I have a friend who is casually engaged with EA. They went on https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/grants and was browsing some of the grants and asking me about them. I get the impression this was well-intentioned curiosity, but I was at a loss to explain the dollar amount of some of the grants my friend pointed out to me, in light of the short "project description" provided.
The last thing I want to do in this post is call anyone out-- I'm sure the rationale behind these grants was sound, and there is relevant information missing from the provided description-- but I was surprised to find out that there are grants for university group organizing in the five and six figures, and some of these are not even for an entire year. I do think this is something that will (perhaps justifiably) raise eyebrows for the average person, if they are just learning about EA as a movement very focused on cost effectiveness, and haven't yet internalized some of the expected value calculations that probably went into these grants. But also, in a couple cases, I personally am having a hard time imagining how these numbers make sense.
If you are reading this post and willing to comment-- could you (1) help me make sense of these grants first for myself and (2) provide any pointers on how to explain them to someone who isn't yet totally onboard with EA? I don't want to indicate specific grants, but specifically, what e.g. is the argument for a 5 or 6 figure grant for one semester of university organizing at a specific school? I don't understand how so much money could be needed. As far as I'm aware, most organizers are volunteers (but maybe that is changing?). Happy to take this to a private conversation if that would be more appropriate.
I haven't browsed the grants in much detail myself, but I would default to trying to explain EA's culture of thoroughness by reference to e.g. GiveWell's detailed evaluations of various charities, and say "this is more depth than most grants go into but it sets the tone of the sorts of things people tend to look for".
You could also point out common biases that the person might be falling for. One thing I would be inclined to explain in particular is the bikeshedding bias (https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/bikeshedding) -- it's much easier to critique things we understand. The simplest-looking grants (like university group support) are ones which I can imagine are particularly subject to bikeshedding.
Another thing I would be inclined to explain is the idea of continuing to invest (possibly exponentially) in things that work. e.g., if some intervention has shown that they made good use of $10k in the past, maybe try giving them $100k and see if they can do 10x as much good, or close to it. A related bias is the absurdity heuristic (e.g. ruling good ideas out because "they seem kind of crazy").