1% is very low. Personally, when I first heard of 1FTW my gut reaction was a sort of dismissive cynicism, like, “oh look how little they are doing while congratulating themselves”. I think that people who are very morally driven on this issue (particularly people who hate wealthier people such as Wharton MBAs) might have similar reactions and I worry that this increases the chance that they will have a generally dismissive attitude about EA. Plus, I would think that a 5% or 10% pledge is able to get at least 1⁄5 or 1⁄10 as many people respectively to sign up.
On the other hand, naively looking at donation quantities ignores the general social effects of getting a large number of influential people to grasp and support EA ideas. So, I think the core idea is good. If I were reassured that few people have a cynical response to your messaging then I think I’d consider it one of the very top uses of funding. Perhaps the messaging should be more stoic, but then you may get less positive interest.
This is useful feedback, and I’ve heard one or two similar sentiments before, though (in my experience) this type of “dismissive cynicism” has been quite rare.
We are quite careful in our messaging of the 1% figure, and try not to be self-congratulatory about giving this relatively small amount (but as you point out there is a tradeoff with trying to create a positive vibe vs being a bit more stoic about a small amount). For example, we often use the figure that Americans give 2.6% on average, to try to anchor people higher than 1% and show how normal that low level is. We also use this stat to have messaging along the lines of “you’ll give 2.6% on average, and will likely have a portfolio of charities where you give. Our ask is for at least 1% of that portfolio to go towards some of the most effective global poverty charities”. Increasingly, we do want to try to ‘upsell’ people more, but our efforts on this are fairly preliminary so far.
1% is very low. Personally, when I first heard of 1FTW my gut reaction was a sort of dismissive cynicism, like, “oh look how little they are doing while congratulating themselves”. I think that people who are very morally driven on this issue (particularly people who hate wealthier people such as Wharton MBAs) might have similar reactions and I worry that this increases the chance that they will have a generally dismissive attitude about EA. Plus, I would think that a 5% or 10% pledge is able to get at least 1⁄5 or 1⁄10 as many people respectively to sign up.
On the other hand, naively looking at donation quantities ignores the general social effects of getting a large number of influential people to grasp and support EA ideas. So, I think the core idea is good. If I were reassured that few people have a cynical response to your messaging then I think I’d consider it one of the very top uses of funding. Perhaps the messaging should be more stoic, but then you may get less positive interest.
This is useful feedback, and I’ve heard one or two similar sentiments before, though (in my experience) this type of “dismissive cynicism” has been quite rare.
We are quite careful in our messaging of the 1% figure, and try not to be self-congratulatory about giving this relatively small amount (but as you point out there is a tradeoff with trying to create a positive vibe vs being a bit more stoic about a small amount). For example, we often use the figure that Americans give 2.6% on average, to try to anchor people higher than 1% and show how normal that low level is. We also use this stat to have messaging along the lines of “you’ll give 2.6% on average, and will likely have a portfolio of charities where you give. Our ask is for at least 1% of that portfolio to go towards some of the most effective global poverty charities”. Increasingly, we do want to try to ‘upsell’ people more, but our efforts on this are fairly preliminary so far.