Open Philanthropy's Coefficient Giving's Technical AI Safety team is hiring grantmakers. I thought this would be a good moment to share some positive updates about the role that I’ve made since I joined the team a year ago.

tl;dr: I think this role is more impactful and more enjoyable than I anticipated when I started, and I think more people should consider applying.

It's not about the “marginal” grants

Some people think that being a grantmaker at Coefficient means sorting through a big pile of grant proposals and deciding which ones to say yes and no to. As a result, they think that the only impact at stake is how good our decisions are about marginal grants, since all the excellent grants are no-brainers.

But grantmakers don’t just evaluate proposals; we elicit them. I spend the majority of my time trying to figure out how to get better proposals into our pipeline: writing RFPs that describe the research projects we want to fund, or pitching promising researchers on AI safety research agendas, or steering applicants to better-targeted or more ambitious proposals.

Maybe more importantly, cG's technical AI safety grantmaking strategy is currently underdeveloped, and even junior grantmakers can help [...]

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Outline:

(00:34) It's not about the marginal grants

(03:03) There is no counterfactual grantmaker

(05:15) Grantmaking is more fun/motivating than I anticipated

(08:35) Please apply!

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First published:
November 26th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gLt7KJkhiEDwoPkae/three-things-that-surprised-me-about-technical-grantmaking

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Three things that surprised me about technical grantmaking at Coefficient Giving (fka Open Phil)

LessWrong (30+ Karma)