For example, if we aimed to launch ten animal charities a year (rather than ten charities across all the cause areas we currently focus on), I do not think the weakest two would be anywhere near as impactful as the top two, and only a small minority of them would secure long-term funding. With animal charities making up around a third of those we have launched, it’s likely we’re already approaching some of these limitations. This means that even if we thought animal charities were, on average, more impactful than human ones, the difference would have to be substantial for us to think that adding a ninth or tenth animal charity into the ecosystem would be more impactful than adding the first or second human-focused charity.
I do not know whether Ambitious Impact (AIM) should be starting more or fewer animal welfare organisations due to them competing for funding. However, how about starting animal welfare organisations with more seed funding (instead of starting more of them)?
If we were to consider one cause area to be significantly superior to others by a factor of thousands, it is possible that the tenth charity within that area, despite having less impact, could still outperform the highest impact charity of another cause area. However, we find this assertion to be bold and unsupported, as we will discover when we look at the examples.
I did not find your examples convincing. I estimate:
Broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns are 168 and 462 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
The Shrimp Welfare Project is 64.3 k as cost-effectivene as GiveWell’s top charities.
How would you concretely modify these analyses to conclude that the best animal welfare interventions are less than 3 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities?
I liked this post, Joey.
I do not know whether Ambitious Impact (AIM) should be starting more or fewer animal welfare organisations due to them competing for funding. However, how about starting animal welfare organisations with more seed funding (instead of starting more of them)?
I did not find your examples convincing. I estimate:
Broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns are 168 and 462 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
The Shrimp Welfare Project is 64.3 k as cost-effectivene as GiveWell’s top charities.
How would you concretely modify these analyses to conclude that the best animal welfare interventions are less than 3 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities?