Re: CSR. George Howlett started Effective Workplace Activism a couple of years ago, but it didn’t take off that much. Their handbook is useful.
I tried quite hard to change my large corporation’s charity selection process (maybe 50 hours’ work), but found the stubborn localism and fuzzies-orientation impossible to budge (for someone of my persuasiveness and seniority).
I’d imagine that “ease of changing selection process” varies considerably by company, so I’ll also share my anecdote (though I don’t doubt that it’s often quite difficult):
The health software company I worked for in 2015-16 offered each employee something like $600 to donate to any charity in a long list they offered, almost all of which were connected somehow to the surrounding city/state or the topic of “healthcare”. Using the latter category, I submitted several GiveWell/TLYCS charities for consideration, and one of those was added to the list.
This didn’t make a huge difference in employees’ overall allocation (the list was on the order of ~100 charities long), but because I’d been running a small EA group at the company, I was able to inform the members and some of my interested coworkers about the new option, so I’d guess we redirected $10,000-20,000 overall.
I think I have actually heard a couple people talk about trying to influence their workplace fundraisers etc—I guess I was thinking more about careers in CSR.
80K actually has a career profile for foundation grantmakers, which could be related to a career in CSR? I imagine in CSR you would come across the barriers of localism/feel-good charities mentioned by technicalities, but the article is a good starting place.
Re: CSR. George Howlett started Effective Workplace Activism a couple of years ago, but it didn’t take off that much. Their handbook is useful.
I tried quite hard to change my large corporation’s charity selection process (maybe 50 hours’ work), but found the stubborn localism and fuzzies-orientation impossible to budge (for someone of my persuasiveness and seniority).
I’d imagine that “ease of changing selection process” varies considerably by company, so I’ll also share my anecdote (though I don’t doubt that it’s often quite difficult):
The health software company I worked for in 2015-16 offered each employee something like $600 to donate to any charity in a long list they offered, almost all of which were connected somehow to the surrounding city/state or the topic of “healthcare”. Using the latter category, I submitted several GiveWell/TLYCS charities for consideration, and one of those was added to the list.
This didn’t make a huge difference in employees’ overall allocation (the list was on the order of ~100 charities long), but because I’d been running a small EA group at the company, I was able to inform the members and some of my interested coworkers about the new option, so I’d guess we redirected $10,000-20,000 overall.
I think I have actually heard a couple people talk about trying to influence their workplace fundraisers etc—I guess I was thinking more about careers in CSR.
80K actually has a career profile for foundation grantmakers, which could be related to a career in CSR? I imagine in CSR you would come across the barriers of localism/feel-good charities mentioned by technicalities, but the article is a good starting place.