1) As leader of Intentional Insights, I have been collaborating with The Life You Can Save and the Local Effective Altruism Network to spread Giving Games to a secular audience. GGs are workshop-style events promoting EA-style effective giving. Intentional Insights has the connections with secular groups and ways of adapting GGs to their needs, while TLYCS provides both funding and facilitators, and LEAN provides facilitators. We have had some good concrete outcomes of that project. I wrote and published an article for a prominent secular organization, United Coalition of Reason, on Giving Games, and their Board of Directors has approved a UCOR-adapted packet and put it up on their resources page. TLYCS and LEAN facilitators are now going to reach out to the hundreds of COR-affiliated secular groups in the US and Canada to start hosting GGs for them.
2) I published an introductory article on effective giving targeted at EAs to help them optimize their giving strategies. It was cross-posted on TLYCS, InIn, and the EA Forum.
3) I published a thought piece on the EA Forum providing some ideas on the value of different participants within EA.
4) I published an article encouraging people to donate their Valentine’s Day gifts to effective charities in the 16th largest newspaper in the US, whose Sunday edition (the only one that published op-eds) reaching over 424K and having 5 million monthly visitors.
Thanks for creating this accomplishments open thread Gleb, I think it’s a great idea for this forum and the EA community at large!
I read your intro article on effective giving just now; it’s a great start! What do you think about investing planned donations and taking advantage of compound interest, even if just for several years, to increase total giving power?
Thanks so much for your supportive words about the accomplishments thread, Brendon!
I think there’s a trade-off between giving now and giving later. If you give now, then the social benefits will be a form of compound interest. For instance, if you give to AMF now, rather than later, they will save lives sooner, and you will have created more benefits in the world. So it would be a matter of calculating the trade-offs and comparing the compounded interest in dollars vs. in social good. Hard balance to make, and I’d be excited for someone to calculate this!
Also technical comment, I’m new to the forum and I didn’t get emailed with your comment reply or see any kind of notification, is that normal? Is there a way to get notified?
Thanks for the input! Yeah I’d also be interested in the difference in impact between the two approaches, and I might post more on it in the next few days or weeks so hopefully that provokes some deep thinking on the matter.
Responding to your point on compounding societal interest, if I give $1,000 now then 1 life could be saved now, But if I wait, invest, and give $2,000 7 years later, 2 lives could be saved. How does saving 1 life 7 years earlier lead to compounding benefits? Sure that 1 person now gets to live, but if I waited to donate, than 2 people who otherwise might not have been saved would have been saved right? More net good by waiting, as long as people remain to be saved (and unless utopia is imminent I think there will still be life saving opportunities for effective charities at least in the next few years if not for the foreseeable future). I think I need help seeing the social good compounding effect.
Also an argument could be made that EA charities will become even more effective in the future, another argument to delay donating.
Brendon, I suggest you make a post on this topic calculating all of the social good done by donating now vs. later. For instance, one life saved now creates goodwill about the nonprofit and its benefits, from both other potential donors and stakeholders, and signals to them the benefit of what this nonprofit is doing. Likewise, what if everyone followed this strategy—then the nonprofit wouldn’t exist, and you wouldn’t have anything to give to 7 years later. So consider all the pros and cons, and make a post on this.
So here’s what I did recently:
1) As leader of Intentional Insights, I have been collaborating with The Life You Can Save and the Local Effective Altruism Network to spread Giving Games to a secular audience. GGs are workshop-style events promoting EA-style effective giving. Intentional Insights has the connections with secular groups and ways of adapting GGs to their needs, while TLYCS provides both funding and facilitators, and LEAN provides facilitators. We have had some good concrete outcomes of that project. I wrote and published an article for a prominent secular organization, United Coalition of Reason, on Giving Games, and their Board of Directors has approved a UCOR-adapted packet and put it up on their resources page. TLYCS and LEAN facilitators are now going to reach out to the hundreds of COR-affiliated secular groups in the US and Canada to start hosting GGs for them.
2) I published an introductory article on effective giving targeted at EAs to help them optimize their giving strategies. It was cross-posted on TLYCS, InIn, and the EA Forum.
3) I published a thought piece on the EA Forum providing some ideas on the value of different participants within EA.
4) I published an article encouraging people to donate their Valentine’s Day gifts to effective charities in the 16th largest newspaper in the US, whose Sunday edition (the only one that published op-eds) reaching over 424K and having 5 million monthly visitors.
Overall a good month, I think.
Thanks for creating this accomplishments open thread Gleb, I think it’s a great idea for this forum and the EA community at large!
I read your intro article on effective giving just now; it’s a great start! What do you think about investing planned donations and taking advantage of compound interest, even if just for several years, to increase total giving power?
Thanks so much for your supportive words about the accomplishments thread, Brendon!
I think there’s a trade-off between giving now and giving later. If you give now, then the social benefits will be a form of compound interest. For instance, if you give to AMF now, rather than later, they will save lives sooner, and you will have created more benefits in the world. So it would be a matter of calculating the trade-offs and comparing the compounded interest in dollars vs. in social good. Hard balance to make, and I’d be excited for someone to calculate this!
Also technical comment, I’m new to the forum and I didn’t get emailed with your comment reply or see any kind of notification, is that normal? Is there a way to get notified?
The “messages” envelope in the top right lights up when you get a new reply.
No way to get notified as far as I know.
Thanks for the input! Yeah I’d also be interested in the difference in impact between the two approaches, and I might post more on it in the next few days or weeks so hopefully that provokes some deep thinking on the matter.
Responding to your point on compounding societal interest, if I give $1,000 now then 1 life could be saved now, But if I wait, invest, and give $2,000 7 years later, 2 lives could be saved. How does saving 1 life 7 years earlier lead to compounding benefits? Sure that 1 person now gets to live, but if I waited to donate, than 2 people who otherwise might not have been saved would have been saved right? More net good by waiting, as long as people remain to be saved (and unless utopia is imminent I think there will still be life saving opportunities for effective charities at least in the next few years if not for the foreseeable future). I think I need help seeing the social good compounding effect.
Also an argument could be made that EA charities will become even more effective in the future, another argument to delay donating.
Brendon, I suggest you make a post on this topic calculating all of the social good done by donating now vs. later. For instance, one life saved now creates goodwill about the nonprofit and its benefits, from both other potential donors and stakeholders, and signals to them the benefit of what this nonprofit is doing. Likewise, what if everyone followed this strategy—then the nonprofit wouldn’t exist, and you wouldn’t have anything to give to 7 years later. So consider all the pros and cons, and make a post on this.