Will the project "Happier Lives Institute" receive any funding from the Clearer Thinking Regranting program run by ClearerThinking.org?

Below, you can find some selected quotes from the public copy of the application. The text beneath each heading was written by the applicant. Alternatively, you can click here to see the entire public portion of their application.

In brief, why does the applicant think we should we fund this project?

HLI conducts and promotes research into the most cost-effective, evidence-based ways to improve global wellbeing, and then takes that information to key decision-makers. 

So far, we’ve looked quite narrowly at GiveWell-style ‘micro-interventions’ in low-income countries to see how taking a happiness approach changes the priorities. This sort of analysis is quite straightforward - it’s standard quantitative economic cost-effectiveness -  but we’re not convinced that these sorts of interventions are going to be the best way to improve global wellbeing. 

We’ve hired Lily to expand our analysis more broadly: Are there systemic changes that would move the world in the right direction, not just benefit one group? What should be done to improve wellbeing in high-income countries? A world without poverty isn’t a world of maximum wellbeing, so how could moving towards a more flourishing society today impact the long-term? These are harder, more qualitative analyses, but no one has tried to tackle them before and we think this could be extremely valuable.

Here's the mechanism by which the applicant expects their project will achieve positive outcomes.

Unlike other charity evaluators, we look beyond standard measures of wealth and health to identify global problems that have been unduly neglected and underfunded such as mental health and chronic pain.

We then identify outstanding funding opportunities that can address these problems by evaluating the cost-effectiveness of interventions, policies, and charities using subjective wellbeing measures.

We communicate our findings to researchers, philanthropists, and policymakers and convince them to redirect resources from less cost-effective programs to our recommended interventions.

Ultimately, this will result in a greater amount of wellbeing per dollar spent.

What would they do with the grant?

Two years' salary for our new Grants Specialist, Dr Lily Yu.

$100,000 (or more) as seed funding to help us establish our new grantmaking fund, make some early-stage grants, and attract more funders.

Here you can review the entire public portion of the application (which contains a lot more information about the applicant and their project):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zANITg1HuKAn5uEe7nzepTZXxyMDy44vowsdVcMFiHo/