Couldn’t these people just apply to the long-term future fund for those kinds of things and the LTFF could be better at recognising who is promising amongst the people who apply?
Grantmakers aren’t always “better at recognising who is promising,” mostly because you sometimes have important information they don’t, like knowing that someone is smart and knowledgeable and altruistic beyond what that person can make legible to time-constrained grantmakers. If you don’t have relevant information, e.g. because you don’t know any promising people-who-need-funding, donating to LTFF is great.
(I have donated to LTFF. I have never made a “local grant,” but I would consider it if I had more money and I knew promising people-who-need-funding.)
Couldn’t these people just apply to the long-term future fund for those kinds of things and the LTFF could be better at recognising who is promising amongst the people who apply?
Grantmakers aren’t always “better at recognising who is promising,” mostly because you sometimes have important information they don’t, like knowing that someone is smart and knowledgeable and altruistic beyond what that person can make legible to time-constrained grantmakers. If you don’t have relevant information, e.g. because you don’t know any promising people-who-need-funding, donating to LTFF is great.
(I have donated to LTFF. I have never made a “local grant,” but I would consider it if I had more money and I knew promising people-who-need-funding.)
I agree with this, but I think the main bottleneck here is just that those people often don’t apply to the LTFF.