Episode Details
Back to Episodes“Incoming money, integrity, and collective action problems” by ElliotTep
Description
EA has been an unusually high-trust community. This has pros and cons. That trust comes with a lot of what makes EA great: people are unusually likely to help each other if they think it will be good overall, reports can discuss with managers whether they should leave for another job, and grantees can be unusually frank with grantmakers.
As discussions grow on the forum about Anthropic employees potentially donating large amounts of equity to EA charities, I want to discuss below a few risks I worry about:
- A collective action problem of everyone pitching Anthropic staff directly.
- Engaging in dishonest or disingenuous behaviour to better fundraise.
Avoiding both these issues matters for two reasons. First, Anthropic staff deserve to be treated with honesty and respect. Second, I think it's good for impact for several reasons, including the value of trust and transparency in maintaining donations over many years.
Collective Action Problem 1. Pitching directly
Individual orgs and fundraisers each have rational incentives to pitch Anthropic employees directly. From any single org's perspective, reaching out once seems fine. But when there are hundreds of orgs potentially worthy of donations, if pitching a donor directly gets you an edge [...]
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Outline:
(01:10) Collective Action Problem 1. Pitching directly
(02:29) Collective Action Problem 2. Dishonesty
(04:43) My recommendations for high-integrity fundraising:
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First published:
March 12th, 2026
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.