As one of the trustees at CEEALAR, I just want to add that we are very excited to employ a full time ED! This ED will have the chance to really take CEEALAR to the next level, and will get a ton of experience with fundraising and impact assessment especially. 

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me or the other trustees.

This isn't really a comment regarding the content of your post, but it made me think of it. I think EAs who write good forum posts should consider submitting them to large philanthropy magazines such as Stanford Social Innovation Review and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

I think you make an interesting argument here but I can't help but feel you are preaching to the choir. It is important to make this argument to the people in philanthropy that complain that EA doesn't address root causes! And those people don't read the EA forum, they read SSIR and the Chronicle.

I do think the article would need some work and probably toned down a bit, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch that posts like this can be published in these other outlets. And more articles that defend EA principles in these other outlets can influence the exact people EA should be trying to influence.

I think it's great that EAIF is not funding constrained. 

Here's a random idea I had recently if anyone is interested and has the time:

An org that organizes a common application for nonprofits applying to foundations. There is enormous economic inefficiency and inequality in matching PF grants to grantees. PF application processes are extremely opaque and burdensome. Attempts to make common applications have largely been unsuccessful, I believe mostly because they tend to be for a specific geographic region. Instead, I think it would be interesting to create different common applications by cause area. A key part of the common application could be incorporating outcome reporting specific to each cause area, which I believe would cause PF to make more impact-focused grants, making EAs happy.

I joined the audit committee of the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative, who found me through the EA Good Governance Project. As someone who wants to get more experience serving on boards, I am looking for opportunities, but the EA Good Governance Project made it possible! 

I'd encourage people interested in serving on boards to join as a candidate and for organizations to use it as a tool for finding board members.

I think generally I agree with you, that people should be careful to not pull the trigger too early on closing down a project. However, I think in the general philanthropic landscape, organizations persist because of the lack of incentives to close them down, which is of course, inefficient. EA does a good job trying to correct this, but like with other areas of EA, it is possible that EA takes it "too far". 

I tend to think the people involved are most equipped to make this determination, and we have additional reason to trust their judgment because it likely goes against their self-interest to close a project down.

I think a related discussion could be had around funders making the decision to quit on projects too early, which is likely much more prevalent/an issue.

And as an aside - I am interested in this topic for a research project. I think doing some qualitative analysis (interviews?) with folks who have closed down projects would make for a fairly interesting research paper.

The grantmaker training program I think may be the best intervention in this space. Training grantmakers and getting them hired at major US private foundations, where they will ultimately have great influence on where funds are directed, has massive potential.

That's fair. Though I would counter that GiveWell says that they have directed $2 billion over 10+ years to effective charities. Private Foundations in the US give collectively around $100 billion a year. So there is a lot of money out there with potential to be influenced.

There certainly was a perception among who we spoke with that EA was very "white/tech bro/elitist", so I think you are correct in that assessment.

Your point about PF accountability is well-taken as well. There is functionally 0 accountability in regards to effectiveness.

It's pretty clear to me that these constraints are bad (and to me core EA is partially about breaking the self-imposed constraints of giving) but the simple reality is that private foundations are legally required to follow their charter. If the board wanted to radically change their charter, in most instances they could (my understanding), but boards tend to be extremely deferential to the founder's original intent. They begin with a fundamental assumption: "We will focus our giving on X cause area or Y geographic area" and then they have the power to make decisions beyond that.

The concern I have is that EA has basically written off all private foundations that are not already EA-aligned as a lost cause.

Yes I think this is an area of misconception that could be explored more and ultimately addressed.