Thanks for this write-up! Sounds like a bunch of cool projects.
Since 2015, over $19m has been given to high-impact charities recommended by FP. FP estimates that their research and advice played a significant role in $8m out of this total.
Do you mean that over $19m has been given to high-impact charities FP recommends by people FP talked to, but $11m might have been given to the same places anyway? That would seem to suggest a surprisingly high proportion of these people wouldāve given anyway, and to the same places.
Or do you mean that the total amount given by anyone to all charities FP recommends is (presumably) around $19-20m? That would seem surprisingly little total donations, given the number of charities FP recommends, and that this is over a span of 5 years. And then thatād imply FP influenced about 40% of that total, which seems a surprisingly high proportion.
Also, do you actually just mean āhigh-impact charitiesā, or high-impact organisations/ārecipients more broadly? I ask because I believe some of the orgs FP recommends arenāt actually charities (e.g., in the existential risk area), though I could be wrong about that.
FP arenāt a straight forward advisory group, they have a pledge and a community, so the $19m is the total to high-impact charities within their pledger community. FPās research team have attempted to estimate which of those donations happened as a result of FP advisory /ā marketing work, which is hard, and as with any self-reporting, open to becoming a KPI that ends up drifting and becoming misreported. My current view of the FP individuals that did this estimate work though is that they have high intellectual honesty and thoroughness, that they are aware of their own misincentives and when I spot-checked a number of their figures in 2018-19 they were good estimates, perhaps even on the conservative side.
Ok, so itās that the people whoāve taken FPās pledge have given an estimated >$19m over 5 years to high-impact charities (which includes e.g. charities that GiveWell recommends but FP doesnāt recommend in its cause are reports), and FP estimates it influenced whether or where ~$8m of that was donated?
That makes more sense than either of the things I guessed the sentence meant. Thanks for clarifying :)
High-impact, for simplicity, (they have a very large total number of grants) is set just as the rough status quo of groups on GiveWell, funded by Open Phil, ACE charities etc., FP manage their own list and we >90% are in agreement on what is in that list. None of the largest grants in the list are groups we feel conflicted about.
In an ideal world we would of course evaluate every group their pledgers have counterfactually funded but thatās not really tractable. And we try to only use their quantitative outcomes as one of several signals as to how well theyāre doing (itās very tempting to fall into a rabbit hole of data analysis for a group with such clear and measurable first order outcomes)
I think itās the former of the two. Regarding the last paragraph, I think this refers to high-impact recipients (I think mostly or exclusively charities). But someone from the Meta Fund could answer these questions in more detail.
Thanks for this write-up! Sounds like a bunch of cool projects.
Do you mean that over $19m has been given to high-impact charities FP recommends by people FP talked to, but $11m might have been given to the same places anyway? That would seem to suggest a surprisingly high proportion of these people wouldāve given anyway, and to the same places.
Or do you mean that the total amount given by anyone to all charities FP recommends is (presumably) around $19-20m? That would seem surprisingly little total donations, given the number of charities FP recommends, and that this is over a span of 5 years. And then thatād imply FP influenced about 40% of that total, which seems a surprisingly high proportion.
Also, do you actually just mean āhigh-impact charitiesā, or high-impact organisations/ārecipients more broadly? I ask because I believe some of the orgs FP recommends arenāt actually charities (e.g., in the existential risk area), though I could be wrong about that.
FP arenāt a straight forward advisory group, they have a pledge and a community, so the $19m is the total to high-impact charities within their pledger community. FPās research team have attempted to estimate which of those donations happened as a result of FP advisory /ā marketing work, which is hard, and as with any self-reporting, open to becoming a KPI that ends up drifting and becoming misreported. My current view of the FP individuals that did this estimate work though is that they have high intellectual honesty and thoroughness, that they are aware of their own misincentives and when I spot-checked a number of their figures in 2018-19 they were good estimates, perhaps even on the conservative side.
Ok, so itās that the people whoāve taken FPās pledge have given an estimated >$19m over 5 years to high-impact charities (which includes e.g. charities that GiveWell recommends but FP doesnāt recommend in its cause are reports), and FP estimates it influenced whether or where ~$8m of that was donated?
That makes more sense than either of the things I guessed the sentence meant. Thanks for clarifying :)
High-impact, for simplicity, (they have a very large total number of grants) is set just as the rough status quo of groups on GiveWell, funded by Open Phil, ACE charities etc., FP manage their own list and we >90% are in agreement on what is in that list. None of the largest grants in the list are groups we feel conflicted about.
In an ideal world we would of course evaluate every group their pledgers have counterfactually funded but thatās not really tractable. And we try to only use their quantitative outcomes as one of several signals as to how well theyāre doing (itās very tempting to fall into a rabbit hole of data analysis for a group with such clear and measurable first order outcomes)
I think itās the former of the two. Regarding the last paragraph, I think this refers to high-impact recipients (I think mostly or exclusively charities). But someone from the Meta Fund could answer these questions in more detail.