I think it has to happen in a way that mostly doesn’t require EA organizations to spend large amounts of time courting individual minor donors. I also don’t think more matching fundraisers is the solution.
Some possible partial solutions: a stronger culture of giving to learn, established by prominent clever donors (Give now, note reports later). Using EA Ventures to arrange funding “rounds” where many donors or investors must be involved for the funding round to go ahead, or using a similar incentive structure, Kickstartr could be used.
a stronger culture of giving to learn, established by prominent clever donors (Give now, note reports later).
I’d definitely be interested in more giving to learn, but I feel like public updates of lessons learned from expansion funding are few and far between. I’d definitely donate more (like five figures more) if I had more orgs that ran public experiments with their funding and publicly wrote up (I’d even settle for a mailing list) successes and failures (and I’d expect failures, not just donor fluff).
Does anyone else agree with me? Or am I missing the work that some EA orgs already do? (Charity Science definitely does this and I donate to them, GiveWell does this a good amount and I donate to them, I think MIRI does this sometimes, I think the GPP has done this once or twice...)
I agree insofar as having clear measures for success for suborganizations or projects which sometimes don’t get met, resulting in suborganization sometimes getting shut down, would give me a good deal more confidence as a donor.
Lots of EA orgs write copious amounts of reports, I think—http://careyryan.com/transparency/. As far as I can tell, that’s continued over the past year. They’re not just fluffy generalities that would please donors, but I agree that they could give more focus to failures and strategic updates than they already do.
Peter, what exact kinds of reports would make the difference for you? How would the table of contents read? I feel like if anything EA orgs spend already too long evaluating and not enough time growing.
Have you thought of updating that? I remember, or think I remember, you doing a version for individuals which I found especially interesting, which could perhaps be rolled into one periodically updated page (updateable by anyone?) rather than a series of blog posts.
The update that I did on individuals is also now over a year old. I’m too time-poor presently, although I could imagine an ongoing transparency update could be a useful thing to have.
How would a “round” or Kickstarter structure help with the coordination problem? People would still jockey to be late enough that the fundraiser got filled without them.
If people want it to be fair, so that they only give funds when others will, then a Kickstarter or a funding round allows them to only participate if lots of other people will, and gives an assurance that they will only have to provide <x% of the required funds, and this all encourages cooperation and participation. In particular, for people who are procrastinating donating, it gives a good Schelling point for everyone to do so. I think that most people are waiting to know that it’s an unusually good time to donate, rather than strategically trying to shirk responsibility.
I think it has to happen in a way that mostly doesn’t require EA organizations to spend large amounts of time courting individual minor donors. I also don’t think more matching fundraisers is the solution.
Some possible partial solutions: a stronger culture of giving to learn, established by prominent clever donors (Give now, note reports later). Using EA Ventures to arrange funding “rounds” where many donors or investors must be involved for the funding round to go ahead, or using a similar incentive structure, Kickstartr could be used.
I’d definitely be interested in more giving to learn, but I feel like public updates of lessons learned from expansion funding are few and far between. I’d definitely donate more (like five figures more) if I had more orgs that ran public experiments with their funding and publicly wrote up (I’d even settle for a mailing list) successes and failures (and I’d expect failures, not just donor fluff).
Does anyone else agree with me? Or am I missing the work that some EA orgs already do? (Charity Science definitely does this and I donate to them, GiveWell does this a good amount and I donate to them, I think MIRI does this sometimes, I think the GPP has done this once or twice...)
I agree insofar as having clear measures for success for suborganizations or projects which sometimes don’t get met, resulting in suborganization sometimes getting shut down, would give me a good deal more confidence as a donor.
Lots of EA orgs write copious amounts of reports, I think—http://careyryan.com/transparency/. As far as I can tell, that’s continued over the past year. They’re not just fluffy generalities that would please donors, but I agree that they could give more focus to failures and strategic updates than they already do.
Peter, what exact kinds of reports would make the difference for you? How would the table of contents read? I feel like if anything EA orgs spend already too long evaluating and not enough time growing.
Have you thought of updating that? I remember, or think I remember, you doing a version for individuals which I found especially interesting, which could perhaps be rolled into one periodically updated page (updateable by anyone?) rather than a series of blog posts.
The update that I did on individuals is also now over a year old. I’m too time-poor presently, although I could imagine an ongoing transparency update could be a useful thing to have.
Anyone want to create one on the EA Wiki?
How would a “round” or Kickstarter structure help with the coordination problem? People would still jockey to be late enough that the fundraiser got filled without them.
If people want it to be fair, so that they only give funds when others will, then a Kickstarter or a funding round allows them to only participate if lots of other people will, and gives an assurance that they will only have to provide <x% of the required funds, and this all encourages cooperation and participation. In particular, for people who are procrastinating donating, it gives a good Schelling point for everyone to do so. I think that most people are waiting to know that it’s an unusually good time to donate, rather than strategically trying to shirk responsibility.