Just to add: the current momentum in Germany is driven by a desire to act and defend democracy in Germany. (Many of our donors are not part of the EA community and are not necessarily seeking the highest global impact in this context at the moment.)
So in the absence of robust analysis on where else donations would go furthest and which organizations promise the highest expected impact globally, providing some tentative guidance to donors now on how to increase the impact of their donations within Germany seems plausible to me in the current context, particularly given the emphasis we place on the differences in the robustness of the underlying research between the Defending Democracy Fund and our other cause areas. (In addition, Germany seems sufficiently relevant to me globally as a liberal democracy that a temporary focus in the current situation is justifiable.)
So hopefully, the current focus provides a good entry point for donors who are new to effective giving whom we can then guide to the place where money goes furthest towards the goal of defending democracy, once such recommendations are available, as well as to other cause areas.
As I noted in my first comment, I think this sort of “bait and switch”-like advertising approach risks undermining the key strengths of EA and should generally be avoided. EA’s comparative advantage is in being analytically correct and so we should tell people what we believe and why, not flatter their prejudices in the hopes that “we can then guide to the place where money goes furthest”. I can see other potential benefits to Effektiv-Spenden or other EAs researching the effectiveness of pro-democracy interventions in Germany, but optimizing for that sort “gateway drug” effect seems likely to be net harmful.
Might not convince you but afaik the effective giving space (GWWC, TLYCS, Effektiv Spenden and others ) has experienced basically zero or even negative growth in the last 2 years.
AMF is even down more than 50% year over year and in general there are probably few if any markets where effective giving has reached even 0.1% of all donations.
I consider this extremely disappointing and that’s why I’m open to experiments on how to reach (much) more people.
Besides there are many people in EA who believe that money directed at avoiding x-risks will go > 10x further than trying to fight extreme poverty. Might be true but I still don’t think we should get rid of all the GiveWell recommended charities on Effektiv Spenden (probably even for their instrumental value alone).
In the short run it’s possible that posting recommendations about whatever causes are currently getting mainstream media attention might attract more donations. But in the long run it’s important that donors be able to trust that EA evaltuators will make their donation recommendations honestly and transparently, even when that trades off with marketing to new donors. Prioritizing transparent analysis (even when it leads to conclusions that some donors might find offputting) over advertising & broad donor appeal is a big part of the difference between EA and traditional charities like Oxfam.
EDIT: Retracted, see point below (misunderstood the linked data). Thanks for pointing this out!
I’m not sure I completely understand the full accounting shown in your link to the AMF page, but from what I get the example you gave looks misplaced:
Indeed, 2023 seemed to have marked a reduction by more than 50% of the incoming funds, but the two years prior to that show substantial increases (and before that another drop; maybe CoViD-related?); moreover, 2024 seems to become again a year of strong increase (already at 50% of 2023 funds in YTD). Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here, but at least this example seems to be in contradiction to the general pessimistic outlook in the first two paragraphs of your answer.
Note that the page says > Our financial year runs from 1st July to 30th June, i.e. FY 2024 is 1st July 2023 to 30th June 2024. so the “YTD 2024” numbers are for almost eight months, not two, and accordingly it looks like FY 2024 will have similar total revenue to FY 2023 (and substantially less than FY 2021 and FY 2022).
Hi, I am Director of Technology at Effektiv Spenden. Thanks for your comments, we appreciate having a discussion on this!
I wanted to point out that describing our approach as “bait and switch” is not correct IMO, nor that we somehow do not tell people “what we believe and why”. Here is what we currently write on our website:
As external analyses and evaluations of the same quality and depth are not yet available in the area of democracy as in our other areas, the effectiveness of the measures we recommend and promote is subject to greater uncertainty than our other recommendations. Nevertheless, the urgency demands that we act now—and not later. We have therefore decided to mark the qualitative difference between the Defending Democracy Donation Fund and our other funds with a “beta” status. ... In the medium term, we plan to expand our donation fund in close coordination with Power for Democracies to include particularly promising initiatives to protect and strengthen democracy worldwide. This year, however, the focus remains on defending and strengthening democracy in Germany.
Similarly in a newsletter we wrote: “We do not expect truly robust donation recommendations before 2025”.
So we make clear that (i) this recommendation isn’t as robust as others and that (ii) the scope is limited to Germany, but that this is a temporary limitation.
My objection is not primarily to what Effektiv-Spenden itself published but to the motivation that Sebastian Schienle articulated in the comment I was replying to. As I said there are potentially good reasons to publish such research, I just think “trying to appeal to people who don’t currently care about global effectiveness and hoping to redirect them later” is not one of them.
(I think ideally Effektiv-Spenden would do more to distinguish this from other cause areas, “beta” seems like an understatement, but I wouldn’t ordinarily criticize such web design decisions if there weren’t people here in the comments explicitly saying they were motivated by manipulative marketing considerations.)
“Manipulative” does not seem an apt description to me. Sebastian Schienle wrote:
So hopefully, the current focus provides a good entry point for donors who are new to effective giving whom we can then guide to the place where money goes furthest towards the goal of defending democracy, once such recommendations are available, as well as to other cause areas.
We are up front on our website about in the future probably giving money to organisations outside of Germany from this fund. With regard to other cause areas, I don’t see anything dishonest about hoping that donors will look at other cause areas after entering through a specific one.
Just to add: the current momentum in Germany is driven by a desire to act and defend democracy in Germany. (Many of our donors are not part of the EA community and are not necessarily seeking the highest global impact in this context at the moment.)
So in the absence of robust analysis on where else donations would go furthest and which organizations promise the highest expected impact globally, providing some tentative guidance to donors now on how to increase the impact of their donations within Germany seems plausible to me in the current context, particularly given the emphasis we place on the differences in the robustness of the underlying research between the Defending Democracy Fund and our other cause areas. (In addition, Germany seems sufficiently relevant to me globally as a liberal democracy that a temporary focus in the current situation is justifiable.)
So hopefully, the current focus provides a good entry point for donors who are new to effective giving whom we can then guide to the place where money goes furthest towards the goal of defending democracy, once such recommendations are available, as well as to other cause areas.
As I noted in my first comment, I think this sort of “bait and switch”-like advertising approach risks undermining the key strengths of EA and should generally be avoided. EA’s comparative advantage is in being analytically correct and so we should tell people what we believe and why, not flatter their prejudices in the hopes that “we can then guide to the place where money goes furthest”. I can see other potential benefits to Effektiv-Spenden or other EAs researching the effectiveness of pro-democracy interventions in Germany, but optimizing for that sort “gateway drug” effect seems likely to be net harmful.
Might not convince you but afaik the effective giving space (GWWC, TLYCS, Effektiv Spenden and others ) has experienced basically zero or even negative growth in the last 2 years.
AMF is even down more than 50% year over year and in general there are probably few if any markets where effective giving has reached even 0.1% of all donations.
I consider this extremely disappointing and that’s why I’m open to experiments on how to reach (much) more people.
Besides there are many people in EA who believe that money directed at avoiding x-risks will go > 10x further than trying to fight extreme poverty. Might be true but I still don’t think we should get rid of all the GiveWell recommended charities on Effektiv Spenden (probably even for their instrumental value alone).
In the short run it’s possible that posting recommendations about whatever causes are currently getting mainstream media attention might attract more donations. But in the long run it’s important that donors be able to trust that EA evaltuators will make their donation recommendations honestly and transparently, even when that trades off with marketing to new donors. Prioritizing transparent analysis (even when it leads to conclusions that some donors might find offputting) over advertising & broad donor appeal is a big part of the difference between EA and traditional charities like Oxfam.
EDIT: Retracted, see point below (misunderstood the linked data). Thanks for pointing this out!
I’m not sure I completely understand the full accounting shown in your link to the AMF page, but from what I get the example you gave looks misplaced: Indeed, 2023 seemed to have marked a reduction by more than 50% of the incoming funds, but the two years prior to that show substantial increases (and before that another drop; maybe CoViD-related?); moreover, 2024 seems to become again a year of strong increase (already at 50% of 2023 funds in YTD). Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here, but at least this example seems to be in contradiction to the general pessimistic outlook in the first two paragraphs of your answer.
Note that the page says
> Our financial year runs from 1st July to 30th June, i.e. FY 2024 is 1st July 2023 to 30th June 2024.
so the “YTD 2024” numbers are for almost eight months, not two, and accordingly it looks like FY 2024 will have similar total revenue to FY 2023 (and substantially less than FY 2021 and FY 2022).
Fair point, thanks!
Hi, I am Director of Technology at Effektiv Spenden. Thanks for your comments, we appreciate having a discussion on this!
I wanted to point out that describing our approach as “bait and switch” is not correct IMO, nor that we somehow do not tell people “what we believe and why”. Here is what we currently write on our website:
Similarly in a newsletter we wrote: “We do not expect truly robust donation recommendations before 2025”.
So we make clear that (i) this recommendation isn’t as robust as others and that (ii) the scope is limited to Germany, but that this is a temporary limitation.
My objection is not primarily to what Effektiv-Spenden itself published but to the motivation that Sebastian Schienle articulated in the comment I was replying to. As I said there are potentially good reasons to publish such research, I just think “trying to appeal to people who don’t currently care about global effectiveness and hoping to redirect them later” is not one of them.
(I think ideally Effektiv-Spenden would do more to distinguish this from other cause areas, “beta” seems like an understatement, but I wouldn’t ordinarily criticize such web design decisions if there weren’t people here in the comments explicitly saying they were motivated by manipulative marketing considerations.)
“Manipulative” does not seem an apt description to me. Sebastian Schienle wrote:
We are up front on our website about in the future probably giving money to organisations outside of Germany from this fund. With regard to other cause areas, I don’t see anything dishonest about hoping that donors will look at other cause areas after entering through a specific one.