I’m being strategic in 2020 and shifting much of my giving for it into 2021 because I expect a windfall, but here’s where I chose to give this year:
AI Safety Support
I think the work Linda (and now JJ) are doing is great and is woefully underfunded. I would give them more sooner but I have to shift that into 2021. They’ve had some trouble getting funding from more established sources for reasons I don’t endorse but don’t want to go into here, and I think giving to them now is especially high leverage to help AISS bootstrap.
I’ll be giving $5k soon and plan to donate more once the funds to do so are unlocked.
MIRI keeps doing great work on AI safety, and I’ve been especially impressed with Scott and Abram in the last couple years. I’ve cut back on some of my funding to MIRI because I view them as less neglected now relative to other things I could fund, but I continue to support them via Amazon Smile.
Wikipedia
This feels a little bit like paying for utilities I use, but I get a lot of value out of Wikipedia and think everyone who can should donate $5 or $10 to them. It also seems generally useful for maintaining and improving a source of facts in a world that increasingly uncertain about what facts even are.
Alcor
I have a cryonics contract with Alcor, and I pay annual dues to them. Most of this is counted as charitable giving.
Bay Zen Center
This isn’t really EA giving, but it is charitable giving to a religious organization (full disclosure, I’m on the board of the Center). They get about 2% of my income. Listed for completeness.
Long Term Future Fund
LTF is generally aligned with my giving priorities and will get my marginal additional funding I don’t have a better idea about how to allocate.
Long term my objective is to donate 30-50% of my income (limited by tax incentives and marginal value of money until I resolve some large outstanding expenses), but today it’s closer to 5%.
I also have the gut feeling that I’d not view a cryonics contract for myself as following my altruistic ideal for helping others, as it would have strong benefits for myself. Maybe one might want to tell Alcor to randomly choose a new customer and pay the contract for them. If I wouldn’t be so excited about cryonics anymore, then probably my excitement came from something else than altruistic impact.
Congrats on your giving! I would maybe add a note of caution if you were anticipating deducting fees to Alcor on your taxes. Even though they’re a c3, they’re providing a service to you. An analogy would be deducting fees for a YMCA gym membership, which is also not tax deductible.
Alcor claims on their brochure that membership dues “may be” tax-deductible. It’s not clear to me how they concluded that. Somebody should probably ask them.
Sometimes membership dues can be deductable with a nonprofit but normally not in exchange for a service. For example, you could likely deduct ACLU membership dues. But they’re not requiring membership in exchange for a service. I’d find the Alcor deduction much more questionable given that the only folks who get memberships are the ones who are being cryopreserved.
I’m being strategic in 2020 and shifting much of my giving for it into 2021 because I expect a windfall, but here’s where I chose to give this year:
AI Safety Support
I think the work Linda (and now JJ) are doing is great and is woefully underfunded. I would give them more sooner but I have to shift that into 2021. They’ve had some trouble getting funding from more established sources for reasons I don’t endorse but don’t want to go into here, and I think giving to them now is especially high leverage to help AISS bootstrap.
I’ll be giving $5k soon and plan to donate more once the funds to do so are unlocked.
Read Linda’s post about AISS for more details.
MIRI
MIRI keeps doing great work on AI safety, and I’ve been especially impressed with Scott and Abram in the last couple years. I’ve cut back on some of my funding to MIRI because I view them as less neglected now relative to other things I could fund, but I continue to support them via Amazon Smile.
Wikipedia
This feels a little bit like paying for utilities I use, but I get a lot of value out of Wikipedia and think everyone who can should donate $5 or $10 to them. It also seems generally useful for maintaining and improving a source of facts in a world that increasingly uncertain about what facts even are.
Alcor
I have a cryonics contract with Alcor, and I pay annual dues to them. Most of this is counted as charitable giving.
Bay Zen Center
This isn’t really EA giving, but it is charitable giving to a religious organization (full disclosure, I’m on the board of the Center). They get about 2% of my income. Listed for completeness.
Long Term Future Fund
LTF is generally aligned with my giving priorities and will get my marginal additional funding I don’t have a better idea about how to allocate.
Long term my objective is to donate 30-50% of my income (limited by tax incentives and marginal value of money until I resolve some large outstanding expenses), but today it’s closer to 5%.
Can you say a little bit more about this? I tend not to think of cryonics as charitable.
Haven’t read into it, but this LessWrong essay contest was about the relationship between EA and cryonics.
I also have the gut feeling that I’d not view a cryonics contract for myself as following my altruistic ideal for helping others, as it would have strong benefits for myself. Maybe one might want to tell Alcor to randomly choose a new customer and pay the contract for them. If I wouldn’t be so excited about cryonics anymore, then probably my excitement came from something else than altruistic impact.
Congrats on your giving! I would maybe add a note of caution if you were anticipating deducting fees to Alcor on your taxes. Even though they’re a c3, they’re providing a service to you. An analogy would be deducting fees for a YMCA gym membership, which is also not tax deductible.
I also say this being an Alcor member myself. Also, here’s a resource on charitable giving and taxes I put together that may be useful: https://medium.com/@aaronhamlin/your-guide-to-charitable-giving-and-taxes-a7c0f44c922
Note that I don’t count my payments for membership/cryopreservation towards my giving.
Alcor claims on their brochure that membership dues “may be” tax-deductible. It’s not clear to me how they concluded that. Somebody should probably ask them.
Sometimes membership dues can be deductable with a nonprofit but normally not in exchange for a service. For example, you could likely deduct ACLU membership dues. But they’re not requiring membership in exchange for a service. I’d find the Alcor deduction much more questionable given that the only folks who get memberships are the ones who are being cryopreserved.