This was intended to be part of SoGive’s approach. Alongside ratings of how charities compared to top (~GiveWell) charities, we wanted to identify ‘best in cause area’ charities. Unfortunately no one wanted to pay us to do this, so we stopped.
One difficulty is the range of cost-effectiveness in many cause areas is likely to be much smaller than (e.g.) for global health. This could mean the best charity is only 2-3x as good as an average charity in that cause area. And unless there is a lot of high-quality evidence, you might expect there to be a big overlap in the confidence intervals for the expected cost-effectiveness of the best and average charities, such that it’s not clear which is actually the best.
This is likely if the maximum cost effectiveness is highest in global health compared to other areas. If global health is just a uniquely high leverage area—which is plausible, so many people in poor countries suffer from easily preventable diseases with terrible impacts—then it’s just going to have an exceptionally high ceiling compared to areas where the suffering is less preventable or less impactful.
This was intended to be part of SoGive’s approach. Alongside ratings of how charities compared to top (~GiveWell) charities, we wanted to identify ‘best in cause area’ charities. Unfortunately no one wanted to pay us to do this, so we stopped.
One difficulty is the range of cost-effectiveness in many cause areas is likely to be much smaller than (e.g.) for global health. This could mean the best charity is only 2-3x as good as an average charity in that cause area. And unless there is a lot of high-quality evidence, you might expect there to be a big overlap in the confidence intervals for the expected cost-effectiveness of the best and average charities, such that it’s not clear which is actually the best.
Ah, that’s interesting! :( that no-one wanted to pay you to do it.
Why do you think the range of cost-effectiveness is greater in global health than in many other areas?
This is likely if the maximum cost effectiveness is highest in global health compared to other areas. If global health is just a uniquely high leverage area—which is plausible, so many people in poor countries suffer from easily preventable diseases with terrible impacts—then it’s just going to have an exceptionally high ceiling compared to areas where the suffering is less preventable or less impactful.