Problem

Many EAs work at Anthropic, and are largely compensated in equity. Anthropic is still private, so employees can't sell this equity. Charities need money now; how to convert current equity into charitable funding?

Proposal

Find external donors with cash to donate, and wants exposure to Anthropic equity. Have the employee and external donor swap their financial interests, in a DAF-like system run by Manifund. The Anthropic employee can then donate immediately; the donor holds the equity for some future sale.

Example

1. Anthropic Alice wants to contribute $100k to MATS today, out of her Anthropic stock.
2. Alice contributes $25k of stock (at the current $60b valuation) into Manifund; Anthropic matches this 3:1, up to $100k worth of equity (~1200 shares)
3. Donor Dave has been earning $200k yearly to donate; he wants to diversify his donation portfolio. He donates $100k of cash into Manifund.
4. Alice and Dave agree to a swap on Manifund, so Alice ends up with $100k cash, and Dave holds 1200 shares
5. Alice can now immediately donate $100k to MATS
6. In 2028, Anthropic stock has 5x’d again and IPOs; Dave can then ask Manifund to sell the stock and donate $500k to a charity of his choice

Why would Anthropic Alice do this, if she believes in Anthropic will continue to grow?

• Hedging: she may hold on to a large amount of Anthropic stock, but still want to contribute some funding now to hedge against Anthropic doing badly
• Impact: giving opportunities will decay over time. Opportunities now may be time sensitive, eg laying groundwork for a new campaign or organization takes years, and the funding is needed now to get things running. In GHD, the cost to save a life has steadily gone up, as we roll out public health improvements; the same may be true now for AI safety or animal welfare.
• Relative abundance: If Anthropic stock continues to grow, there will be much more money in the world anyways, especially EA-aligned funding, so deploying money now may be much more important
• Value drift: Alice in 2028 may care about different things than Alice in 2025. But Alice in 2025 should not defer entirely to Alice in 2028; they're different people!

Why would Donor Dave do this?

• Growth: Most obviously, Anthropic shares will probably continue to grow down the line
• Diversification: This gives Dave more donation influence in worlds where Anthropic does better, which Dave can’t get easy exposure to right now
• Expert knowledge: Dave might think that Alice has good tastes on where to donate, eg what the best AI safety opportunties are based on her direct work in the field and her social connections; and altruistically want to enable her to be allocating those dollars, today