Manifund

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LLM Summary:Manifund is a $2M+ annual charitable regranting platform (founded 2022) that provides fast grants (<1 week) to AI safety projects through expert regrantors ($50K-400K budgets), fiscal sponsorship, and experimental impact certificates. The platform distributed $2.06M in 2023 (~40% to AI safety research) and raised $2.25M for 10 regrantors in 2025, filling a niche between individual donors and major funders like Coefficient Giving.

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QualityRated 50 but structure suggests 93 (underrated by 43 points)
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Quick Assessment

Dimension	Assessment	Evidence
Scale	Growing	$2M+ in 2023; $2.25M raised for 2025 regrants
Speed	Very Fast	Grant recommendation to disbursement in under 1 week
Mechanism Innovation	High	Pioneered impact certificates, regranting at scale
Transparency	Very High	All grants public with explanations
Team Size	Small	≈3 core staff (Austin Chen, Rachel Weinberg, Saul Munn)
Fiscal Sponsorship	Yes	501(c)(3) status; 5% fee for large donors
Focus Areas	AI Safety Primary	≈80% of grants to x-risk/AI safety
Related Platform	Manifold Markets	Shared founders, infrastructure, community

Organization Details

Attribute	Details
Full Name	Manifund (Manifold for Charity)
Type	Charitable regranting platform and fiscal sponsor
Founded	2022
Founders	Austin Chen (CEO), Rachel Weinberg (Engineer)
Parent/Related	Manifold Markets (prediction market platform)
Legal Status	501(c)(3) nonprofit
Annual Volume	$2M+ (2023); $2.25M budget (2025)
Website	manifund.org
Substack	manifund.substack.com
Primary Focus	AI safety, effective altruism, rationalist projects

Overview

Manifund is a charitable funding platform that emerged from Manifold Markets in 2022 to address a critical gap in the effective altruism funding ecosystem: the need for fast, flexible grantmaking that can move money to promising projects within days rather than months. Founded by Austin Chen and Rachel Weinberg, Manifund operates as both a regranting platform and a fiscal sponsor, enabling donors to support projects that lack formal nonprofit status while receiving tax benefits.

The platform’s origin traces to a concrete pain point: Manifold Markets received a $500,000 grant from the FTX Future Fund in 2022 for charity prediction markets, but needed a separate 501(c)(3) entity to process the funds. What began as “Manifold for Charity” evolved into a full funding platform after Scott Alexander approached the team in 2022 wanting to run ACX Grants through an impact certificate mechanism. Austin Chen recruited his then-girlfriend (now wife) Rachel Weinberg to build the platform, and she became the primary engineer for manifund.org, launching it within two weeks.

Manifund distinguishes itself from traditional foundations through three mechanisms. First, it empowers individual regrantors with independent budgets of $50,000-$400,000 to make grant decisions without committee review, enabling faster and more speculative funding. Second, it experimented extensively with impact certificates, a mechanism where funders can retroactively purchase credit for completed work. Third, it provides infrastructure for programs like ACX Grants, where external funders can run their own grantmaking through the platform.

The platform serves a critical “middle layer” function in the EA funding ecosystem. Large funders like Coefficient Giving operate at scale but require months of due diligence. EA Funds and Long-Term Future Fund operate at medium scale with multi-week timelines. Manifund fills the niche for $5,000-$50,000 grants that can be disbursed within a week, often seeding projects that later receive larger grants from major funders. As one regrantor noted, “quick regrants induce further funding from OpenPhil and others.”

Founding Team

Austin Chen

Austin Chen co-founded Manifold Markets in December 2021 alongside brothers Stephen and James Grugett. He served as Chief Product Officer before stepping back from day-to-day Manifold operations to focus on Manifund. Chen’s entrepreneurial approach emphasizes rapid experimentation and community-driven development.

Attribute	Details
Role	CEO and Co-founder, Manifund
Previous	CPO and Co-founder, Manifold Markets
Education	MIT (Computer Science)
Notable	Pioneered play-money prediction markets at scale

Chen’s philosophy centers on building infrastructure that empowers individual decision-makers rather than committees. When discussing Manifund’s regranting model, he emphasized that “regrantors make grants solo and are directly responsible for grant quality, which encourages more speculative grants and avoids problems in review-by-committee.”

Rachel Weinberg

Rachel Weinberg serves as the primary engineer and co-founder of Manifund. She joined after Austin Chen approached her about building the impact certificate platform for Scott Alexander’s ACX Grants program.

Attribute	Details
Role	Co-founder and Lead Engineer, Manifund
Previous	President, EA @ Tufts University
Education	Tufts University (Mathematics, partial degree)
Community	Organized small-to-medium EA events

Weinberg’s background in effective altruism community building informed Manifund’s design philosophy. She founded and ran the EA group at Tufts before transitioning to engineering. Her rapid development of manifund.org, launching within two weeks of starting, enabled the platform to process its first grants quickly.

Funding Mechanisms

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Regranting Programs

Regranting is Manifund’s primary funding mechanism, pioneered by the FTX Future Fund in 2022. The model empowers individual experts (“regrantors”) with independent budgets to make grant decisions without committee approval. Manifund launched its regranting program in May 2023 after being introduced to an anonymous donor “D” who provided $1.5 million specifically for this purpose.

Program Year	Total Pool	Number of Regrantors	Budget per Regrantor	Focus
2023	$1.4M	5	$50K-400K	AI safety, EA causes
2024	≈$2M	≈12	$50K-400K	AI safety primary
2025	$2.25M	10 (announced)	$100K+	AI safety primary

Notable 2024 Regrantors:

Neel Nanda (Mechanistic interpretability researcher, Anthropic)
Leopold Aschenbrenner (Former OpenAI researcher, Situational Awareness author)
Dan Hendrycks (Center for AI Safety director)
Adam Gleave (FAR AI founder)
Ryan Kidd (SERI MATS co-director)
Evan Hubinger (Anthropic alignment researcher)

2025 Regrantors include several former Manifund grantees who have become grantmakers:

Tamay Besiroglu (Epoch AI)
Lisa Thiergart (MIRI)
Marius Hobbhahn (Apollo Research)

The regranting model offers several structural advantages over traditional grantmaking. Speed is paramount: Manifund can move money from recommendation to grantee bank account in under one week. The model also encourages “hits-based giving” where regrantors can make speculative bets on early-stage projects that committee processes might reject. Each regrantor writes public explanations for their grants, creating accountability and enabling learning across the ecosystem.

ACX Grants

Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten grant program represents one of Manifund’s largest partnerships. Alexander committed $250,000 of personal funds in 2024, with other donors contributing an additional ≈$1 million through Manifund’s infrastructure.

Year	Scott’s Commitment	Total Distributed	Applications	Grants Made
2024	$250,000	≈$1.25M	600+	≈40
2025	$250,000	TBD	654	42

Notable ACX Grants (2024):

Recipient	Amount	Project
Elaine Perlman	$50,000	Lobbying for kidney donation law reform
John Lohier & Hugo Smith	$13,000	Lead-acid battery recycling research in Nigeria
Mark Webb	$5,000	Direct land reform experimentation
Various	$5K-50K	Biotech, AI alignment, education, climate projects

The 2024 ACX Grants introduced an impact market component where applications not receiving direct grants could participate in a secondary market. Retroactive prize funders including ACX Grants 2025, Survival and Flourishing Fund, Long-Term Future Fund, Animal Welfare Fund, and EA Infrastructure Fund (collectively disbursing $5-33M annually) committed to purchasing successful impact certificates.

Impact Certificates

Impact certificates represent Manifund’s most experimental funding mechanism. The concept functions like “Kickstarter meets the stock market, for charity”: founders create proposals with minimum funding goals, accredited investors bid in auctions, and successful projects issue tradeable certificates representing credit for completed work. Retroactive funders can later purchase certificates for projects that demonstrated impact.

Aspect	Implementation	Results
Mechanism	Auction-based initial funding; tradeable certificates	Facilitated 20+ project fundings
Investor Interest	Lower than expected	Struggled to attract speculative investors
Trading Volume	Limited	AMMs implemented but underutilized
Learning Value	High	Informed future mechanism design

Key Learnings from Impact Certificate Experiments:

Manifund ran three major impact certificate programs through Q1 2024: ACX Grants, Manifold Community Fund, and ChinaTalk essay competition. The team concluded they were “less excited by impact certificates than before” due to several challenges:

Investor acquisition difficulty: The use case of speculating on charitable projects did not attract sufficient investor interest beyond the EA community.
Evaluation burden: Assessing project impact proved time-consuming and “wasn’t that fun,” with participation declining each evaluation round.
Trading mechanism complexity: Implementing automated market makers facilitated more trading but didn’t justify the engineering cost. All AMMs were overpriced because the system supported buying and selling but not shorting.
Brand/prize insufficiency: When partnering with Open Philanthropy’s essay contest, most essayists declined to create impact certificates, including all ultimate winners. This demonstrated that “large dollar prizes plus well-known brands are not sufficient to get a robust certificate ecosystem started.”

Despite these challenges, Manifund views the experiments positively for the learning they generated. The platform continues to support impact certificates while focusing more resources on regranting, which has demonstrated clearer product-market fit.

Donor Lottery

Manifund hosts donor lotteries following the model established by Carl Shulman and Paul Christiano in 2017. The mechanism allows donors to pool contributions, with one randomly-selected winner receiving the entire pool to distribute as grants.

Feature	Details
Entry Range	$1,000 - $100,000
Typical Pool Size	$100,000 - $500,000
Winner Selection	Random, proportional to contribution
Allocation Period	≈6 months to distribute

The donor lottery rationale exploits increasing marginal returns to donation research. A $1,000 donor gains a 1% chance of allocating $100,000, making extensive research worthwhile. Winners often spend dozens of hours investigating giving opportunities, producing higher-quality grant decisions than thousands of small donors making quick choices.

Fiscal Sponsorship Model

Manifund operates as a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, providing critical infrastructure for projects that lack formal nonprofit status. This enables tax-deductible donations to individuals, unregistered projects, and even for-profit companies (pending due diligence).

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Feature	Details
Tax Status	501(c)(3) nonprofit
Fee Structure	5% for large donors (covers operations)
Eligible Grantees	Registered charities, individuals, for-profits (with review)
Restrictions	No political campaigns or lobbying
Processing Time	Days to one week

The fiscal sponsorship model solves a key friction point in EA funding: many promising projects are led by individuals or small teams without formal nonprofit status. Traditional foundations cannot easily fund such projects. Manifund bridges this gap by accepting donations, conducting basic due diligence, and disbursing funds while maintaining tax compliance.

Grant Categories and Distribution

2023 Distribution

Category	Amount	Percentage	Notes
AI Safety Research	$800K+	≈40%	Interpretability, alignment, governance
Community Building	$400K	≈20%	Local groups, events, career transitions
Software & Tools	$300K	≈15%	Forecasting, epistemics, infrastructure
Events & Conferences	$200K	≈10%	Manifest, workshops, retreats
Other EA Causes	$300K	≈15%	Biosecurity, animal welfare, global health
Impact Certificates	$45K	≈2%	Experimental mechanism
Total	$2.06M	100%	$2.012M grants + $45K certificates

Typical Grant Sizes

Size Range	Frequency	Typical Use Cases
$1K - $5K	25%	Microgrants, travel, small events
$5K - $25K	40%	Early-stage projects, tools, part-time work
$25K - $75K	25%	Research projects, organization support
$75K - $200K	8%	Major projects, multi-month work
$200K+	2%	Apollo Research (largest grant)

Notable Funded Projects

AI Safety

Project	Regrantor(s)	Amount	Impact
Apollo Research	Tristan Hume, Evan Hubinger, Marcus Abramovitch	Largest grant	Founded by Marius Hobbhahn; published research contributing to Anthropic’s dictionary learning work
Developmental Interpretability (Timaeus)	Multiple	Seed funding	First funding for DevInterp research agenda; accelerated research by months
Mechanistic Interpretability Community	Various	≈$50K	Grew to 500+ members; 40+ reading sessions; multiple publications
ChinaTalk AI Coverage	Various	≈$20K	Reported on DeepSeek developments ahead of mainstream coverage

Community Building

Project	Focus	Impact
Equiano Institute	AI Alignment Research Lab for Africa	Assisted UN on Global Digital Compact; ran governance and alignment fellowships
AI Safety Communities	Online coordination	Maintains AI Safety World, EA Domains, AI Safety Training resources
Mox SF Coworking	Physical space	Coworking and events space for AI safety researchers

Research and Tools

Project	Type	Description
Shallow Review 2024	Research	Quick review of AI safety papers; induced further OpenPhil funding
Foresight AI Safety Grants	Regranting	Supports neurotechnology, cryptography, multi-agent game theory
Inside View Podcast	Media	43+ AI safety explainers featuring Evan Hubinger, Neel Nanda, Victoria Krakovna

Connection to Manifold Markets

Manifund maintains close organizational and technical ties to Manifold Markets, the play-money prediction market platform.

Connection	Details
Shared Founders	Austin Chen co-founded both; Stephen and James Grugett lead Manifold
Team Overlap	~3 people on Manifund, ≈6 on Manifold (as of 2024)
Infrastructure	Shared codebase elements; connected user accounts
Community	Overlapping user base; cross-promotion
Events	Manifest conference serves both communities

Manifold Markets Overview

Attribute	Details
Founded	December 2021
Founders	Austin Chen, Stephen Grugett, James Grugett
Headquarters	Austin, Texas
Funding	$1.5M (FTX Future Fund), $340K+ (SFF), ACX Grant (seed)
Currency	”Mana” (play money); Sweepcash sunset March 2025

Manifold Markets received its original seed funding from Scott Alexander’s ACX Grants program, which “kicked off Manifold as a business.” The platform later raised $1.5 million from the FTX Future Fund and over $340,000 from the Survival and Flourishing Fund.

Manifest Conference

Manifold hosts Manifest, an annual forecasting and prediction markets festival that brings together the broader rationalist and EA communities.

Year	Dates	Location	Attendance	Notable Speakers
2023	Sep 22-24	Berkeley, Lighthaven	250	Nate Silver, Robin Hanson, Eliezer Yudkowsky
2024	Jun 7-9	Berkeley, Lighthaven	600	Nate Silver, Scott Alexander, Dwarkesh Patel, Emmett Shear (Twitch), Ben Mann (Anthropic)

The 2024 Manifest featured startup pitch competitions, prediction market workshops, and fireside chats. The event ran alongside LessOnline, hosted by Lightcone Infrastructure, creating a 10-day gathering of the rationalist and forecasting communities.

Application Process

For Projects Seeking Funding

Step	Details	Timeline
1. Create Profile	Sign up on Manifund	Minutes
2. Submit Project	Describe work, budget, timeline, deliverables	30-60 minutes
3. Identify Funders	Find relevant regrantors or apply to open calls	Same day
4. Review Process	Regrantor evaluates fit with their focus area	Days to 2 weeks
5. Due Diligence	Manifund reviews for legitimacy, legality, mission alignment	1-3 days
6. Receive Funds	Transfer to Manifund account; request withdrawal	Days

What Makes Strong Applications

Factor	Strong Signal	Weak Signal
Scope	Clear deliverables, measurable outcomes	Vague goals, “exploring” without specifics
Team	Relevant track record, domain expertise	No demonstrated capability
Budget	Justified costs, efficient allocation	Round numbers without breakdown
Timeline	Specific milestones, realistic estimates	Open-ended or unrealistic
Theory of Change	Clear path from work to impact	Disconnected from outcomes
Transparency	Willing to share updates publicly	Resistant to public accountability

For Donors and Regrantors

Feature	Description
Regrantor Program	Apply for budget to run independent grantmaking ($50K-400K)
Direct Giving	Fund specific projects directly through platform
Donor Lottery	Pool funds for chance at larger allocation
Account Funding	Add money to account for flexible allocation
Tax Documentation	Automatic receipts for 501(c)(3) donations

Platform Features

Transparency

Manifund distinguishes itself through radical transparency. All grants are publicly visible with full details:

Information	Visibility
Grant Amount	Public
Project Description	Public
Regrantor Identity	Public
Grant Rationale	Public (regrantor writes explanation)
Project Updates	Public
Comments/Discussion	Public
Withdrawal Amounts	Public

This transparency creates accountability for regrantors (whose track records are visible) and enables ecosystem learning (other funders can see what’s being funded and why).

Technical Infrastructure

Feature	Implementation
Open Source	Core platform code publicly available
API Access	Programmatic access to grant data
Embeddable Widgets	Projects can embed funding progress
Notification System	Updates on projects, comments, funding
Mobile Support	Responsive web design

Comparison with Other EA Funders

Dimension	Manifund	Long-Term Future Fund	Coefficient Giving	SFF
Speed	Days to 1 week	4-8 weeks	3-12 months	Quarterly
Typical Grant Size	$5K-75K	$20K-200K	$100K-10M+	$50K-500K
Due Diligence	Light (regrantor discretion)	Medium	Heavy	Medium
Decision Process	Individual regrantors	Committee	Staff + external review	Committee
Transparency	All grants public	Grant reports public	Grant reports public	Recommendations public
Fiscal Sponsorship	Yes (5% fee)	Through CEA	No	No
Focus	AI safety, EA broad	AI safety, longtermism	Strategic causes	X-risk, EA infra

When to Apply to Manifund vs. Other Funders

Apply to Manifund when:

You need funding quickly (weeks, not months)
Grant size is $5K-75K
Project is early-stage or speculative
You lack nonprofit status
You want to test an idea before seeking larger funding

Apply to LTFF/Coefficient Giving when:

Project requires $100K+
You have time for longer review process
Project has clear track record to evaluate
You need multi-year funding commitment

Strengths and Limitations

Organizational Strengths

Strength	Evidence
Speed	Grant recommendation to disbursement in under 1 week
Flexibility	Multiple funding mechanisms (regrants, impact certs, lotteries)
Transparency	All grants public with rationales
Low Overhead	Small team, 5% fee covers operations
Innovation	Pioneered impact certificates at scale in EA
Accessibility	Easy application, fiscal sponsorship available
Expert Networks	Top AI safety researchers as regrantors

Limitations

Limitation	Mitigation
Scale	$2M annually vs. $100M+ at OpenPhil
Due Diligence	Less thorough than major foundations
Regrantor Availability	Grant quality depends on regrantor capacity
Sustainability	Relies on continued donor participation
Focus	Primarily AI safety/EA community

Impact Certificate Challenges

The impact certificate mechanism faced specific challenges that limited its effectiveness:

Challenge	Observed Result
Investor Acquisition	Failed to attract investors outside EA community
Evaluation Burden	Team participation declined over time
Trading Liquidity	AMMs implemented but underutilized
Mainstream Adoption	Coefficient Giving essay contest participants declined certificates

Manifund continues supporting impact certificates while recognizing that regranting has demonstrated stronger product-market fit.

Strategic Position in EA Funding Ecosystem

Manifund fills a specific niche in the effective altruism funding landscape: fast, flexible, small-to-medium grants that seed early-stage projects. This complements rather than competes with larger funders.

Ecosystem Role	Description
Seed Funder	Provides initial funding that enables projects to later secure larger grants
Speed Layer	Moves money in days when other funders take months
Risk Tolerance	Regrantors can make speculative bets committees might reject
Talent Identification	Regrantors with field expertise spot promising individuals early
Infrastructure Provider	Fiscal sponsorship enables funding to non-charities

Several Manifund-funded projects have subsequently received larger grants from Coefficient Giving and other major funders, validating the “quick regrants induce further funding” thesis.

Timeline

Date	Event
Dec 2021	Manifold Markets founded by Austin Chen, Stephen Grugett, James Grugett
2022	Manifold receives $500K from FTX Future Fund for charity prediction markets
2022	Manifund incorporated as separate 501(c)(3)
Late 2022	Scott Alexander approaches team about running ACX Grants via impact certificates
2022	Rachel Weinberg joins; builds manifund.org in two weeks
May 2023	Anonymous donor “D” provides $1.5M for regranting program
2023	Manifund launches with ≈12 regrantors ($50K-400K budgets each)
Sep 2023	First Manifest conference (250 attendees, Berkeley)
2023	$2.06M distributed ($2.012M grants + $45K impact certificates)
Q1 2024	Impact certificate experiments conclude with mixed results
Jun 2024	Manifest 2024 (600 attendees)
2024	ACX Grants 2024 includes impact market for 50+ proposals
2025	$2.25M raised for 10 regrantors
Jan 2025	ACX Grants 2025 funds 42 of 654 applications