However, I’m sceptical of charity entrepreneurship’s ability to achieve systemic change - I’d probably (correct me if I’m wrong) need a graduate degree in economics to tackle the global economic system.
It might plausibly be helpful to hire staff who had graduate degree in economics, but I think you would not necessarily need a graduate degree in economics yourself in order to start an organization focused on improving economic policy. Of course it’s hard to say for sure until it’s tried—but there’s a lot that goes into running an organization, and it takes many different skills and types of people to make it come together. Domain expertise is only one part of it. A lot of great charities (e.g. GiveWell, AMF) were started by people who didn’t enter with domain expertise or related degrees. (None of which is to say that economics isn’t a strong option for a variety of paths, only that you shouldn’t put the path of starting an organization in the “I need a degree first” box.)
(As for my opinion more generally, I do think that social entrepreneurship would under-perform relative to purely EtG (if you give to the right place), and also under-perform relative to focused non-profit or policy work (if you work on the right thing), because it has to simultaneously turn profit and achieve impact, which really limits the flexibility to work on the higher impact things. But it primarily depends on what specifically you’re working on, in every case.)
Yes, I think this is correct. It’s worth thinking about what the best path would be—and, although I’m leaning more and more towards a graduate degree in economics, I’m still uncertain and I agree that it wouldn’t be necessary for every type of policy work.
As for social entrepreneurship vs structural change, this is difficult because
(a) for-profit social enterprises may be more sustainable because of a lack of reliance on grants that may not materialise;
(b) policy change is much harder to achieve (perhaps) than even a successful social enterprise.
The tricky part of social enterprise from my perspective is that high impact activities are hard to find, and I figure they would be even harder to find when placed under the additional constraint that they must be self sustaining. Which is not to say that you might not find one (see here and here), just that, finding an idea that works is arguably the trickiest part.
for-profit social enterprises may be more sustainable because of a lack of reliance on grants that may not materialise;
This is true, but keep in mind, impact via social enterprise may be “free” in terms of funding (so very cost-effective), but, it comes with opportunity costs in terms of your time. When you generate impact via social enterprise, you are essentially your own funder. Therefore, for a social enterprise to beat your earning-to-give baseline, its net impact must exceed the good you would have done via whatever you might have otherwise donated to a GiveWell top charity if you instead were donating as much money as you would in a high earning path. (This is of course also true for non-profit/other direct work paths). Basically, social enterprises aren’t “free” (since your time isn’t free) so it’s a question of finding the right idea and then also deciding if the restrictions inherent in trying to be self-sustaining are easier than the restrictions (and funding counterfactuals) inherent in getting external funding.
It might plausibly be helpful to hire staff who had graduate degree in economics, but I think you would not necessarily need a graduate degree in economics yourself in order to start an organization focused on improving economic policy. Of course it’s hard to say for sure until it’s tried—but there’s a lot that goes into running an organization, and it takes many different skills and types of people to make it come together. Domain expertise is only one part of it. A lot of great charities (e.g. GiveWell, AMF) were started by people who didn’t enter with domain expertise or related degrees. (None of which is to say that economics isn’t a strong option for a variety of paths, only that you shouldn’t put the path of starting an organization in the “I need a degree first” box.)
(As for my opinion more generally, I do think that social entrepreneurship would under-perform relative to purely EtG (if you give to the right place), and also under-perform relative to focused non-profit or policy work (if you work on the right thing), because it has to simultaneously turn profit and achieve impact, which really limits the flexibility to work on the higher impact things. But it primarily depends on what specifically you’re working on, in every case.)
Yes, I think this is correct. It’s worth thinking about what the best path would be—and, although I’m leaning more and more towards a graduate degree in economics, I’m still uncertain and I agree that it wouldn’t be necessary for every type of policy work.
As for social entrepreneurship vs structural change, this is difficult because
(a) for-profit social enterprises may be more sustainable because of a lack of reliance on grants that may not materialise;
(b) policy change is much harder to achieve (perhaps) than even a successful social enterprise.
The tricky part of social enterprise from my perspective is that high impact activities are hard to find, and I figure they would be even harder to find when placed under the additional constraint that they must be self sustaining. Which is not to say that you might not find one (see here and here), just that, finding an idea that works is arguably the trickiest part.
This is true, but keep in mind, impact via social enterprise may be “free” in terms of funding (so very cost-effective), but, it comes with opportunity costs in terms of your time. When you generate impact via social enterprise, you are essentially your own funder. Therefore, for a social enterprise to beat your earning-to-give baseline, its net impact must exceed the good you would have done via whatever you might have otherwise donated to a GiveWell top charity if you instead were donating as much money as you would in a high earning path. (This is of course also true for non-profit/other direct work paths). Basically, social enterprises aren’t “free” (since your time isn’t free) so it’s a question of finding the right idea and then also deciding if the restrictions inherent in trying to be self-sustaining are easier than the restrictions (and funding counterfactuals) inherent in getting external funding.