Can you provide a rationale/cost-effectiveness estimate as to why a dollar donated to EAIF goes further to save lives/suffering reduction than a GiveWell Top charity?
Suppose that by donating $1k to an EAIF project, they get 1 new person to consider donating more effectively.
This 1 new person pledges to give 1% of their salary to GiveWell’s top charities, and they do this for the next 10 years.
If they make (say) $50k / year, then over 10 years they will donate $5k to GiveWell charities.
The net result is that a $1k donation to EAIF led to $5k donated to top GiveWell charities—or a dollar donated to EAIF goes 5x further than a GiveWell Top charity
Of course, there are a bunch of important considerations and nuance that have been ignored in this hypothetical—indeed, I think it’s pretty important to be cautious / suspicious about calculations like the above, so we should often discount the “multiplier” factor signficantly. Nonetheless, I think (some version of) the above argument goes through for a number of projects EAIF supports.
Can you provide a rationale/cost-effectiveness estimate as to why a dollar donated to EAIF goes further to save lives/suffering reduction than a GiveWell Top charity?
Hey, good question!
Here’s a crude rationale:
Suppose that by donating $1k to an EAIF project, they get 1 new person to consider donating more effectively.
This 1 new person pledges to give 1% of their salary to GiveWell’s top charities, and they do this for the next 10 years.
If they make (say) $50k / year, then over 10 years they will donate $5k to GiveWell charities.
The net result is that a $1k donation to EAIF led to $5k donated to top GiveWell charities—or a dollar donated to EAIF goes 5x further than a GiveWell Top charity
Of course, there are a bunch of important considerations and nuance that have been ignored in this hypothetical—indeed, I think it’s pretty important to be cautious / suspicious about calculations like the above, so we should often discount the “multiplier” factor signficantly. Nonetheless, I think (some version of) the above argument goes through for a number of projects EAIF supports.