London's Business School, I'm sure that if given a chance, people cooperate instead of selfishly competing. Simply because the synergy is more beneficial to everyone involved. And it is the only good future for humanity.
I'm myself creating an AI-driven social tool for the good people, which effectively democratizes collaboration and thus creates a future where people cooperate instead of fighting, launching on 22/12/2022. Otherwise, we'd see a future whe... (read more)
I made a submission to the FTX future fund worldview prize a while ago through the google form provided which contained the link to my article on medium. It has not been cross-linked to EA yet as mentioned on the website. Kindly check
what do you heavily weigh
is it the candidates progress, background, sincerity, project idea and impact. what would make you guys say a resounding yes.
for yc its team and market size. how do you treat solo founders
For an applications still being considered, would an update regarding ongoing work be useful?
Hi, my name is Stephanie Beasley. I report on global philanthropy at Devex. Wondering if the foundation has a comms officer. I would love to be in touch. https://twitter.com/Steph_Beasley
Hi,
I work at UC Santa Cruz and we recently submitted a proposal for this: https://ftxfuturefund.org/apply/
I'm hoping that you can help me out with some information that is required to set the FTX Foundation up as a sponsor in our sponsor database.
Could you please provide me with the following:
You can email the info to me at ospdocs@ucsc.edu
Thank you so much!
Kevin
Hello, curious if the application for HeliosDAO was received. I did not initially receive a confirmation email so I resubmitted the entire grant, though I did not receive any confirmation email the second time either.
I've checked my spam as well as both emails included on our form but no confirmation or any other correspondence from FTX (other than for our corporate crypto account).
(I've reviewed the comments here and searched for the precise keywords listed, however there is nothing in either the base email used to submit or the email entered on the form).
email used was team@helios.eco
any update or information would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
Hi there - I've submitted an application for the FTX Future Fund and now secured a key partner, which I believe really improves the project - is there any way to update my application at all? Many thanks, Michelle
Dear FTX team,
I am shocked to understand that we missed the date to submit. I'm the founder and inventor of 121giving.com and I am kicking myself for not knowing or being able to find this submission period link.
If you are considering delayed entries, please do let me know. It would be an honor and I believe you'll find of tremendous value to the world and a great compliment to your portfolio for good.
I would appreciate the opportunity to submit our investor kit , upon your consideration.
With Gratitude,
Mark
https://www.linkedin.com/i... (read more)
Hi! I also got the „Your response is too large“ error yesterday despite my word count being way below 6000. So I attached a Word Document with all the answers, made a note about it in the „Describe your project in 100 words“ question, and left all other fields in the form blank. That worked.
So it would be awesome if you could not discard seemingly blank submissions right away, but check for attachments! Thank you!
Hello, I submitted an application yesterday (by the deadline of 03/21/2022). However, in reviewing my application packet I noticed that one of my attachments did not successfully upload. The attachment provides a much more concrete sense of our past performance and general strategy, and as such I'd love for it to be included in our application.
Is there anyway I could email this to someone involved in the administration/review of the FTX Future Fund submissions so that it could be included with the rest of my application? The attachment is an excel spreadsheet.
Many thanks in advance for any information you can provide.
What is the minimum amount of money a project should require?
From reading on your website, I somehow get the intuition that you are rather interested in relatively big projects, say requiring $30k+, rather more.
In particular, it does not seem to me like you are looking for applications like "Hey, could you give me 5000$ to fund my research project I plan to do the next months?". But I may be mistaken and I haven't read anything explicit about it not being possible (maybe I just overlooked it).
(And yes, I know there's the LTFF for such things, I'm just curious regardless.)
I am trying to submit a video file with my application. I have never done it before. It is on the project itself. It says on your site that it can be submitted somewhere on the application form could you please tell me where I might add my video. Thank you
Re: EA-aligned Movies and Documentaries
I happen to know a well-established documentary filmmaker, whos areas of interest overlap with EA topics. I want to pitch him to work on a movie about x-risks. Do you have any further info about the kinds of documentaries you'd like to fund? Anything that's not obvious from the website.
Is there a specific time of day on March 21st that the application is due, ie. 11:59pmPDT?
Are you able to give grants to residents of Russia? Citizens of Russia? Citizens of Russia who left their country in the last 3 weeks and are not planning to return? Or are there sanctions-related legal reasons you can't do that?
this is a wonderful initiave. One small question:where do we upload the budget file? In the ' If you have further materials for us to read, please feel free to upload them here' section?
thanks
This is absolutely sterling! Congratulations on a much-needed initiative!
Small request, possibly pedantic: In the Google form, could you please change the space below the question "Does this proposal fall under one of the areas in our "Areas of Interest" page?" from a "single line" to a "para"? Anything more than a few words as a response there (e.g. if there are a few areas of interest to be mentioned), reformats everything in a single, long line.
Many thanks!
Thanks so much for opening up this amazing opportunity.
Are there any length limits (either from FF or Google) on individual entry fields, or overall, aside from question 2 under "Your project" and question 2 under "Other"?
It's so refreshing to see such a lean approach to funding good work, thanks!
We are launching a process to build/activate innovation ecosystems, grounding them on a specific mission and fostering a community to supports top talent (fellows), which then go on to launch new impact ventures. We'll start with sustainability for the blue economy in Africa, with a strong focus on climate resilience.
Having said that, we believe the approach (assuming we make it work!) will be repurposed to other impact missions beyond climate action, including longtermism ones.
Would the scaling and extending of that type of program be elegible for funding?
If the project idea is eventually a for-profit organization, does the organization need to be already incorporated?
Dear friends, dear Sam Bankman-Fried, hello!
Someone said: the shackles of habit begin to be felt when they are hard to break. Therefore, we have come up with and have already developed a vaccine against mental illness - an application with a creative product, located at the intersection of creativity, science and technology. It is much more profitable, more effective and easier to prevent a serious illness from the beginning than to heal for a very long, expensive and painful time later. And it's not a fact that you'll be healed. It is much more effe... (read more)
Hello,
it look perhaps surprising at first but I think that to make humanity better people should all learn how our emotional and sensation "system" is secretly working :
https://kalcoeur.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/the-equilibrium-constraint/
If everybody knew and integrate that well, the world would undoubtedly be much better, so an good project would be to spread and explain it to .. everybody ! :)
F.
Hello,
I have a recommendation for a donation that would be highly impactful for families. The Wildland Firefighter Foundation supports firefighter families when they are hurt or killed fighting wildland fires. The wildfire crisis we are currently in is directly affecting civilization throughout the US. We as firefighters are on the front lines of climate change. I’m sure your very aware of this rapidly escalating issue.
I’m a professional Wildland Firefighter that is volunteering for this foundation. Several of us that hold very high wildland firefigh... (read more)
How can we apply for a grant?
Dear FF team,
As Chairman and co founder of the Commonwealth Insurance Forum Ltd (Not for Profit)in London we are set up to expand on education,knowledge and connectivity in insurance.
We seek funds for Social Media ,Podcast,TV interviews etc.at the least.
There are 58 Commonwealth Nations and some 2.45 bn people in the Commonwealth most of whom speak English and follow English legal principles.
Insurance covers everything we all do ,or can do from Micro insurance to Country weather Catastrophic insurance and everything in between so a very wide ca... (read more)
Hi! when is the next call? I have a project to develop an app to reduce the risk of bankruptcy for restaurants and bars in Mexico. Since 8 out of 10 businesses in Mexico go bankrupt in less than 3 years. I have incubated the project and I would use the money to hire developers. Can I apply to the call?