This is an interesting comment, I think you bring up good points.
One reason why I didn’t focus much on crowdfunding is that the money that goes in there is not really LEAF’s, and it’s just one among many focuses they have. If an EA decides to give money to LEAF (through the recurring campaign, or through a grant, for example) that money will probably not go to a crowdfunding campaign, and would probably not make much of an impact on how they decide who to crowdfund. It would go to their other projects. When donating to a campaign you donate to the specific org who benefits from the project of the campaign and not to LEAF. LEAF, unlike other orgs like Open Phil for example, doesn’t make grants directly, but only organizes campaigns so that people can bring money to a project.
You probably already knew all in the paragraph above, so: I think your point is correct. Where exactly they bring money by choosing who to finance is important in order to ascertain if the research which wouldn’t otherwise have happened is actually making an impact (an impact at all, given the characteristics of this field, yes). A plus to them from my POV is that they seem internally sympathetic to SENS’ approach (it’s obvious by reading their introductory articles), although they also financed different approaches (one campaign is for a project involving NMN supplementation led by David Sinclair, a couple of others on biomarkers...). But I admit it’s not much and a more detailed look would be ideal. For now, if you are more concerned about the science than YouTube/internet advocacy, policy influencing, etc. it is probably best to donate directly to orgs doing specific scientific research.
Not being able to evaluate much by looking at crowdfunding alone I followed the methodology of trying to gauge the ratio donations : money brought to the field, which I’ve seen used a lot for evaluating advocacy charities inside EA.
Maybe we’ll be able to ascertain their decision-making regarding crowdfunding better (although probably not a lot better) after the interview, since the first question is about that.
This is an interesting comment, I think you bring up good points.
One reason why I didn’t focus much on crowdfunding is that the money that goes in there is not really LEAF’s, and it’s just one among many focuses they have. If an EA decides to give money to LEAF (through the recurring campaign, or through a grant, for example) that money will probably not go to a crowdfunding campaign, and would probably not make much of an impact on how they decide who to crowdfund. It would go to their other projects. When donating to a campaign you donate to the specific org who benefits from the project of the campaign and not to LEAF. LEAF, unlike other orgs like Open Phil for example, doesn’t make grants directly, but only organizes campaigns so that people can bring money to a project.
You probably already knew all in the paragraph above, so: I think your point is correct. Where exactly they bring money by choosing who to finance is important in order to ascertain if the research which wouldn’t otherwise have happened is actually making an impact (an impact at all, given the characteristics of this field, yes). A plus to them from my POV is that they seem internally sympathetic to SENS’ approach (it’s obvious by reading their introductory articles), although they also financed different approaches (one campaign is for a project involving NMN supplementation led by David Sinclair, a couple of others on biomarkers...). But I admit it’s not much and a more detailed look would be ideal. For now, if you are more concerned about the science than YouTube/internet advocacy, policy influencing, etc. it is probably best to donate directly to orgs doing specific scientific research.
Not being able to evaluate much by looking at crowdfunding alone I followed the methodology of trying to gauge the ratio donations : money brought to the field, which I’ve seen used a lot for evaluating advocacy charities inside EA.
Maybe we’ll be able to ascertain their decision-making regarding crowdfunding better (although probably not a lot better) after the interview, since the first question is about that.