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FTX Future Fund and Longtermism
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rhys_lindmark
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Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: EA Forum
Written before the November 2022 FTX collapse, this post is now a historical artifact documenting EA funding optimism around FTX Future Fund; its projections were overtaken by events, but it offers insight into longtermism funding dynamics and ecosystem concentration risks.
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Building effective altruismCareer choiceEffective altruism fundingFTX FoundationFuture FundFunding opportunities
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Importance: 35/100blog postanalysis
Summary
This post analyzes the FTX Future Fund's significance within EA funding, documenting that Open Philanthropy and GiveWell controlled ~80% of EA grants and projecting growth to $1B+ annually. It argues FTX Future Fund's planned $100M+ annual giving represented a major inflection point for longtermist causes, which had previously received only ~20% of Open Phil's budget. The piece captures a pivotal moment in EA funding dynamics before the subsequent FTX collapse.
Key Points
- •Open Philanthropy and GiveWell controlled approximately 80% of EA grants at the time of writing, with total EA funding projected to exceed $1B annually by 2022-2023.
- •Longtermist causes received only ~20% of Open Philanthropy's budget, making FTX Future Fund's dedicated longtermist focus a significant shift in funding allocation.
- •FTX Future Fund's planned $100M+ annual giving was seen as a major inflection point that could reshape EA ecosystem priorities.
- •The post reflects pre-collapse optimism about FTX as a transformative funding source, making it historically significant as a document of that era.
- •Concentration of EA funding in a few major funders (Open Phil, GiveWell, FTX) raised both opportunity and dependency concerns for the ecosystem.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| FTX Future Fund | Organization | 60.0 |
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# FTX Future Fund and Longtermism
By rhys_lindmark
Published: 2022-03-17
*This is a linkpost for* [*https://www.rhyslindmark.com/ftx-future-fund/.*](https://www.rhyslindmark.com/ftx-future-fund/.)
*Warning: Lots of napkin math below. Lending y'all an Idea That Is Not Yet Fully Formed™. But wanted to share so you get a rough map of longtermist funding.*
* * *
My org is writing a grant application for [FTX Future Fund's](https://ftxfuturefund.org/) first grant round. (You should too! [Apply by March 21](https://ftxfuturefund.org/apply/).)
As part of that, I wanted to research how important FTX Future Fund is for the longtermist ecosystem more generally.
In summary: It's quite important! Let's learn why.
**I. EA Funding Right Now**
---------------------------
First, let's look at EA funding over time.
Of all Effective Altruist (EA) funding, 20% comes from [GiveWell](https://www.givewell.org/) and 60% comes from [Open Philanthropy](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/) (Open Phil).
In 2019, here's how much each org processed:
[https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nws5pai9AB6dCQqxq/how-are-resources-in-ea-allocated-across-issues](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nws5pai9AB6dCQqxq/how-are-resources-in-ea-allocated-across-issues)
What about GiveWell's giving over time? Their graph is below.
They processed only $2M per year in the 2000s, then started to grow from $10M to $100M per year throughout the 2010s.
[https://blog.givewell.org/2021/05/11/early-signs-show-that-you-gave-more-in-2020-than-2019-thank-you/](https://blog.givewell.org/2021/05/11/early-signs-show-that-you-gave-more-in-2020-than-2019-thank-you/) (this doesn't include Open Phil)
And here's [Open Phil's estimate](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/progress-to-date) of how much they've given per year:
So, taking GiveWell and Open Phil together, here's how much EA money has been given per year throughout the 2020s:
$400M, not bad.
But this is actually going to ramp up a bunch in the coming few years. Open Phil only [regranted $100M](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/our-progress-2020-and-plans-2021) to GiveWell in 2020, but they [plan to grant](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/2021-allocation-givewell-top-charities-why-we-re-giving-more-going-forward) GiveWell $300M in 2021, $500M in 2022, and $500M again in 2023.
So how much will Open Phil be granting total?
Based on [2021 data](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wShayYNw2oj_7fmv4tMbjgdFuAU4Uu7xQFbvVT4mO4I/edit?usp=sharing), GiveWell granting is roughly 50% of Open Phil's budget:
So by increasing their 2022/2023 GiveWell giving to $500M, we'd roughly
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