Info for potential retroactive funders in the ACX Grants 2 Impact Market.

Overview

ACX Grants Round 2 will include an impact marketplace, and we’re looking for donors who are interested in acting as retroactive buyers of impact.

We’re particularly interested in retro funders outside of traditional EA areas, e.g. biology research, social science and forecasting; see the results from ACX Grants Round 1 to get a sense of what types of projects will be available to fund.

About impact certs

Here’s a whole post by Scott explaining impact certificates, but this is the gist:

Impact certificates are like a VC funding ecosystem for charity. Charity founders with good ideas sell shares in their proposed projects. Profit-seeking investors buy shares of projects that they expect to succeed. This funds the project; if it does succeed, altruistic people/foundations buy the impact, compensating the investors.

From March to October 2023, ACX and Manifund ran a Minigrants round on impact certs, paying out $31k to 18 forecasting projects.

For retroactive funders

At the end of 2024, Manifund will send each retroactive funder the project descriptions and founder updates. The funders will then read these applications and reports, and come up with a valuation for the impact of each project. It’s up to each funder how to assign valuations, but here are a couple ways to think about it:

• How much would you have paid for the project to happen if, a year ago, an oracle told you what the outcomes would be?
• Would you have funded the original application if you’d received it a year ago? If so, what would have been your median prediction for how well the project would turn out? How do the actual outcomes compare to that? Then fund it proportionally.
  • e.g. a project asked for $10k. If you would have funded it, but the outcome was 5x better than you would have predicted, award it $50k. If it was 0.5x as good as you would have predicted, award it $5k.
  • Or if you would have funded the project at $10k thinking it had a 25% chance of success, and it succeeded, award it $40k.

Once valuations are assigned, the funders will put up offers for the impact certificates at their chosen valuations, which investors can choose to accept.

We highly recommend retro funders write up how you intend to value projects, and how much you expect to pay out. You can also point to examples of past projects you have funded, for how much, and why. This helps investors and founders understand what kinds of outcomes and impact you are looking to fund.

FAQ

Which projects in ACX Grants Round 2 will be available as impact certs?

Applicants may opt to create impact certificates for projects about:

• technical AI safety
• EA community building
• or Scott otherwise decides not to fund with a grant