The SAFE simplified early startup investing. Can we do this for early charity funding — and make it backwards compatible with regular grants?
Motivation
- Backfilling credit for Manifold forprofit vs nonprofit funds
- Emphasizing “I was right to back” eg Alex on drones
Sketches
- Loan-like structure?
- One pain point in EA is that people want money now, but OpenPhil is too slow to respond.
- So: “We’ll loan you eg $10k now; you repay 20% of all future funds raised, up to $20k”
- Or: Most Favorable Nations clause that converts on…
- official impact assessment by some retro funder?
Design constraints
- useful even if not otherwise participating in impact equity
- so: if an early project raises more in grant funding, SAFIE holders get compensated
- so: if an early project decides to become a for-profit, SAFIE just turns into a SAFE
- e.g. Automatically give 10% equity to the funding nonprofit
- How to balance later small donations?
- Maybe largest donation gets 10%, and others are treated as MFN?
- Ask SAFIE issuers to publicly post quarterly (or yearly?) updates on all funds raised & valuations provided
- Allow individuals to issue SAFIEs too?
Further reading