JoshuaFox comments on SIAI vs. FHI achievements, 2008-2010 - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 25 September 2011 11:42AM

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Comment author: JoshuaFox 25 September 2011 12:05:43PM 11 points [-]
  1. FHI is part of a prestigious university. This has signaling value in many areas: Adding credibility to the message, recruitment, and fundraising.
  2. FHI also has raised a lot more money.
  3. You might also compare what they have accomplished given their level of resources--where you get more bang for the buck.
  4. FHI and SIAI have similar but different goals/subgoals. Depending on how one prioritizes these, direct comparisons are not always relevant.
  5. It is also possible, though I am not quite sure of this, that FHI and SIAI are complementary. It may be that FHI uses "establishment" resources like the university affiliation, but is forced to follow a more conservative path; while SIAI is more financially constrained and lacks the prestige, but in exchange is permitted to take radical new directions.
Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 25 September 2011 12:08:08PM 7 points [-]

Do you know where to find the figures for how much money FHI has?

Comment author: wallowinmaya 25 September 2011 05:58:58PM *  4 points [-]

In the annual report for 01 October 2008 - 30 September 2009 they write: ( at page 23)

"At the present time, approximately half of our budget comes from the Universityʹs James Martin 21st Century School, and approximately half comes from a few visionary philanthropists. The following donations were received during the last academic year: Philanthropist #1: £161,308 Philanthropist #2: £9,392 Philanthropist #3: £13,435 Bright Horizons Foundation: £46,072 Other donations: £780"

So they got around £231,000 from donations. With the budget from the James Martin School this should sum up to approximately £462,000 which equals around $711,000 for 10/2008 - 10/2009.

I don't know the budget for the year 2010. (As a sidenote, the budget of FHI for 11/2005- 11/2006 was £203,665. And for 11/2006 - 11/2007 it was £263,113. (page 77). Maybe we can extrapolate from that data? )

Comment author: steven0461 25 September 2011 08:06:47PM 5 points [-]

Comparing two organizations with the same budget isn't necessarily fair. If two organizations both had a budget of $500,000, and achieved the same amount of visible progress, but one of them had to spend $250,000 on fundraising, then (assuming linear returns to money) we should expect marginal donations to the latter organization to be twice as effective, right?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 25 September 2011 06:57:42PM 2 points [-]

Great, thanks!

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