I will keep harping on that more people should try starting (public benefit) corporations instead of nonprofits. At least, give it five minutes’ thought. Especially if handwaves impact markets something something. This should be in their Overton Window, but it might not be because they automatically assume “doing good ⇒ charity ⇒ nonprofit”. Corporations are the standard procedure for how effective helpful things are done in the world; they are RLHF’d by the need to acquire profit by providing real value to customers, reducing surfacce area for bullshitting. I am not an expert here by any means, but I’m noticing the fact that I can go on Clerky or Stripe Atlas and spend a couple hours spinning up an organization, versus, well, I haven’t actually gone through with trying to incorporate a nonprofit, but the process seems at least 10x more painful based on reading a book on it and with how many people seek fiscal sponsorship. I’m pretty surprised this schlep isn’t talked about more. Having to rely on fiscal sponsorship seems pretty obviously terrible to me, and I hadn’t even considered the information-distortive effects here. I would not be caught dead being financially enmeshed with the EVF umbrella of orgs after FTX. From my naive perspective, the castle could have easily been a separate business entity with EVF having at least majority control?
(I just realized I’m on LessWrong and not EA Forum, and could have leaned harder into capitalismpunk without losing as many social points.)
My chief guess for why this happens is people don’t realize it’s an option or understand the distinction, and it isn’t in their skillset or area of interest so they don’t dig deep enough to find out.
Actually, wow, that “people” sure sounds like I’m talking about someone else. Hi, I personally didn’t have the phrase “public benefit corporation” cached in my head and I’m not actually sure what the distinction between that and a nonprofit is. That’s not because it’s totally irrelevant to my interests either. I’ve talked with two or three people over the last year specifically seeking advice on how to set up the legal structure for an organization that wasn’t aiming to make a profit, and “public benefit corporation” isn’t in my notes from any of those conversations. These weren’t random people either! One was a director of a non-profit and the other was an (off the clock) lawyer!
And I think I’m unusually interested in organizational structure for someone in this space. There’s a kind of corollary to Being The (Pareto) Best in the World, where you start to see that there are (for example) incredibly talented biologists all over, highly skilled statisticians available if you know where to look, but a comparatively far smaller number of expert biologist-statisticians. Adroitness with the intricacies of bureaucratic organizational structure is a third skill. Stripe Atlas has put some serious work into making the process of creating an organization easy and painless for people fluent in Internet because it’s common for someone with the WebDesign-ViableBusiness skill overlap to not have put any points in Organizational Bureaucracy. If you want a biologist-statistician-bureaucrat, you are looking for what’s actually a pretty narrow slice of the population! If a biologist-statistician (or any other fertile combination of non-bureaucrat-adjacent skills) wanted to do some biology-statistics and someone else offered to handle the organizational backend, I absolutely understand why they might jump at it!
(Over the last year, I’ve started to regard Being The (Pareto) Best in the World in much the same way that one regards a dread prophecy of doom, spoken from a rent in the air above some sulphurous chasm. The blindingly obvious gaps I see in the world are often at the intersections of three different skillsets.)
Lest I sound like I have zero suggestions: Do you recommend something for people to read if they want to do a quick bit of upskilling here?
Forming a nonprofit is not that difficult. It’s like four extra hours of work to get the 501c3 status and a decent time delay of several months. Having someone else to fill out the 990 for you is nice, though!
I cheerfully believe it’s not actually that difficult if you know what you’re doing. I think building a website isn’t that difficult and doing a forward roll isn’t that difficult and baking a loaf of bread isn’t that difficult, and some people find those activities hard.
If you happen to know of a well written, straightforward guide you’d like to point me at, maybe one with some explainers about what various options mean and what the tradeoffs are compared to alternative structures, I and possibly other readers could probably benefit from a link!
I will keep harping on that more people should try starting (public benefit) corporations instead of nonprofits. At least, give it five minutes’ thought. Especially if handwaves impact markets something something. This should be in their Overton Window, but it might not be because they automatically assume “doing good ⇒ charity ⇒ nonprofit”. Corporations are the standard procedure for how effective helpful things are done in the world; they are RLHF’d by the need to acquire profit by providing real value to customers, reducing surfacce area for bullshitting. I am not an expert here by any means, but I’m noticing the fact that I can go on Clerky or Stripe Atlas and spend a couple hours spinning up an organization, versus, well, I haven’t actually gone through with trying to incorporate a nonprofit, but the process seems at least 10x more painful based on reading a book on it and with how many people seek fiscal sponsorship. I’m pretty surprised this schlep isn’t talked about more. Having to rely on fiscal sponsorship seems pretty obviously terrible to me, and I hadn’t even considered the information-distortive effects here. I would not be caught dead being financially enmeshed with the EVF umbrella of orgs after FTX. From my naive perspective, the castle could have easily been a separate business entity with EVF having at least majority control?
(I just realized I’m on LessWrong and not EA Forum, and could have leaned harder into capitalismpunk without losing as many social points.)
My chief guess for why this happens is people don’t realize it’s an option or understand the distinction, and it isn’t in their skillset or area of interest so they don’t dig deep enough to find out.
Actually, wow, that “people” sure sounds like I’m talking about someone else. Hi, I personally didn’t have the phrase “public benefit corporation” cached in my head and I’m not actually sure what the distinction between that and a nonprofit is. That’s not because it’s totally irrelevant to my interests either. I’ve talked with two or three people over the last year specifically seeking advice on how to set up the legal structure for an organization that wasn’t aiming to make a profit, and “public benefit corporation” isn’t in my notes from any of those conversations. These weren’t random people either! One was a director of a non-profit and the other was an (off the clock) lawyer!
And I think I’m unusually interested in organizational structure for someone in this space. There’s a kind of corollary to Being The (Pareto) Best in the World, where you start to see that there are (for example) incredibly talented biologists all over, highly skilled statisticians available if you know where to look, but a comparatively far smaller number of expert biologist-statisticians. Adroitness with the intricacies of bureaucratic organizational structure is a third skill. Stripe Atlas has put some serious work into making the process of creating an organization easy and painless for people fluent in Internet because it’s common for someone with the WebDesign-ViableBusiness skill overlap to not have put any points in Organizational Bureaucracy. If you want a biologist-statistician-bureaucrat, you are looking for what’s actually a pretty narrow slice of the population! If a biologist-statistician (or any other fertile combination of non-bureaucrat-adjacent skills) wanted to do some biology-statistics and someone else offered to handle the organizational backend, I absolutely understand why they might jump at it!
(Over the last year, I’ve started to regard Being The (Pareto) Best in the World in much the same way that one regards a dread prophecy of doom, spoken from a rent in the air above some sulphurous chasm. The blindingly obvious gaps I see in the world are often at the intersections of three different skillsets.)
Lest I sound like I have zero suggestions: Do you recommend something for people to read if they want to do a quick bit of upskilling here?
this is exactly why I would disagree with this suggestion.
do you know any references people could use to investigate more?
Forming a nonprofit is not that difficult. It’s like four extra hours of work to get the 501c3 status and a decent time delay of several months. Having someone else to fill out the 990 for you is nice, though!
I cheerfully believe it’s not actually that difficult if you know what you’re doing. I think building a website isn’t that difficult and doing a forward roll isn’t that difficult and baking a loaf of bread isn’t that difficult, and some people find those activities hard.
If you happen to know of a well written, straightforward guide you’d like to point me at, maybe one with some explainers about what various options mean and what the tradeoffs are compared to alternative structures, I and possibly other readers could probably benefit from a link!