Donating 10 % more of oneās gross earnings to an organisation 10 times as cost-effective as one one could join is 10 (= 0.1*10/ā0.1) times as impactful as working there if the alternative hire would be 10 % less impactful? If you agree, do you have any thoughts on what is implied by it, and the distribution of cost-effectiveness across the jobs of people replying to the EA Survey?
I think I follow and agree with āspiritā of the reasoning, but donāt think itās very cruxy. I donāt have cached takes on what it implies for the people replying to the EA survey.
Some general confusions I have that make this exercise hard: * not sure how predictive choice of org to work at is of choice of org to donate to, lots of people I know donate to the org they work at because they think itās the best, some donate to think they think are less impactful (at least on utilitarian grounds) than the place they work (e.g. see CEA giving season charity recs) - you seem to think that orgs people donate to are better than orgs they work at but Idk if thatās true * a bit confused about the net effects of joining an org on its capital, e.g. lots of hires unlock more funding via fundraising capacity, credibility, etc. * most people earning to give (at least people that I meet) arenāt (imo) salary max-ing (i.e. earning way more than they do in direct work roles). If we were to restrict e2g to the top earners (e.g. stratup founders, AI company employees, lawyers, hedgies etc.) then I think. itās much easier to consider the hypotehticalāif you buy value drift claims maybe donations from direct workers go up from being surrounded by EAs? * replacement arguments are confusing, it actually matters what the person you would have otherwise hired goes on to do (and so on) * Itās not super clear to me that rough ex-ante impact distributions are extremely skewed like ex-post ones are * I donāt know how to value the effects of collecting information being much easier in direct work than in e2g (hopefully, EA Funds and similar make this a little less important)
I donāt really like my comment here, I feel like Iām pulling away from the actual question but I donāt think a myopic response is very helpful for discourseāthe above considerations are actual cruxes for me in the real sense (I could imagine my overall take changing if I changed my mind on them).
* not sure how predictive choice of org to work at is of choice of org to donate to, lots of people I know donate to the org they work at because they think itās the best, some donate to think they think are less impactful (at least on utilitarian grounds) than the place they work (e.g. see CEA giving season charity recs) - you seem to think that orgs people donate to are better than orgs they work at but Idk if thatās true
I am assuming people would donate to organisations which are more cost-effective than their own in expectation because donating to ones which are less cost-effective would decrease their impact. This still leaves open the possibility of people donating to their own organisation (or asking to earn less), but they selected this partly for personal fit reasons which do not apply to donations, so I would expect most unbiased people to think there are other organisations which are more cost-effective than their own.
* a bit confused about the net effects of joining an org on its capital, e.g. lots of hires unlock more funding via fundraising capacity, credibility, etc.
Roles unlocking funds should ideally be paid more until the point where increasing earnings by 1 $ only increases funds by 1 $.
Both. I do not have reasons to believe organisations are under or overspending on fundraising. Some organisations say they have a hard time finding people who are a good fit for fundraising (being ātalent-constrainedā), but I think this only means there are steep diminishing returns on spending more on fundraising by increasing the earnings of possible fundraising roles. It does not mean they are underspending on fundraising. In general, I think it is sensible to at least have a prior expectation that the various activities on which an impact-focussed organisation can spend more money on have similar marginal cost-effectiveness. Otherwise, they would be leaving impact on the table by not moving money from the least to the most cost-effective activities at the margin. At the same time, I expect to find inefficiencies after learning more.
Hi Caleb,
Donating 10 % more of oneās gross earnings to an organisation 10 times as cost-effective as one one could join is 10 (= 0.1*10/ā0.1) times as impactful as working there if the alternative hire would be 10 % less impactful? If you agree, do you have any thoughts on what is implied by it, and the distribution of cost-effectiveness across the jobs of people replying to the EA Survey?
I think I follow and agree with āspiritā of the reasoning, but donāt think itās very cruxy. I donāt have cached takes on what it implies for the people replying to the EA survey.
Some general confusions I have that make this exercise hard:
* not sure how predictive choice of org to work at is of choice of org to donate to, lots of people I know donate to the org they work at because they think itās the best, some donate to think they think are less impactful (at least on utilitarian grounds) than the place they work (e.g. see CEA giving season charity recs) - you seem to think that orgs people donate to are better than orgs they work at but Idk if thatās true
* a bit confused about the net effects of joining an org on its capital, e.g. lots of hires unlock more funding via fundraising capacity, credibility, etc.
* most people earning to give (at least people that I meet) arenāt (imo) salary max-ing (i.e. earning way more than they do in direct work roles). If we were to restrict e2g to the top earners (e.g. stratup founders, AI company employees, lawyers, hedgies etc.) then I think. itās much easier to consider the hypotehticalāif you buy value drift claims maybe donations from direct workers go up from being surrounded by EAs?
* replacement arguments are confusing, it actually matters what the person you would have otherwise hired goes on to do (and so on)
* Itās not super clear to me that rough ex-ante impact distributions are extremely skewed like ex-post ones are
* I donāt know how to value the effects of collecting information being much easier in direct work than in e2g (hopefully, EA Funds and similar make this a little less important)
I donāt really like my comment here, I feel like Iām pulling away from the actual question but I donāt think a myopic response is very helpful for discourseāthe above considerations are actual cruxes for me in the real sense (I could imagine my overall take changing if I changed my mind on them).
Thanks for the good points, Caleb.
I am assuming people would donate to organisations which are more cost-effective than their own in expectation because donating to ones which are less cost-effective would decrease their impact. This still leaves open the possibility of people donating to their own organisation (or asking to earn less), but they selected this partly for personal fit reasons which do not apply to donations, so I would expect most unbiased people to think there are other organisations which are more cost-effective than their own.
Roles unlocking funds should ideally be paid more until the point where increasing earnings by 1 $ only increases funds by 1 $.
Do you think in real life thatās a sensible expectation, or are you saying thatās how you wish it worked?
Both. I do not have reasons to believe organisations are under or overspending on fundraising. Some organisations say they have a hard time finding people who are a good fit for fundraising (being ātalent-constrainedā), but I think this only means there are steep diminishing returns on spending more on fundraising by increasing the earnings of possible fundraising roles. It does not mean they are underspending on fundraising. In general, I think it is sensible to at least have a prior expectation that the various activities on which an impact-focussed organisation can spend more money on have similar marginal cost-effectiveness. Otherwise, they would be leaving impact on the table by not moving money from the least to the most cost-effective activities at the margin. At the same time, I expect to find inefficiencies after learning more.