An important point that did not come across in my postings is that I'm skeptical of philanthropic projects having a positive impact on what they're trying to do in general (independently of relation to existential risk). One major influence here has been my personal experience with public institutions. Another major influence has been reading the GiveWell blog. See for example GiveWell's page on Social Programs That Just Don't Work. At present I think that it's a highly nonobvious but important fact that those projects which superficially look to be promising and which are not well-grounded by constant feedback from outsiders almost always fail to have any nontrivial impact on the relevant cause.

If you had a post on this specifically planned then I would be interested in reading it!