Donors might conclude that improving the long-term future is not sufficiently tractable to be worth supporting. It is very difficult to know whether actions taken now are actually likely to improve the long-term future. To gain feedback on their work, organizations must rely on proxy measures of success: Has the public become more supportive of their ideas? Are their researchers making progress on relevant questions? Unfortunately, there is no robust way of knowing whether succeeding on these proxy measures will cause an improvement to the long-term future. Donors who prefer tractable causes with strong feedback loops should consider giving to the Global Health and Development Fund.

Some donors may think that future or possible beings do not matter morally, or matter less than beings who currently exist. For example, one might have a moral position similar to what philosophers term the Person-Affecting View. According to this view, “an act can only be bad if it is bad for someone, so that there is no moral obligation to create people, nor moral good in creating people” (Parfit (1991), p. 114). Donors who hold these views should consider supporting organizations which focus on helping existing people, perhaps through the Global Health and Development Fund.

Donors may prefer to support established organizations. The fund's most recent grants have mostly funded newer organizations and individual researchers. This trend is likely to continue, provided that promising opportunities continue to exist.

Donors may be pessimistic about the room for more funding available in this area. Open Philanthropy has made global catastrophic risk reduction a major focus area and may fund many of the opportunities that the fund managers would find promising.

Well-informed donors with a good knowledge of the space may be in a position to identify opportunities that may be more promising than the recommendations of the Fund. These donors may be able to have a bigger impact by continuing to conduct their own research, rather than deferring to the Fund managers.

Some donors may be skeptical that artificial intelligence constitutes a significant global catastrophic risk. While the Long-Term Future Fund is open to funding organizations that seek to reduce any type of global catastrophic risk — including risks from extreme climate change, nuclear war, and pandemics — grants so far have prioritized projects addressing risks posed by artificial intelligence, and the grantmakers expect to continue this at least in the short term.

Some donors in this area favor interventions which make humanity more likely to have a future, through activities like reducing existential risks. (This is the approach of most of the Fund’s grants so far.) Others favor interventions which reduce the likelihood that future beings experience suffering. Finally, some favor interventions which focus on increasing the likelihood that we achieve extremely positive futures. Donors with strong views in these areas should consider directly supporting organizations that work to achieve their desired outcomes.