Putting up cash to backstop time-sensitive projects
And other slightly unorthodox ways to use money for impact
A few times, I’ve promised to fund impactful projects if people didn’t get funding that they were hoping for.
For example, one person had applied for funding to get a master’s degree in machine learning. They needed to commit to the degree within a few weeks, but they hadn’t received confirmation about the funding yet. I was pretty confident that they’d be awarded a grant, but they had little enough runway that the uncertainty might have been enough to stop them going ahead with the degree — and if they did so, it would have been very stressful for them. So I put a promise in writing that I’d send them the money for the master’s if the funding didn’t come through.
I’m glad that I made these offers! It meant that these people were able to go ahead with their projects, they felt less anxious, and — because I thought that they’d probably get funding in the end — I was only spending something like 1/10th of the cost on expectation.
In general, I’ve been quite enthusiastic about making ‘donations’ to unblock someone who was prevented from doing important work due to their financial situation, in cases where I’m in a high-trust relationship with them and we’re able to stomach the social weirdness of it all. Some examples of similar things I’ve done include:
Paying for conferences
Paying graduate school test fees
Equipment for work — where the category is broad enough to include ‘air conditioners’
While these are awfully tax-inefficient for donations, I think that I’ve managed to unblock a lot of valuable work as a result.