The evidence suggests that the majority of donors experience no difficulties with the current evidence available to them about the charities they donate to and will not be receptive to changing their donation practices. This is what the Money for Good study was about.
It might be possible to shift broad societal norms about giving, but this seems to require a different set of tools than just testing what works or using the traditional marketing toolkit. Given the evidence, the strategy that seems to make the most sense is the startup style approach that EAs are currently engaged in: spread the ideas to a niche group of early adopters, dominate in the initial niche, then spread to serve additional markets. I think we’re still very much in the early adopter phase and we still have a lot of work to do before attempting to spread more widely.
I’m curious about what would be the problem with experimenting with spreading ideas about effective giving to a broad audience? We can see through experimenting whether it works or not, rather than simply building models.
The evidence suggests that the majority of donors experience no difficulties with the current evidence available to them about the charities they donate to and will not be receptive to changing their donation practices. This is what the Money for Good study was about.
It might be possible to shift broad societal norms about giving, but this seems to require a different set of tools than just testing what works or using the traditional marketing toolkit. Given the evidence, the strategy that seems to make the most sense is the startup style approach that EAs are currently engaged in: spread the ideas to a niche group of early adopters, dominate in the initial niche, then spread to serve additional markets. I think we’re still very much in the early adopter phase and we still have a lot of work to do before attempting to spread more widely.
I’m curious about what would be the problem with experimenting with spreading ideas about effective giving to a broad audience? We can see through experimenting whether it works or not, rather than simply building models.