Astral Codex Ten - ACX Grants Followup Impact Market
I. What’s Going OnWe got 351 proposals for ACX Grants, but were only able to fund 34 of them. I’m not a professional grant evaluator and can’t guarantee there aren’t some jewels hidden among the remaining 317. The plan has always been to run an impact market - a site where investors crowdfund some of the remaining grant proposals. If the project goes well, then philanthropists who missed it the first time (eg me) will pay the investors for funding it, potentially earning them a big profit. In our last impact market test, some people (okay, one person) managed to get 25x their initial investment by funding a charity which did really well. So in my ideal world, we’d be running an impact market where you could invest your money in the remaining 317 proposals and make a profit if they did well. We’ve encountered two flaws on the way to that ideal world: First, although about 140 of you expressed interest in and qualified for the impact market round, only 44 have responded to emails from Manifund, signed the necessary documents, and actually gotten featured. So there are only 44 proposals on the market so far. If you want to participate in the impact market, but aren’t on there yet, please check your email and spam folder for messages from Manifund. If you didn’t get any, but you applied to ACX Grants and want to participate, please email rachel@manifund.org. Second, you can’t legally run a stock-market-like institution without lots of SEC approvals that we’re not really specced to get. Last time we got around this problem by only selling to accredited investors (ie rich people). This time our sponsors at Manifund want to try something different. Anyone, accredited investor or not, can invest in charities. But when you sell your investment, you won’t get a payout in real money. You’ll get it in special Manifund dollars that you can donate to other charities, but can’t spend on non-charitable purposes. I realize this is less fun than real dollars, sorry. Despite these minor hiccups, I’m still pretty excited about this. Go to https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs to check this one out. II. Sample ProjectsThere are 44 projects available right now. I’m hoping other ACX Grants applicants will put their projects up and there will be more by the time you look at it. I can’t discuss all 44, but here are some that I find interesting:
…and 39 others, hopefully more by the time you read this. Even if you’re not interested in investing, I still think it’s fun to browse through some of these and see what kinds of wacky ideas people have. III. Technical DetailsRemember, an impact market is like a stock market or VC ecosystem for charity. Investors fund projects, and then big philanthropists play the role of an IPO or final acquirer, funding successful projects in a way that gives value back to the investors. A toy example:
Obviously this depends on having big philanthropists willing to cooperate with this new system. Our current impact market has five partners: The Long Term Future Fund, The EA Infrastructure Fund, The Survival And Flourishing Fund, The Animal Welfare Fund, and future rounds of ACX Grants. That means if you buy an impact certificate today, you can try selling it to one of those funders later, after the project is done. Each of these charities has specific things they fund, so you might want to check their past history before trusting them to buy one of your certificates. Impact markets are pretty new. We ran a test round last year and it went well, but this round is a bit more complicated and has some new moving parts. Along with the issue where you won’t get real money back, please be aware of the following possible risks:
But some possible benefits are:
IV. LogisticsAgain, go to https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs to see the projects available. You can also choose to invest extra money to grants I’ve already funded. Currently ten of these are looking for extra money; you can see them here. You can try selling me these impact certificates, but I would only buy back the impact that came from your extra funding, not from my original funding, and you would have to do a good job convincing me about what that was. And Manifund has other projects which aren’t related to ACX Grants or part of the impact market, but which you can still fund if you want. You can find them here. Manifund will be hosting a Q&A on Discord tomorrow (Friday 3/8) at 10 AM Pacific, go here for more information. You're currently a free subscriber to Astral Codex Ten. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
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