Always remember that impact is achieved through direct work...
Even in emerging economies, impact needs funding. (Effective) donations are not mentioned in the post. However, they should be quite central, because of
1) Solidarity: Even little privileged people in EA in LMICs should keep solidarity with large donors: everyone is giving up some ‘next level’ comforts, compared to their norm. Whether that is the smaller Tesla or walking for the hour every day.
That personal commitment can make the community a yet more honorable place to be a part of.
2) Impact: Not only “[s]mall donors can sometimes beat large donors in terms of cost-effectiveness,[1]” for example by identifying the 1 in 10,000 children who would have died from malaria in a community with or without nets and buying them the $4 treatment, but also they can show/test paths for more cost-effective donations.
This will make dialogues with large donors very fruitful, as both parties[2] will be bringing their very significant comparative advantages.
3) Change leverage: People who are invested in finding yet better ways of caring for others whose issues they connect with should enjoy greater community approval than those who waited for instructions and received funding to advance others’ solutions.
People who could be supported in scaling up programs will be the ones who sincerely care. This is necessary for a change to happen.
4) Solutions pressure: For many relatively privileged people in LMICs, it can be common to support many others. For example, it is possible to meet even 5 begging children trying to gain attention every day and donate to some. If one is spending others’ funding, they may seek to just gain the $1,000 GiveDirectly transfer for each of them, which is unrealistic given the scale of poverty.
If one is spending their own funds, they may think twice about a sustainable yet affordable program that would make a decisive impact for the children.
We think it is unlikely that new EAs in LMICs will find comparable charities to existing GiveWell’s recommended charities, particularly in middle income countries. Existing charity evaluators are probably better suited to do this work.
On the other hand, engaging in some charity evaluation efforts can be formative for some EAs to help them internalize cost effectiveness evaluation and prioritization.
The post suggests to start with values and methodologies used by prominent Western institutions[3] and conduct evaluations of local situations only after these values are internalized.
This can lead to value imposition.
Rather, one can start with local values or value systems and develop/refine/discuss methodologies for their measurement. This can enrich the discourse on the meaning(s) of ‘good.’
Some resources on values presented by local scholars and their measurements include this paper on measuring Ubuntu, this “Buddhist perspective on measuring wellbeing and happiness in sustainable development,” and this page on broad values in Hinduism.[4]
The key can be to discern which values are truly held by the people vs. presented by a scholar but not held as well as which are internalized based on own decisions vs. based on conformation to a previous or an external standard.
I am imagining a person who had only $4 to donate in a month and someone who had $4,000 speaking about effective ways of saving lives. I am not stating a LMICs vs. HICs dichotomy.
Even in emerging economies, impact needs funding. (Effective) donations are not mentioned in the post. However, they should be quite central, because of
1) Solidarity: Even little privileged people in EA in LMICs should keep solidarity with large donors: everyone is giving up some ‘next level’ comforts, compared to their norm. Whether that is the smaller Tesla or walking for the hour every day.
That personal commitment can make the community a yet more honorable place to be a part of.
2) Impact: Not only “[s]mall donors can sometimes beat large donors in terms of cost-effectiveness,[1]” for example by identifying the 1 in 10,000 children who would have died from malaria in a community with or without nets and buying them the $4 treatment, but also they can show/test paths for more cost-effective donations.
This will make dialogues with large donors very fruitful, as both parties[2] will be bringing their very significant comparative advantages.
3) Change leverage: People who are invested in finding yet better ways of caring for others whose issues they connect with should enjoy greater community approval than those who waited for instructions and received funding to advance others’ solutions.
People who could be supported in scaling up programs will be the ones who sincerely care. This is necessary for a change to happen.
4) Solutions pressure: For many relatively privileged people in LMICs, it can be common to support many others. For example, it is possible to meet even 5 begging children trying to gain attention every day and donate to some. If one is spending others’ funding, they may seek to just gain the $1,000 GiveDirectly transfer for each of them, which is unrealistic given the scale of poverty.
If one is spending their own funds, they may think twice about a sustainable yet affordable program that would make a decisive impact for the children.
The post suggests to start with values and methodologies used by prominent Western institutions[3] and conduct evaluations of local situations only after these values are internalized.
This can lead to value imposition.
Rather, one can start with local values or value systems and develop/refine/discuss methodologies for their measurement. This can enrich the discourse on the meaning(s) of ‘good.’
Some resources on values presented by local scholars and their measurements include this paper on measuring Ubuntu, this “Buddhist perspective on measuring wellbeing and happiness in sustainable development,” and this page on broad values in Hinduism.[4]
The key can be to discern which values are truly held by the people vs. presented by a scholar but not held as well as which are internalized based on own decisions vs. based on conformation to a previous or an external standard.
I interpret, here, small and large donor as an average-income person in a LIC and a HIC.
I am imagining a person who had only $4 to donate in a month and someone who had $4,000 speaking about effective ways of saving lives. I am not stating a LMICs vs. HICs dichotomy.
based on the presumed origin of the frameworks in the post and the resources sheet
People in different contexts in LMICs (and HICs) can be better informed on various quality values-measurements resources.