It seems that we have some great donation opportunities in at least some cases such as AI Safety. This has made me wonder what donation strategies I prefer. Here are some thoughts, also influenced by Zvi Mowshowitz’s:
Attracting non-EA funding to EA causes: I prefer donating to opportunities that may bring external or non-EA funding to some causes that EA may deem relevant.
Expanding EA funding and widening career paths: Similarly, if possible fund opportunities that could increase the funds or skills available to the community in the future. For this reason, I feel highly supportive of Ambitious Impact project to create onramps for careers with impact in earning to give, for instance. This is in contrast to incubating new charities (Charity Entrepreneurship), which is slightly harder to motivate unless you have strong reasons to believe your impact is more cost-effective than typical charities. I am a bit wary that uncertainty might be too large to clearly distinguish charities in the frontier.
Fill in the gap left by others: Aim to fund charities that are medium-sized between their 2nd to 5th years of life: they are not small and young enough that they can rely on Charity Entrepreneurship seed funding. But they are also not large enough to get funding from large funders. One could similarly argue that you should fund causes that non-EAs are less likely to fund (e.g. animal welfare), though I find this argument more strongly if non-EA funding was close to fully funding those other causes (e.g. global health) or if the full support of the former (animal welfare) fully depends on the EA community.
Value stability for people running charities: By default and unless there are clearly better opportunities, keep donating to the same charities as previously done, and do so with unrestricted funds. This allows some stability for charities, which is very much welcomed for the charities. Also, do not push too hard on the marginal cost-effectiveness of donations, because that creates some poor incentives.
Favour hits-based strategies and local-knowledge: Favour hits-based strategies particularly those in which you profit from local knowledge of opportunities that may not be visible to others in the community.
One example of a charity I will support is ARMoR which fits well with points 1 and 3. I am also excited about local knowledge opportunities in the AI Safety ecosystem. Otherwise, I am also particularly optimistic about the work of Apollo Research on evaluations and Redwood Research on AI control; as I believe those to be particular enablers of more robust AI governance.
My donation strategy:
It seems that we have some great donation opportunities in at least some cases such as AI Safety. This has made me wonder what donation strategies I prefer. Here are some thoughts, also influenced by Zvi Mowshowitz’s:
Attracting non-EA funding to EA causes: I prefer donating to opportunities that may bring external or non-EA funding to some causes that EA may deem relevant.
Expanding EA funding and widening career paths: Similarly, if possible fund opportunities that could increase the funds or skills available to the community in the future. For this reason, I feel highly supportive of Ambitious Impact project to create onramps for careers with impact in earning to give, for instance. This is in contrast to incubating new charities (Charity Entrepreneurship), which is slightly harder to motivate unless you have strong reasons to believe your impact is more cost-effective than typical charities. I am a bit wary that uncertainty might be too large to clearly distinguish charities in the frontier.
Fill in the gap left by others: Aim to fund charities that are medium-sized between their 2nd to 5th years of life: they are not small and young enough that they can rely on Charity Entrepreneurship seed funding. But they are also not large enough to get funding from large funders. One could similarly argue that you should fund causes that non-EAs are less likely to fund (e.g. animal welfare), though I find this argument more strongly if non-EA funding was close to fully funding those other causes (e.g. global health) or if the full support of the former (animal welfare) fully depends on the EA community.
Value stability for people running charities: By default and unless there are clearly better opportunities, keep donating to the same charities as previously done, and do so with unrestricted funds. This allows some stability for charities, which is very much welcomed for the charities. Also, do not push too hard on the marginal cost-effectiveness of donations, because that creates some poor incentives.
Favour hits-based strategies and local-knowledge: Favour hits-based strategies particularly those in which you profit from local knowledge of opportunities that may not be visible to others in the community.
One example of a charity I will support is ARMoR which fits well with points 1 and 3. I am also excited about local knowledge opportunities in the AI Safety ecosystem. Otherwise, I am also particularly optimistic about the work of Apollo Research on evaluations and Redwood Research on AI control; as I believe those to be particular enablers of more robust AI governance.