Our mission

Manifund builds funding infrastructure for nonprofits, primarily for effective altruism and longtermist causes. We provide:

• a clean user experience to grantmakers, donors, and recipients so money moves where it’s needed, quickly;
• open grant proposals, decision rationales, and bookkeeping for public accountability and tight feedback loops; and
• innovative funding mechanisms that align incentives with impact.

We currently support two funding mechanisms: regranting and impact certificates.

Regranting

Regranting is a method of giving money whereby a charitable donor delegates a grantmaking budget to different individuals known as “regrantors”. Regrantors are then empowered to make grant decisions based on the objectives of the original donor.

This model was pioneered by the FTX Future Fund; among the grantmaking models they experimented with in 2022, they considered regranting to be the most promising.

Why regranting?

• Regranting surfaces opportunities that a donor might otherwise miss, as regrantors can tap into their personal networks and fields of expertise.
• The regranting model requires less overhead than traditional grantmaking, as one person is responsible for the budget rather than a committee. This also allows for faster grant turnaround times, solving a key pain point for grantees.
• Certain cause areas like longtermism can be speculative, opaque, and nascent, making it harder for donors to know where to direct their money. Regranting allows donors to outsource these decisions to trustworthy individuals.

How does regranting on Manifund work?

Our website makes the regranting process simple and transparent:

1. A donor contributes money to Manifold for Charity, a registered 501c3 nonprofit.
2. The donor then allocates the money between regrantors of their choice.
3. Regrantors choose which opportunities (eg existing charities, new projects, or individuals) to spend their budgets on, writing up an explanation for each grant made.
4. Manifold for Charity reviews the grant to make sure it is legitimate, legal, and aligned with our mission, and then wires the money and publishes the grant writeups.

Kickoff: Longtermist Round 1

On launch, there will be ~15 sponsored regrantors, each with a regranting budget of $50k-$400k to distribute to projects or charities that they believe will most improve the long-term future. These regrants are backed by an anonymous donor’s contribution of $1.5 million, as well as smaller grants from EA orgs. Longtermist Round 1 will end after this pool is spent, or after 6 months have passed.

FAQ

Currently all grant information is made public. This includes the identity of the regrantor and grant recipient, the project description, the grant size, and the regrantor’s writeup.

We strongly believe in transparency as it allows for meaningful public feedback, accountability of decisions, and establishment of a regrantor track records. We recognize that not all grants are suited for publishing; for now, we recommend such grants be made through other donors (such as LTFF, SFF, or OpenPhil).

If after some time we receive feedback from regranters or recipients that this is significantly restricting their behavior or causing friction, we may add a semi-private or private option.

We support regrants to registered charities and individuals. For-profit organizations may also be eligible, pending due diligence. As a US-registered 501c3, we do not permit donations to political campaigns.

We will look over all grants before fulfilling withdrawal requests to make sure they meet these requirements. We reserve the right to veto grants for any reason, though will strongly defer to regrantors’ judgement.

Regranters are allowed to donate to their own projects, though we’ll evaluate these projects with more scrutiny before fulfilling withdrawal requests.

Anyone can become a regrantor just be altering a setting on their profile. This will advertise their profile as a regrantor and allow them to create grants out of their budget.

Manifund will reach out personally to individuals we want to sponsor as regrantors.

Impact certificates

One way to give or receive funding for projects on Manifund is through impact certificates. The impact certificate ecosystem is like Kickstarter meets the stock market, for charity!

How do impact certificates work on Manifund?

• Founders create a proposal for a charitable project, with a minimum funding goal.
• Accredited investors initially offer to fund the proposed project through an auction. At a predetermined date, the auction will resolve: if the total amount bid meets the minimum funding goal, the project will be funded and top bidders by valuation will recieve shares in the project in exchange for money. Otherwise, the project will not be funded.
• If the project is funded, accredited investors may continue to trade shares in the active project, buying and selling based on how the projects are performing.
• After the project is complete, altruistic individuals or organizations can offer to buy up these shares in recognition of successful impact by the project.

An example of Manifund impact certificates in action

1. A research team proposes a project to develop a forecasting model to prevent pandemics. They ask for $5,000 to work on this project.
2. Investor Ivan offers to buy $3,000 of impact certs at a $6,000 valuation; other investors contribute the rest, and the project is successfully funded at this higher valuation.
3. 3 months later, the forecasting model proves to be effective in predicting the trajectory of an upcoming pandemic and helping hospitals take action.
4. The Good Foundation values the project at $18,000 of impact, offering to buy up all of the outstanding certs.
5. Ivan’s certs have tripled in value from $3,000 to $9,000; he sells half to The Good Foundation for $4,500, and burns the other half to claim charitable impact.

Why are impact certs better than regular grants?

For donors: “In an impact market, you (as the final oracular funder) only need to figure out which projects did work, which is much easier: for example, penicillin obviously worked, and flying cars obviously didn’t. Then you buy the shares of those projects, and your job is done. Private investors still have to do the prediction behind the scenes, but they’re only risking their own money, not charitable dollars, and they’re properly incentivized to get the right answers.”
 —ACX

For investors: If you have a good eye for what projects and founders are likely to be successful, you can now earn profits off of your skill — while helping early-stage projects get off the ground.

For founders: Manifund is like a Common App for charitable funding: instead of applying one-by-one to a bunch of different grantmakers, you only need to create a single project proposal. This makes it easy to apply, even for very small amounts of funding (as low $250). Interested investors can then offer to fund your project through our site.

Like startup equity, you can keep a portion of your impact cert shares, to sell later or distribute to other people who help your project.

See also

• Impact Markets: The Annoying Details by Scott Alexander
• Retroactive Public Goods Funding by Vitalik Buterin
• Why Certificates? by Paul Christiano and Katja Grace

About us

Manifund is built by the team behind Manifold Markets, primarily Austin Chen and Rachel Weinberg.

Come chat with us on Discord, or reach out to austin@manifold.markets!

Appendix: technical details

The Auction Mechanism

On Manifund, project proposals start with a fundraising auction, where investors can offer to fund the project at a different valuations. At a predetermined auction close date, typically a week or two after the proposal is posted, the auction will resolve as follows:

Bids will be read in order from highest valuation to lowest valuation. Bids will be paid out until all shares are bought at the price set by the lowest successful bid. If the total amount bid exceeds the minimum funding but not all shares are sold, then all bids will go through, the project will be funded, and remaining shares will go up for sale at that valuation on the market (this only happens if all bids were above the minimum valuation for the project). Otherwise, the minimum funding bar was not met by all bids combined and the project will not proceed.

For example, let’s go back to that research team with a forecasting project to prevent pandemics with a minimum funding bar of $5,000. Here are a few ways the auction could go: