Manifund

This is a regranter that gives its money to its own regranters, one of which was me, for unrestricted grants. They’re the charity donation offshoot of Manifold. They’ve played with crowdfunding, and with impact certificates, and ACX grants. They help run Manifest.

You’re essentially hiring these people to keep building a website and trying alternative funding allocation mechanisms, and for them to trust the judgment of selected regranters. That seems like a reasonable thing to do if you don’t otherwise know where to put your funds and want to fall back on a wisdom of crowds of sorts. Or, perhaps, if you actively want to fund the cool website.

Manifold itself did not apply, but I would think that would also be a good place to invest or donate in order to improve the world. It wouldn’t even be crazy to go around subsidizing various markets. If you send me manna there, I will set aside and use that manna to subsidize markets when it seems like the place to do that.

If you want to support Manifold itself, you can either donate or buy a SAFE by contacting Austin at austin@manifund.org.

Also I’m a regranter at Manifund, so if you wanted to, you could use that to entrust me with funds to regrant. As you can see I certainly feel I have plenty of good options here if I can’t find a better local one, and if it’s a substantial amount I’m open to general directions (e.g. ensuring it happens relatively quickly, or a particular cause area as long as I think it’s net positive, or the method of action or theory of impact). However, I’m swamped for time, so I’d probably rely mostly on what I already know.

Manifund does not do anything directly related to AI policy. It’s a fundraising platform. But I’m including it in this list because I’m impressed by how it’s changed the funding landscape.

Many orgs have written fundraising pitches on Manifund. And for whatever reason, some of these pitches are way higher quality than what I’m used to. I’m not sure why—maybe Manifund’s prompt questions draw out good answers.

For example, originally I was skeptical that donations to Lightcone Infrastructure could be competitive with top charities, but its Manifund page changed my mind. I donated $200 just as a reward for the excellent writeup.

Many of the orgs on my list (especially the smaller ones) wrote detailed pitches on Manifund that helped me decide where to donate. Manifund deserves part of the credit for that.

Manifund is free to use, but it sometimes asks large donors to give a percentage of their donations to cover its operating costs. Manifund didn’t ask me to do that, so I didn’t.