EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)18 Maalis

“What I didn’t expect about being a funder” by JamesÖz 🔸

Crossposted from my blog

I am very fortunate to have my job in many ways – I get to talk to, learn from, and give money to amazing people and nonprofits all around the world. I get to allocate a modest amount of resources to incredible organisations that I think are doing some of the best work to improve the world. I don’t have to fundraise for my or my team's salaries anymore. However, there are some things I’ve learned since becoming a philanthropic grantmaker that were either surprising or affected me more strongly than I expected.

I will outline some of these below. These are not meant to invoke feelings of “oh poor grantmakers who have access to money and influence” but rather “oh, I never considered things from that perspective”. Hopefully, they will also lead to more productive working relationships between funders and advocacy groups.

Here, I discuss:

How challenging the trade-offs are that funders face
The extremely poor feedback mechanisms that nonprofits have
How people treat you differently once you have access to funding, and how that changes you
The weight of saying no to good groups
Some things that make me feel cynical

Trade-offs [...]

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Outline:

(01:18) Trade-offs are hard and money is scarce

(06:35) Nonprofits have bad feedback mechanisms

(13:00) How people treat you differently (and how that changes you)

(14:52) Its hard to say no to people

(16:08) Its easy to become cynical

(19:38) Wrapping up

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First published:
March 11th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/umicYzuRsm6okFRKA/what-i-didn-t-expect-about-being-a-funder

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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