(This is a copy)

Project Name: Manifund Regranting Program

Type of Entity: Non-profit (already has tax-exempt status)

Email: [email protected]

Full Name: AustinChen

Linkedin / CV:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinch/

References: Linchuan Zhang ([email protected])

One-sentence description: Regranting budgets for 5-20 offbeat individuals

Do you need a response faster than mid-August?: Response at the end of current round

Project Summary: See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RMXctNAksBgXgoszY/announcing-manifund-regrants. We've already raised $2m towards longtermist regrantors, but would like the latitude to pick out other unusual/offbeat individuals who may be less established (or even completely unaffiliated with EA), but we think are good bets.

(It's possible this kind of grant is out of scope for Lightspeed and we should eg reach out to Jaan directly instead; no worries if so!)

Project Goals: Like Lightspeed Grants, we believe that EA funding is overly centralized, opaque, and glacial. We intend to change this by testing better funding models, of which regranting seems extremely promising.

I'd roughly aim for us to move ~$10m by the end of the year, towards grants that other grantmakers like OP/LTFF/SFF think are at least comparable in quality/total impact to their own mechanisms.

One side goal is to identify promising regrantors who then go on to serve as fulltime grantmakers in more established orgs, as this seems to be a funding bottleneck. Finding 3-4 such individuals might pay for the whole program on its own?

Track record: I cofounded Manifold Markets, starting from no ties to the EA scene around Dec 2021, and built it to one of the best-known sites in the forecasting space (eg surpassing Metaculus in monthly page views.)

Funding amount and breakdown: Requesting $500k:

~60% for new regrantors (we've already received 2 solid applications in the <12h since launch)

~30% to re-up budgets for good regrantors

~10% for operations (eg our own salaries)