There seems to be an assumption here along the lines of “EA funders will continually track the impact of EA university groups and steer them well, while alumni donors won’t”.
I don’t think that’s correct. EA funders are busy and have to make decisions about groups with limited context and information. You might even get alumni donors who care more about the quality of the organisers, the long-term outcomes and operations of the group relative to the EA funder who has many options available, and doesn’t have the capacity to invest in and support a group.
Random, I realized I misread your comment the first time around — yeah I do think the above consideration (maybe alumni have unusual local knowledge on small CB projects that influence them) is interesting pushback. Thanks!
Thinking about it again, I’m weakly positive about people in general taking advantage of “local knowledge” when donating, and people knowing which CB efforts helped them is a good example of ‘local knowledge’ effects.
(I do still think the second consideration holds — bigger funders have a much better birds eye perspective on the meta ecosystem as a whole than the average EA, even if they have worse local knowledge.)
Thanks!
There seems to be an assumption here along the lines of “EA funders will continually track the impact of EA university groups and steer them well, while alumni donors won’t”.
I don’t think that’s correct. EA funders are busy and have to make decisions about groups with limited context and information. You might even get alumni donors who care more about the quality of the organisers, the long-term outcomes and operations of the group relative to the EA funder who has many options available, and doesn’t have the capacity to invest in and support a group.
Reading again though, maybe what you mean is “the group that helped you might not be the best group to support any more”. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, your second comment is the message I meant to convey :)
Random, I realized I misread your comment the first time around — yeah I do think the above consideration (maybe alumni have unusual local knowledge on small CB projects that influence them) is interesting pushback. Thanks!
Thinking about it again, I’m weakly positive about people in general taking advantage of “local knowledge” when donating, and people knowing which CB efforts helped them is a good example of ‘local knowledge’ effects.
(I do still think the second consideration holds — bigger funders have a much better birds eye perspective on the meta ecosystem as a whole than the average EA, even if they have worse local knowledge.)