A charity once popular with tech entrepreneurs in the UK and US has seen its funding plummet after the imprisonment of one of its biggest donors.
Effective Ventures, a charity operated by the Effective Altruism movement, saw its income sink 51% to £31.7m in the year to end June 2024, its latest accounts show, amid a steep decline in grants and donations.
The firm, which operates the Centre for the Governance of AI and a research unit into long-term trends called Longview, has received donations from a host of well-known tech entrepreneurs, including Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook, and Jaan Tallinn, the founder of Skype.
Among the firm’s biggest donors was Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto firm FTX, who was sentenced to 25 years in jail last year after being charged with fraud and money laundering.
The loss of donations from FTX has forced the charity to ‘scale down’ its operations. Effective Ventures says it now plans to wind down the company and spin off its various arms into independent entities.
“A major donor to EV UK filed for bankruptcy protection and we do not expect to receive income from this donor in future,” Effective Ventures said.
“We have responded by raising new funds from other donors, and by scaling down planned expenditure in affected projects where appropriate. In addition, financial controls have been improved to ensure that projects have sufficient runway to wind down in an orderly fashion if funding ceases.
“Trustees of EV UK decided that the charitable purposes for which the charity was set up would be best served by spinning out all of the projects which are currently fiscally sponsored by EV UK, into new independent entities.”
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