Founders Pledge evaluates charities in a range of fields including global catastrophic risk reduction. For example, they recommend NTI’s biosecurity work, and this is why GWWC marks NTI’s bio program as a top charity. Founders Pledge is not as mature as GiveWell, they don’t have the same research depth, and they’re covering a very broad range of fields with a limited staff, but this is some work in that direction.
From a brief glance, it does appear that Founders Pledge’s work is far more analogous to typical longtermist EA grantmaking than Givewell. Ie. it relies primarily on heuristics like organiser track record and higher-level reasoning about plans.
it relies primarily on heuristics like organiser track record and higher-level reasoning about plans.
I think this is mostly correct, with the caveat that we don’t exclusively rely on qualitative factors and subjective judgement alone. The way I’d frame it is more as a spectrum between
I think I’d place FP’s longtermist evaluation methodology somewhere between those two poles, with flexibility based on what’s feasible in each cause
Founders Pledge evaluates charities in a range of fields including global catastrophic risk reduction. For example, they recommend NTI’s biosecurity work, and this is why GWWC marks NTI’s bio program as a top charity. Founders Pledge is not as mature as GiveWell, they don’t have the same research depth, and they’re covering a very broad range of fields with a limited staff, but this is some work in that direction.
From a brief glance, it does appear that Founders Pledge’s work is far more analogous to typical longtermist EA grantmaking than Givewell. Ie. it relies primarily on heuristics like organiser track record and higher-level reasoning about plans.
I think this is mostly correct, with the caveat that we don’t exclusively rely on qualitative factors and subjective judgement alone. The way I’d frame it is more as a spectrum between
[Heuristics] <------> [GiveWell-style cost-effectiveness modelling]
I think I’d place FP’s longtermist evaluation methodology somewhere between those two poles, with flexibility based on what’s feasible in each cause