I think its a really good point that there’s something very different between research/policy orgs and orgs that deliver products and services at scale. I basically agree, but I’d slightly tweak this to ”It is very hard for a charity to scale to more than $100 million per year without delivering a physical product or service.”
Because digital orgs/companies who deliver a digital service (GiveDirectly, Facebook/Google/etc) obviously can scale to $100 million per year.
We can also spend a lot on advertisement, which seems neither like a product nor a service.
Ads for Veganuary, Challenge 22 and similar diet pledge programs might scale reasonably well (both within and across regions). I suppose they’re also providing services, i.e. helping people go vegan with information, support groups, dieticians/nutritionists/other healthcare professionals, etc., but that’s separate from the ads.
Ads for documentaries, videos, books or articles to get people into EA or specific causes.
Can GiveDirectly’s “service” actually/should scale up to >$100m/year? Obviously they can distribute >100M/year, but I’m interested in whether they need or benefit from >100m/year of employees, software, etc (what in other subsectors of the nonprofit world just be called “overhead”), without just tacking on unnecessary bloat.
I think its a really good point that there’s something very different between research/policy orgs and orgs that deliver products and services at scale. I basically agree, but I’d slightly tweak this to
”It is very hard for a charity to scale to more than $100 million per year without delivering a
physicalproduct or service.”Because digital orgs/companies who deliver a digital service (GiveDirectly, Facebook/Google/etc) obviously can scale to $100 million per year.
We can also spend a lot on advertisement, which seems neither like a product nor a service.
Ads for Veganuary, Challenge 22 and similar diet pledge programs might scale reasonably well (both within and across regions). I suppose they’re also providing services, i.e. helping people go vegan with information, support groups, dieticians/nutritionists/other healthcare professionals, etc., but that’s separate from the ads.
Ads for documentaries, videos, books or articles to get people into EA or specific causes.
Can GiveDirectly’s “service” actually/should scale up to >$100m/year? Obviously they can distribute >100M/year, but I’m interested in whether they need or benefit from >100m/year of employees, software, etc (what in other subsectors of the nonprofit world just be called “overhead”), without just tacking on unnecessary bloat.
Absolutely, that’s a great point!