Alexander Gordon-Brown asked this question on the Facebook group:
Not-so-hypothetical question*: If you acquired a large sum of money**, what would you do with it?
In the name of epistemic modesty, I want to start getting opinions on this. There is a boring 'donate it to the best place' option, closely followed by an equally-boring 'save it and donate it later' option. It may well be the case that the boring options win, as I think they do for smaller amounts. However, it seems plausible that some ideas have increasing returns as the amount grows.
For instance, one idea I've floated to myself is effectively running a public giving game of some kind. There are lots and lots of ways this could be structured, with different upsides and downsides. I have some thoughts on this specifically, but I'm really just canvassing for others' thoughts.
*I almost feel bad for spamming the main forum with this. I'm doing it anyway because I'm not going to be the only one with this decision, and it's recurring (for instance, this is the approximately the situation for every finance earning-to-give EA once a year).
**I want to put exact amounts to one side, but lets say between $20,000 and $200,000 for the sake of grounding the discussion.
This question sounded like it would be easier to answer with threading and upvotes! Post your ideas for what a large EA funder might want to do below.
Note: Please post one suggestion per comment so that upvotes can be used as precisely as possible. Thanks!
I was taking the difference to be that scholarships are more about funding individuals rather than organisations, and perhaps even individuals without a project in mind.
I agree that a decent-sized fund that awards seed grants + expansion grants to EA projects is a good idea, as per my comment.
I'm less sure about funding individuals, though I could see myself being persuaded. Funding individuals might be better for high-variance long-shots e.g. see this for a little evidence: http://pazoulay.scripts.mit.edu/docs/hhmi.pdf Also it's plausible there's people out there who we trust due to their participation in the community, but who can't get funded by existing mechanisms (because those existing mechanisms don't trust them), so are funding-constrained. e.g. paying for someone in the community to do some valuable self-development or training. Finally, if made high-prestige enough, it could be a good way to generate career capital for people we want to back. Though, for all of this, you'd need a good mechanism for selecting the right people!