Some preliminary comments. Despite the (at times unfair) criticism you’ve received in the past, I do think that what you’re doing at InIn is valuable and potentially high-impact. Although your content does not resonate with EAs (and that’s not your goal), the EA community should acknowledge and embrace the importance of convincing a wider, non-EA audience to donate effectively. Your project is still in a learning phase but making fast progress, so kudos on that and I hope you keep up with the good work.
Now some more concise remarks about the post. I’m unsure to what extent you’ll be able to convince EAs to donate to InIn based on the data you present in your Annual Report. The strongest arguments going for InIn seem to be:
the vast media coverage, and
the large amount of content you’ve managed to generate.
I don’t know how to weigh these numbers in when assessing the effectiveness of InIn. I believe this is not an issue of how you chose to quantify your impact—you have done a good job in keeping track of the numbers. It is rather the nature of InIn that can make it quite difficult to establish exactly (or even roughly) how much you can achieve (in terms of money moved to effective charities) per dollar you receive. GWWC has the advantage of being able to come up with such numbers more straightforwardly. 80,000 Hours has also published convincing metrics of their impact, despite the difficulty in tracking their success. However, I am excited to see that you plan to test your interventions more rigorously in the future, and I look forward to your results. Until then, would it be fair to say that funding InIn at this stage requires a small leap of faith?
Thanks again for all the great work! Looking forward to future collaborations.
Alfredo, thanks for your supportive comments! I’m glad you and a number of other EAs recognize the importance of convincing a wider, non-EA audience of giving effectively :-)
Indeed, InIn is still in the earlier phase and learning very actively, but I hope we never stop learning even as we settle on a more concrete path of activities. There’s so much good to be done to help improve the world and convey the message of effective giving broadly, but there’s many ways to get there, and we constantly try to seek the best path that balances maximum upsides and lowest downsides.
Yeah, it’s hard to measure the exact impact of vast media coverage and the large amount of content. We can only use case studies so far to see the impact in dollars moved—such as the comment linked above. Another example is what I heard from a prominent EA recently about her showing my Huffington Post to her mom, and her mom—not an EA—donating to the Effective Altruism Foundation as a result.
We do plan to test interventions more rigorously as we are able to get the funding and resources necessary to run studies.
I agree that funding InIn at this stage requires a small leap of faith. It requires a venture capitalist mentality—there’s higher risks but higher rewards as well. Every dollar given at the earlier stage makes a bigger impact than one at a later stage in the ability of InIn to improve the world sooner. Moreover, since we are at the early stage of our fundraising, every dollar makes a bigger impact. Additionally, the challenge grant makes it an especially good time to give right now.
Hi Gleb,
Thanks for referring me to this post.
Some preliminary comments. Despite the (at times unfair) criticism you’ve received in the past, I do think that what you’re doing at InIn is valuable and potentially high-impact. Although your content does not resonate with EAs (and that’s not your goal), the EA community should acknowledge and embrace the importance of convincing a wider, non-EA audience to donate effectively. Your project is still in a learning phase but making fast progress, so kudos on that and I hope you keep up with the good work.
Now some more concise remarks about the post. I’m unsure to what extent you’ll be able to convince EAs to donate to InIn based on the data you present in your Annual Report. The strongest arguments going for InIn seem to be:
the vast media coverage, and
the large amount of content you’ve managed to generate.
I don’t know how to weigh these numbers in when assessing the effectiveness of InIn. I believe this is not an issue of how you chose to quantify your impact—you have done a good job in keeping track of the numbers. It is rather the nature of InIn that can make it quite difficult to establish exactly (or even roughly) how much you can achieve (in terms of money moved to effective charities) per dollar you receive. GWWC has the advantage of being able to come up with such numbers more straightforwardly. 80,000 Hours has also published convincing metrics of their impact, despite the difficulty in tracking their success. However, I am excited to see that you plan to test your interventions more rigorously in the future, and I look forward to your results. Until then, would it be fair to say that funding InIn at this stage requires a small leap of faith?
Thanks again for all the great work! Looking forward to future collaborations.
Alfredo, thanks for your supportive comments! I’m glad you and a number of other EAs recognize the importance of convincing a wider, non-EA audience of giving effectively :-)
Indeed, InIn is still in the earlier phase and learning very actively, but I hope we never stop learning even as we settle on a more concrete path of activities. There’s so much good to be done to help improve the world and convey the message of effective giving broadly, but there’s many ways to get there, and we constantly try to seek the best path that balances maximum upsides and lowest downsides.
Yeah, it’s hard to measure the exact impact of vast media coverage and the large amount of content. We can only use case studies so far to see the impact in dollars moved—such as the comment linked above. Another example is what I heard from a prominent EA recently about her showing my Huffington Post to her mom, and her mom—not an EA—donating to the Effective Altruism Foundation as a result.
We do plan to test interventions more rigorously as we are able to get the funding and resources necessary to run studies.
I agree that funding InIn at this stage requires a small leap of faith. It requires a venture capitalist mentality—there’s higher risks but higher rewards as well. Every dollar given at the earlier stage makes a bigger impact than one at a later stage in the ability of InIn to improve the world sooner. Moreover, since we are at the early stage of our fundraising, every dollar makes a bigger impact. Additionally, the challenge grant makes it an especially good time to give right now.
Look forward to future collaborations as well!