In 2025, twelve people across three tracks participated as “Recommenders” (grant evaluators) in a single round of a grant-recommendation process for Funder Jaan Tallinn. The round featured three tracks: the Main Track, the Fairness Track, and the Freedom Track. The following Recommenders in this round agreed to have their identities made public:
Two Main Track Recommenders and one Freedom Track Recommender have chosen to remain anonymous.
We call the recommendation process used in this grant round the “S-Process”, for “Simulation Process”, because it involves allowing the Recommenders and Funder to simulate a large number of counterfactual delegation scenarios using a table of marginal utility functions. Recommenders specified marginal utility functions for funding each application, and adjusted those functions through discussions with each other as the round progressed. Similarly, the Funder specified and adjusted different utility functions for deferring to each Recommender. In this round, the process also allowed the Funder to make some final adjustments to decide on their final intended grant amounts.
The S-Process app is still being developed for broader use.
We used Recommenders’ inputs to create a Synthetic Mean Recommender. This feature acts as a simulated Recommender, generating grant recommendations by using an average of all the Recommenders’ utility functions weighted to give each Recommender an equal amount of influence.
Two specialized tracks, the Fairness Track and the Freedom Track, ran with three Recommenders each, in parallel with the Main Track which had six Recommenders. Applicants could specifically flag their application for consideration by Recommenders in the Freedom Track, the Fairness Track, or both. All guaranteed eligible applications (applications which received an approval of their Speculation Grant request) were qualified to be evaluated by Recommenders in all tracks (Main, Freedom, and Fairness).
In the final recommendations table, the “Track Recommendations” column shows the recommendations from each of the three tracks and the Synthetic Mean Recommender. In the “Total Funding Recommended” column is the total funding recommendation an org received, which is the sum of the recommendations from the three tracks and the Synthetic Mean Recommender.
New to the 2025 S-Process Grant Round is the SFF Matching Pledge Program. Matching Pledges are commitments made by the Funder of an S-Process round to match outside donations to a recipient at some rate (such as 0.5x, 1x, or 3x), up to the pledged amount. Many applicants this round opted to receive some or all of their funding as a Matching Pledge. Those who did received a boost to their evaluations from the S-Process algorithm, which incorporated the impact of the outside funding required to claim the Matching Pledge.
The goals of the Matching Pledge program include diversifying the funding landscape, providing encouragement to other donors who want to give more, and increasing the fundraising robustness and independence of organizations receiving recommendations from the S-Process.
The total funding recommended in this round is $34.33MM, exceeding our $10MM-$20MM estimate. An additional $0.59M was distributed previously through Speculation Grants in excess of our final recommendations for those organizations. The total funding expected to be distributed in association with this round is $34.92MM. (Please note that due to rounding, subtotals may not precisely add up to the total figure.)
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† The total in parentheses reflects additional funding that was distributed in cases where the amount of the Speculation Grant awarded to an organization exceeded the eventual recommendation amount for that organization. This additional funding is not included in the figure for the total funding recommended in this round, but is included in the amount of funding expected to be distributed in total.
This round, Recommenders crossed track boundaries substantially when evaluating applications, making the per-track distinctions less meaningful. Below are the total funding recommendations broken down first by the track of Recommenders, and then by the track of applications.
Most of the final endorsed recommendations of this round of the S-Process are listed below. These numbers have resulted from numerical inputs from both the Funder and Recommenders, which represented estimates of the marginal utility of granting to each organization. Note that:
† Parentheses indicate a Speculation Grant awarded to certain recommended organizations, prior to the completion of the S-Process round. If the Speculation Grant amount was higher than the S-Process recommendation, it subsumed the S-Process recommendation, so only the Speculation Grant amount is meant to be granted. If the Speculation Grant was less, it was deducted from the S-Process recommendation, so the total granted is meant to be the amount of the S-Process recommendation.
‡ Curly braces indicate a Matching Pledge awarded to certain recommended organizations, as part of their S-Process round recommendation. This is funding that will be distributed conditional on the organization raising outside funds.
“*” Asterisks demarcate recommendations that were “controversial” in that one or more Recommenders wished to publicly disendorse the recommendation. Two asterisks on a recommendation indicates that there are two or more disendorsements.
Note that the S-Process system is designed to generally favor funding things that at least one Recommender is excited to fund, rather than things that every Recommender is excited to fund. As such, the grant recommendations above do not especially represent the “average” opinion of the group in any sense.
The final endorsed Matching Pledge recommendations of this round of the S-Process are listed below.
You can learn more about the SFF Matching Pledge Program on our Matching Pledges page.
Matching Pledge Amount: The maximum amount the Funder will give to the organization as matching funds for outside donations they receive.
Matching Rate: The rate chosen by the organization at which the Funder will match outside funds, ranging from 0.25x to 4x.
- A rate of 0.25x means $0.25 from the Funder for each $1 of outside funds
- A rate of 1x means $1 from the Funder for each $1 of outside funds
- A rate of 4x means $4 from the Funder for each $1 of outside funds
Matching Pledge Deadline: The date chosen by the organization by which they must receive outside donations in order for those donations to be eligible for their Matching Pledge.
As an example, suppose an organization receives a Matching Pledge Amount of $100,000, and has chosen a Matching Rate of 2x and a Matching Pledge Deadline of December 31, 2025. They would be eligible to claim $2 of matching funds for every $1 of outside donations they raise by December 31, 2025, up to a maximum of $100,000 of matching funds for raising $50,000 of outside donations.
The S-Process is designed to allow a lot of freedom and autonomy for the Recommenders and the Funders. Funders retain the right and freedom to make and/or recommend grants that the S-Process, as a whole, did not endorse, based on information the Funders learn from the S-Process. As well, the S-Process structure doesn’t impose restrictions on Recommenders and Funders communicating with each other as much as they want outside of the S-Process. As such, while the S-Process might be useful in helping the Funders learn about grant-making opportunities and opinions, the Funders need not be limited by the outputs of the S-Process in order for it to function.
Each Recommender’s own inputs to the process (both initial and final versions) are free for that Recommender to share privately or publicly in any form and for any use-case, as long as they anonymize any other Recommenders who have requested anonymity, and respect the privacy of the organizations who applied to the round. In particular, the S-Process does not require Recommenders to avoid sharing their own (appropriately anonymized) inputs, even when sharing some documents might make it somewhat easier in principle for an adversary to reverse-engineer the inputs of other Recommenders. The spirit of the S-Process is, however, to discourage this sort of intentionally adversarial de-anonymization, as it is disrespectful of the Recommenders who contributed their time and effort under the conditions of anonymity.