I haven’t seen this discussed online. When I met Holden Karnofsky, co-executive director of Givewell, I asked him if making existing charities more effective is work Givewell would consider getting into. He told me Givewell is not considering that, and they intend to stick to their work of charity evaluation. He believes making existing charities more effective would be a more difficult job than evaluating them.
I agree that making charities more effective is a difficult uphill battle. It is definitely easier and more beneficial in the short term to evaluate existing charities. It would be really great to see some sort of cost/benefit break down comparing the time and energy it would take to create a new charity vs retrofitting an existing one.
This seems like a very complex question but I think it may be valuable as a long-term strategy for EAs to look at. Ultimately the goal is to divert enough energy and attention to highly effective charities, which would ultimately mean that other charities notice what donors want. To my mind it would be really fantastic if at that moment there was an EA organization or group that could step in and help organizations look at how to become more effective. Again this seems to be a long way off, but something worth doing an analysis of.
I haven’t seen this discussed online. When I met Holden Karnofsky, co-executive director of Givewell, I asked him if making existing charities more effective is work Givewell would consider getting into. He told me Givewell is not considering that, and they intend to stick to their work of charity evaluation. He believes making existing charities more effective would be a more difficult job than evaluating them.
I agree that making charities more effective is a difficult uphill battle. It is definitely easier and more beneficial in the short term to evaluate existing charities. It would be really great to see some sort of cost/benefit break down comparing the time and energy it would take to create a new charity vs retrofitting an existing one.
This seems like a very complex question but I think it may be valuable as a long-term strategy for EAs to look at. Ultimately the goal is to divert enough energy and attention to highly effective charities, which would ultimately mean that other charities notice what donors want. To my mind it would be really fantastic if at that moment there was an EA organization or group that could step in and help organizations look at how to become more effective. Again this seems to be a long way off, but something worth doing an analysis of.