I don’t think donors should take much guidance from them, compared to OpenPhil or the EA Animal Welfare Fund, and I would personally wager that CE leading giving in the animal space would be net-negative for the space compared to the status quo (which, to be fair, is very bad already).
If you had total control over all donations in the EA animal space, how would you change things compared to the status quo?
For the main point of your argument, I echo Vasco Grilo’s point that your critiques of specific would be more compelling with justification or sources backing up your views. For any given charity idea, I have no reason to think that the fact that somebody on the internet thinks it’s a bad idea prior to launch correlates with that idea actually being bad. Every new idea has people who are sceptical of it—that doesn’t provide much information one way or the other. I’d be more interested to see a detailed evaluation of each charity in terms of actual impact they may have (or have not) delivered. I can only speak for my experience at Animal Ask, but a couple of recent, detailed evaluations do exist, and we invest a great deal of energy into critically evaluating our own work (and having it evaluated by others).
(As always, my views are my own, not those of my employer.)
I agree that detailed evaluations would be better than my narrative impressions. My main point is to warn people to do way more due diligence on CE. Even if the reputation is undeserved, the organization has a negative reputation among many in animal advocacy, especially in research and grant evaluation, and that is worth looking into.
I don’t really have strong views on how to allocate funds in the animal space, but I doubt it is through funding circles, which usually seem worse for charities even if they are better for donors and the space overall (e.g. the degree of dislike that charities have for the existing Farmed Animal Funders circle seems like an indicator of something important).
If you had total control over all donations in the EA animal space, how would you change things compared to the status quo?
For the main point of your argument, I echo Vasco Grilo’s point that your critiques of specific would be more compelling with justification or sources backing up your views. For any given charity idea, I have no reason to think that the fact that somebody on the internet thinks it’s a bad idea prior to launch correlates with that idea actually being bad. Every new idea has people who are sceptical of it—that doesn’t provide much information one way or the other. I’d be more interested to see a detailed evaluation of each charity in terms of actual impact they may have (or have not) delivered. I can only speak for my experience at Animal Ask, but a couple of recent, detailed evaluations do exist, and we invest a great deal of energy into critically evaluating our own work (and having it evaluated by others).
(As always, my views are my own, not those of my employer.)
I agree that detailed evaluations would be better than my narrative impressions. My main point is to warn people to do way more due diligence on CE. Even if the reputation is undeserved, the organization has a negative reputation among many in animal advocacy, especially in research and grant evaluation, and that is worth looking into.
I don’t really have strong views on how to allocate funds in the animal space, but I doubt it is through funding circles, which usually seem worse for charities even if they are better for donors and the space overall (e.g. the degree of dislike that charities have for the existing Farmed Animal Funders circle seems like an indicator of something important).