I’ve been following the reports you and Xio and Joey have been writing on all the different fundraising methods you’ve explored, and will consider a substantial donation (since I’d want to keep you running and pay for a sizeable chunk of time experimenting). It would be a shame for effective altruism if you guys had to shut down abruptly given your demonstrated commitment to measure results and shut projects down if they don’t raise money. I assume it would be a waste of knowledge and expertise and contacts you’ve built up too. It’d be helpful if you could comment on that. In particular is there a way to invest to create potential for more money raised in the future, or build up resources of any sort that can be used for whatever seems highest impact?
Thanks Ervin for the kind words. You’re right that if we shut down there would be a loss of contacts / knowledge. We have gotten a lot better at fundraising overall and expect if other people were to do other fundraising projects there would be a similar learning curve. We have also built up some contacts through networking that would be useful for later projects (e.g. legacy fundraising).
I’d also add that we’ve always bought the standard fundraising advice that it’s worth investing in small first-time donors because (especially with some further best practice work, which we plan to do) they’ll on average donate more in future years. So some of our work is an upfront investment that should continue to pay off with relatively smaller amounts of future work. Internal estimates we made had this leading to quite a lot of money in future years.
I’ve been following the reports you and Xio and Joey have been writing on all the different fundraising methods you’ve explored, and will consider a substantial donation (since I’d want to keep you running and pay for a sizeable chunk of time experimenting). It would be a shame for effective altruism if you guys had to shut down abruptly given your demonstrated commitment to measure results and shut projects down if they don’t raise money. I assume it would be a waste of knowledge and expertise and contacts you’ve built up too. It’d be helpful if you could comment on that. In particular is there a way to invest to create potential for more money raised in the future, or build up resources of any sort that can be used for whatever seems highest impact?
Thanks Ervin for the kind words. You’re right that if we shut down there would be a loss of contacts / knowledge. We have gotten a lot better at fundraising overall and expect if other people were to do other fundraising projects there would be a similar learning curve. We have also built up some contacts through networking that would be useful for later projects (e.g. legacy fundraising).
I’d also add that we’ve always bought the standard fundraising advice that it’s worth investing in small first-time donors because (especially with some further best practice work, which we plan to do) they’ll on average donate more in future years. So some of our work is an upfront investment that should continue to pay off with relatively smaller amounts of future work. Internal estimates we made had this leading to quite a lot of money in future years.