Aly Marczynski
Bio
My background is in philanthropy, nonprofits, and public-sector strategy, and I’m now shifting my focus to how philanthropy can help society prepare for the challenges created by advanced AI.
I’m especially interested in grantmaking infrastructure, field-building, institutional resilience, and decision-making under uncertainty.
How others can help me
I’m interested in connecting with people working on AI-related philanthropy, grantmaking, field-building, and broader societal preparedness. I’m also exploring my next professional role, particularly opportunities where my background in grantmaking, strategy, and nonprofit operations could be useful in the AI or effective philanthropy ecosystem.
Introductions to relevant organizations, funders, or people thinking about these questions would be very welcome. I’m also always interested in examples of interesting grantmaking models or philanthropic infrastructure I should be looking at.
How I can help others
I’m happy to help with questions about grantmaking, nonprofit strategy, program management, impact measurement, and working with foundations or grantees. I’m also glad to be a sounding board for project ideas or career questions, and to make introductions where I can.
Posts 1
Comments3
Thanks for your comment. I think the key distinction is that I'm not arguing that funders should lower the bar, or that traditional grantmaking experience is more valuable than deep AI safety judgment. I'm asking what happens if the current model genuinely constrains how much funding can be deployed.
If the preferred strategy is to recruit from a small pool of research-y/policy/technical AI safety people and train them as grantmakers, that may be a deliberate choice. But it also means drawing from a talent pool that is already scarce and valuable elsewhere in the field. If that choice is contributing to undisbursed funding, then it seems worth exploring whether other models could increase allocation capacity without materially reducing decision quality.
That could mean mixed teams, technical review layered onto broader grantmaking expertise, partnerships between organizations, or other funding models. If funders test those alternatives and still conclude that the current profile is necessary, that’s useful information too.
My main point is that if the field decides to keep a very narrow model and accepts that less funding will go out as a result, then the public messaging around a “grantmaker bottleneck” should be more specific. The shortage is not simply of people willing or able to do grantmaking; it is of people who meet a very particular profile that funders have chosen to prioritize.
I completely agree with your point about bringing different kinds of experienced judgment into the grantmaking process rather than expecting one profile to cover everything. I think experienced builders could be particularly useful for evaluating execution ability, organizational capacity, and whether a proposed intervention is actually practical.
This also reinforces something I was trying to get at: broadening the profile doesn’t necessarily mean replacing technical expertise, but building teams where different kinds of expertise complement each other. Thanks for the links to the experienced builders work, I'll definitely check it out.