tl;dr: I think this role is more impactful and more enjoyable than I anticipated when I started, and I think more people should consider applying.
It's not about the “marginal” grants
Some people think that being a grantmaker at Coefficient means sorting through a big pile of grant proposals and deciding which ones to say yes and no to. As a result, they think that the only impact at stake is how good our decisions are about marginal grants, since all the excellent grants are no-brainers.
But grantmakers don’t just evaluate proposals; we elicit them. I spend the majority of my time trying to figure out how to get better proposals into our pipeline: writing RFPs that describe the research projects we want to fund, or pitching promising researchers on AI safety research agendas, or steering applicants to better-targeted or more ambitious proposals.
Maybe more importantly, cG's technical AI safety grantmaking strategy is currently underdeveloped, and even junior grantmakers can help [...]
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Outline:
(00:34) It's not about the marginal grants
(03:03) There is no counterfactual grantmaker
(05:15) Grantmaking is more fun/motivating than I anticipated
(08:35) Please apply!
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First published:
November 26th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gLt7KJkhiEDwoPkae/three-things-that-surprised-me-about-technical-grantmaking
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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