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Tag: grant-making

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Jul 24, 2025
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Apply For An ACX Grant (2025)

13 min • 1,864 words • 31 comments • 92 likes • podcast (11 min)
Scott Alexander announces the 2025 ACX Grants program offering $1M in microgrants for charitable and scientific projects, with a new equity-sharing component for projects that become startups. Longer summary
Scott Alexander announces the 2025 ACX Grants program, a microgrants initiative funding charitable and scientific projects from ACX readers. He plans to contribute $200K with an expected additional $800K from other donors, for grants ranging from $5K to $50K. This year introduces a new feature where some grants will be replaced with SAFEs or convertible grants, giving ACX Grants equity claims if projects become successful startups. The post details application processes, timelines, types of projects they're interested in, and various ways others can help as funders, VCs, evaluators, or friendly professionals. Shorter summary
Jun 19, 2025
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Open Questions For Future ACX Grants Rounds

6 min • 802 words • 83 comments • 70 likes • podcast (6 min)
Scott Alexander outlines five key strategic questions facing the ACX Grants program, including whether to fund for-profit companies and how to handle various funding scenarios. Longer summary
Scott Alexander discusses several open questions regarding the ACX Grants program, focusing on key organizational and strategic decisions. He explores whether to fund for-profit companies with charitable aims, whether to donate or invest in such companies, how to handle nonprofits that transition to for-profit status, how to manage requests for prestige without funding, and how to evaluate last year's impact market grants. Each question is presented with arguments for different approaches and their potential drawbacks, showing the complexity of these decisions. Shorter summary
Jun 18, 2025
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ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates

83 min • 12,789 words • 162 comments • 116 likes • podcast (75 min)
Scott reviews updates from two cohorts of ACX Grants recipients (from 2021 and 2024), analyzing their progress and sharing lessons learned about what makes grants successful. Longer summary
Scott Alexander reviews progress updates from two cohorts of ACX Grants recipients - the first cohort from 2021 (after 3 years) and the second from 2024 (after 1 year). The post methodically goes through each grant's status, with many showing significant progress in areas like AI safety advocacy, animal welfare, scientific research, and political lobbying. Scott then analyzes patterns in what made grants successful, finding that lobbying organizations and animal welfare projects were particularly effective, while scientific grants were harder to evaluate. He concludes that while not all projects succeeded, the $3 million program generated good value through both direct impact and startup creation, and he plans to continue it with some adjustments. Shorter summary
May 22, 2025
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Contra MR On Charity Regrants

10 min • 1,532 words • 607 comments • 371 likes • podcast (12 min)
Scott Alexander criticizes Tyler Cowen and others for misrepresenting USAID's funding model, explaining how regranting through other charities is both necessary and effective despite seeming inefficient to outsiders. Longer summary
Scott Alexander criticizes a Marginal Revolution post by Tyler Cowen about USAID funding, where Cowen suggests that only 12% of funds go to recipients. Scott explains that this is misleading because USAID is not a direct charity but a funding organization that works through other charities. He details how the grant-making process works, defends the overhead costs, and points out that Cowen himself runs an organization (Mercatus Center) that does similar regranting. Scott particularly criticizes Trump and Rubio for misrepresenting these programs as wasteful, noting that programs like PEPFAR have saved millions of lives and have very low rates of unexplained expenses. Shorter summary
Nov 04, 2022
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ACX Grants: Project Updates

28 min • 4,283 words • 106 comments • 65 likes • podcast (27 min)
Scott Alexander provides updates on the ACX Grants project, summarizing the progress of grantees and their ongoing needs. Longer summary
This post provides updates on the ACX Grants project, where Scott Alexander awarded grants to various individuals and organizations for innovative projects. The post summarizes the progress of each grantee, their self-assessed performance on a scale of 1-10, and any additional help or funding they are seeking. The projects range from scientific research and technology development to policy advocacy and social initiatives. Scott also reflects on lessons learned from the grant program and announces the creation of an ACX Grantees Discord for grantees to connect with each other. Shorter summary
Feb 09, 2022
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So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program

51 min • 7,897 words • 193 comments • 134 likes • podcast (51 min)
Scott Alexander shares his experiences and challenges in running a microgrants program, offering insights and advice for others considering similar initiatives. Longer summary
Scott Alexander recounts his experience running a microgrants program, detailing the challenges and complexities involved. He discusses the difficulty of evaluating grant proposals, relying on expert advisors, dealing with applicants' poor grant-writing skills, and navigating the moral dilemmas of effective altruism. Scott concludes by questioning whether running such a program is worthwhile for most people, suggesting alternatives like donating to established charities, and proposing a new impact certificate-based system for future grant-making. Shorter summary
Jan 21, 2022
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Resubmit And Summarize Your Proposals For Grants ++

4 min • 619 words • 67 comments • 65 likes • podcast (7 min)
Scott Alexander announces Grants ++, asking unfunded ACX Grant applicants to resubmit concise proposals for potential reader funding. Longer summary
Scott Alexander announces the next phase of ACX Grants called Grants ++, where unfunded proposals will be published for readers to potentially offer funding. Due to challenges with unclear instructions and the large volume of proposals, Scott is asking applicants to resubmit their proposals in a concise one-paragraph format (max 1500 characters). He provides examples of the desired format and sets guidelines for inclusion, such as allowing startups only if they have a charitable aspect. Applicants are instructed to submit their paragraphs through a provided link by January 28, 2022, with the understanding that submissions are final and cannot be changed once sent. Shorter summary
Dec 28, 2021
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ACX Grants Results

44 min • 6,732 words • 362 comments • 227 likes • podcast (44 min)
Scott Alexander announces the results of the ACX Grants program, awarding funding to various projects and individuals across different fields. Longer summary
Scott Alexander announces the results of the ACX Grants program, which awarded funding to various projects and individuals across different fields. He provides details on the awardees, their projects, and the grant amounts. Scott also discusses the challenges of the grant-making process, acknowledges the help he received, and outlines future steps for the program. Shorter summary
Nov 12, 2021
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Apply For An ACX Grant

9 min • 1,256 words • 254 comments • 112 likes • podcast (10 min)
Scott Alexander announces ACX Grants, offering $250,000 to fund promising research and projects, with potential for additional funding through partnerships. Longer summary
Scott Alexander announces ACX Grants, a program to fund good research and projects with minimal paperwork. He's allocating $250,000 of his own money and hopes to supplement with more from other sources. The grants aim to support projects that could make the world better but might not attract traditional funding. Applications are open for two weeks, with winners announced 2-4 weeks later. Scott also introduces ACX Grants+ and ACX Grants++, which involve forwarding promising projects to other potential funders or publicizing them on his blog, respectively. Shorter summary