I’ve got really mixed feelings here and I don’t know which way to swing. I’m still extremely uncertain about how much we can influence aid policy especially amidst the current messy global political situation.
Sure leverage can be high, but the question is how on earth do we get that leverage? What do you suggest?
I would love to see some great posts on the forum about how we counterfactually could have spent our money or time to prevent this current mess? That might convince me that future work could be valuable too.
To state the obvious Politics is super hard to influence for many reasons including
1) huge money and effort already poured into influencing politics from many angles, so achieving acting in that environment is really difficult.
2) so much unpredictability and change over time.
CE literally started an org which was trying to do something like this, which soon shut down because they didn’t feel it was working
I think it’s easy to say that leverage is “high” for political action but there still needs to be a meaningful pathway to make that happen. Right now in the wake of trump, AID policy might be a harder needle to shift than ever before. A recently elected left wing government in the UK even just slashed aid by 40 percent—wild stuff.
There could even be a counter argument that in a world where governments are backing away from international aid and are harder to leverage, increasing EA donations and covering gaps could be more important than a few years ago.
I know EA aligned people put a lot of successful effort into helping USAID funding be more evidence based, which bore great fruits for a while but now it’s unfortunately in the dust at least for now
I’m all for political leverage and putting funding into it, but we need concrete fundable ideas different from those we have tried which didn’t work already.
Also Making up the shortfall on the ground is a great thing to do, and like your said in no way mutually exclusive from political work.
Appreciate this thoughtful comment Nick! I’m also unsure where I fall on how EAs should respond/ where the balance between funding policy advocacy and cost-effective interventions on the ground should be. I think within the advocacy piece—my argument would be that EAs should diversify influence strategies and the types of organizations they fund in order to build power from multiple angles. And even to build the evidence base needed for these kind of calculations, because I think everyone is kind of shooting blind. Influencing aid policy is difficult but it’s possible with the right strategy…which I think could be more diversified than it is now.
Funding more grassroots advocacy strategies. Grassroots organizing is an essential but often overlooked piece of policy influence. While direct lobbying by experts and insiders plays a role, real political change happens when elected officials feel pressure from their own constituents. This is one of the most powerful tools we have in democracy, but it doesn’t fit neatly into impact assessments and is underfunded as a result. Without sustained grassroots pressure, even the best policy ideas often go nowhere. But even with robust and already established grassroots networks, it can take multiple congressional sessions to get bills passed or funding increased. But it’s hard to prove impact if it looks like your campaign didn’t achieve anything. Even if you are at a significantly stronger starting point than you were at the start of the last session 2 years prior, you basically need to start over with re-introducing bills, educating new members of congress, recruiting volunteers in districts that are newly important due to committee assignments, etc. Influence with Congress depends heavily on relationships and trust built through prior collaboration, but funders (understandably) want to see results on shorter grant cycles.
Prioritizing established experts/organizations in particular markets…A big challenge in the CEAP blog was underestimating the complexity of political advocacy. Policymakers don’t simply weigh competing voices; they listen to those who understand the policy landscape, the political constraints, and the key decision-making processes, which can take years to grasp. it’s important to understand who is influential to the people you want to influence, and how/if you can get them to be messengers of your ideas, which takes time in these spaces and to understand the interpersonal dynamics of decision makers, sometimes apart from their official role. I think, in part because of this complexity and difference between donors, that it’s best for organizations to specialize in one sovereign donor (especially where they’re based) and/or a multilateral system rather than casting a broader net or taking a more meta approach.
For example, much of the governing/oversight for US foreign aid is done through the annual appropriations bill, which very few members of Congress fully understand, and which few organizations are funded to engage in depth on—given restrictions around funding lobbying.
…while supporting cross-market networks/coalitions. I think there’s great value in making linkages/coordinated pushes across donor markets, and EAs could do more to support networks/coalitions of aid effectiveness advocates across multiple countries. My organization is a founding partner of a group of civil society organizations across 14 countries advocating for increased global health ODA in our markets and globally. This kind of infrastructure means we can mobilize quickly when opportunities—or threats—emerge in ways that newer orgs often can’t. The example in the CEAP blog of Sweden aid cuts is a great case in point—having deep, existing networks allows for rapid response in time sensitive situations. We also benefit from individualized expertise and credibility of our local ties, local grassroots networks, and individual relationships with policymakers—it’s just not that an American INGO has a DC office, Brussels, office and Nairobi office—which would be weaker position IMO.
Leveraging existing organizations and strategies for change, rather than standing up new EA-specific groups. I think EA efforts in this space have struggled because they often start from scratch—and bring in advisors and those with expertise—instead of partnering with experienced advocates and established networks that already have access and influence. Without that foundation—and knowing the ins and outs of key levers of power for foreign aid oversight (like appropriations and the annual SFOPS reports in the US) - it’s difficult to meaningfully advise career civil servants who have spent decades navigating these systems. With the extreme hollowing-out of USAID staff in the past 3 weeks, and loss of thousands of years of experience across them, I’m not sure what this dynamic will look like moving forward but expect it will be dramatically different, at least in the short term.
I have never worked at an explicitly EA policy advocacy organization, so this is a big assumption on my part, but taking lessons from successful campaigns less focused on evidenced-based programs could be useful. Policy advocacy is incredibly relational and based on emotion. People’s hearts and minds are usually not changed by the data/evidence, rather they have some kind of emotional breakthrough that makes them more willing to hear the other evidence. Not to say it should be that way…but it’s what I’ve experienced. it’s not enough (in the US market) to have a clearly defined “edge” or produce detailed or factual reports. Also to emotion/ego on the other end, policymakers tend to listen to those who tailor solutions to them and solutions they feel they can claim as a personal win and “own” moving forward and this kind of advocacy communication is a unique skill that can be honed over time.
EAs have so much experience evaluating programs and identifying what to move forward, so I think a big challenge for this community will be figuring out how to move forward. I think increased investment in grassroots advocacy strategies could be most useful in the short term, especially in a culture currently leaning anti-intellectual and anti-science.
I’m a huge fan of grassroots organising although its so hard to quantify the benefits of I’m not sure it falls in the realm of what effective altruism can easily get behind. Also grassroots organisation shouldn’t need very much money—I’ve been involved in the past and we didn’t need much!
I’m only a fan of leveraging existing orgs if they can really show they are achieving wat they say they are. How do we know current advocates are effective? I can’t see a reason reason for me why EA orgs shouldn’t be able to start up and work on this over time—I would take a few EA orgs failing at advocacy as some signal that it might not be a super cost effective approach.
I’m skeptical of the idea that there are magical orgs out there doing things that new orgs couldn’t replicate at all. Could you suggest some existing orgs that you think are very good that EA could support?
EA does support some too. One example that EA does support with stacks of cash in this space is the Center for Global Development. I’ve had one terrible interaction with them that lowered my confidence in whether they really are a good faith org and also their general competency, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing impactful stuff.
Great points Nick. Can I message you/are you open to moving this offline? I want to keep the conversation going and have a lot of thoughts but some I’m not comfortable sharing publicly yet (not 100% convinced of my position) and I need to be sensitive given my job and relationships with other orgs in the space.
I’ve got really mixed feelings here and I don’t know which way to swing. I’m still extremely uncertain about how much we can influence aid policy especially amidst the current messy global political situation.
Sure leverage can be high, but the question is how on earth do we get that leverage? What do you suggest?
I would love to see some great posts on the forum about how we counterfactually could have spent our money or time to prevent this current mess? That might convince me that future work could be valuable too.
To state the obvious Politics is super hard to influence for many reasons including
1) huge money and effort already poured into influencing politics from many angles, so achieving acting in that environment is really difficult.
2) so much unpredictability and change over time.
CE literally started an org which was trying to do something like this, which soon shut down because they didn’t feel it was working
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/emBSDADvCnSwtL2kS/center-for-effective-aid-policy-has-shut-down
I think it’s easy to say that leverage is “high” for political action but there still needs to be a meaningful pathway to make that happen. Right now in the wake of trump, AID policy might be a harder needle to shift than ever before. A recently elected left wing government in the UK even just slashed aid by 40 percent—wild stuff.
There could even be a counter argument that in a world where governments are backing away from international aid and are harder to leverage, increasing EA donations and covering gaps could be more important than a few years ago.
I know EA aligned people put a lot of successful effort into helping USAID funding be more evidence based, which bore great fruits for a while but now it’s unfortunately in the dust at least for now
I’m all for political leverage and putting funding into it, but we need concrete fundable ideas different from those we have tried which didn’t work already.
Also Making up the shortfall on the ground is a great thing to do, and like your said in no way mutually exclusive from political work.
Appreciate this thoughtful comment Nick! I’m also unsure where I fall on how EAs should respond/ where the balance between funding policy advocacy and cost-effective interventions on the ground should be. I think within the advocacy piece—my argument would be that EAs should diversify influence strategies and the types of organizations they fund in order to build power from multiple angles. And even to build the evidence base needed for these kind of calculations, because I think everyone is kind of shooting blind. Influencing aid policy is difficult but it’s possible with the right strategy…which I think could be more diversified than it is now.
Funding more grassroots advocacy strategies. Grassroots organizing is an essential but often overlooked piece of policy influence. While direct lobbying by experts and insiders plays a role, real political change happens when elected officials feel pressure from their own constituents. This is one of the most powerful tools we have in democracy, but it doesn’t fit neatly into impact assessments and is underfunded as a result. Without sustained grassroots pressure, even the best policy ideas often go nowhere. But even with robust and already established grassroots networks, it can take multiple congressional sessions to get bills passed or funding increased. But it’s hard to prove impact if it looks like your campaign didn’t achieve anything. Even if you are at a significantly stronger starting point than you were at the start of the last session 2 years prior, you basically need to start over with re-introducing bills, educating new members of congress, recruiting volunteers in districts that are newly important due to committee assignments, etc. Influence with Congress depends heavily on relationships and trust built through prior collaboration, but funders (understandably) want to see results on shorter grant cycles.
Prioritizing established experts/organizations in particular markets…A big challenge in the CEAP blog was underestimating the complexity of political advocacy. Policymakers don’t simply weigh competing voices; they listen to those who understand the policy landscape, the political constraints, and the key decision-making processes, which can take years to grasp. it’s important to understand who is influential to the people you want to influence, and how/if you can get them to be messengers of your ideas, which takes time in these spaces and to understand the interpersonal dynamics of decision makers, sometimes apart from their official role. I think, in part because of this complexity and difference between donors, that it’s best for organizations to specialize in one sovereign donor (especially where they’re based) and/or a multilateral system rather than casting a broader net or taking a more meta approach.
For example, much of the governing/oversight for US foreign aid is done through the annual appropriations bill, which very few members of Congress fully understand, and which few organizations are funded to engage in depth on—given restrictions around funding lobbying.
…while supporting cross-market networks/coalitions. I think there’s great value in making linkages/coordinated pushes across donor markets, and EAs could do more to support networks/coalitions of aid effectiveness advocates across multiple countries. My organization is a founding partner of a group of civil society organizations across 14 countries advocating for increased global health ODA in our markets and globally. This kind of infrastructure means we can mobilize quickly when opportunities—or threats—emerge in ways that newer orgs often can’t. The example in the CEAP blog of Sweden aid cuts is a great case in point—having deep, existing networks allows for rapid response in time sensitive situations. We also benefit from individualized expertise and credibility of our local ties, local grassroots networks, and individual relationships with policymakers—it’s just not that an American INGO has a DC office, Brussels, office and Nairobi office—which would be weaker position IMO.
Leveraging existing organizations and strategies for change, rather than standing up new EA-specific groups. I think EA efforts in this space have struggled because they often start from scratch—and bring in advisors and those with expertise—instead of partnering with experienced advocates and established networks that already have access and influence. Without that foundation—and knowing the ins and outs of key levers of power for foreign aid oversight (like appropriations and the annual SFOPS reports in the US) - it’s difficult to meaningfully advise career civil servants who have spent decades navigating these systems. With the extreme hollowing-out of USAID staff in the past 3 weeks, and loss of thousands of years of experience across them, I’m not sure what this dynamic will look like moving forward but expect it will be dramatically different, at least in the short term.
I have never worked at an explicitly EA policy advocacy organization, so this is a big assumption on my part, but taking lessons from successful campaigns less focused on evidenced-based programs could be useful. Policy advocacy is incredibly relational and based on emotion. People’s hearts and minds are usually not changed by the data/evidence, rather they have some kind of emotional breakthrough that makes them more willing to hear the other evidence. Not to say it should be that way…but it’s what I’ve experienced. it’s not enough (in the US market) to have a clearly defined “edge” or produce detailed or factual reports. Also to emotion/ego on the other end, policymakers tend to listen to those who tailor solutions to them and solutions they feel they can claim as a personal win and “own” moving forward and this kind of advocacy communication is a unique skill that can be honed over time.
EAs have so much experience evaluating programs and identifying what to move forward, so I think a big challenge for this community will be figuring out how to move forward. I think increased investment in grassroots advocacy strategies could be most useful in the short term, especially in a culture currently leaning anti-intellectual and anti-science.
Thanks Dorothy those are good points.
I’m a huge fan of grassroots organising although its so hard to quantify the benefits of I’m not sure it falls in the realm of what effective altruism can easily get behind. Also grassroots organisation shouldn’t need very much money—I’ve been involved in the past and we didn’t need much!
I’m only a fan of leveraging existing orgs if they can really show they are achieving wat they say they are. How do we know current advocates are effective? I can’t see a reason reason for me why EA orgs shouldn’t be able to start up and work on this over time—I would take a few EA orgs failing at advocacy as some signal that it might not be a super cost effective approach.
I’m skeptical of the idea that there are magical orgs out there doing things that new orgs couldn’t replicate at all. Could you suggest some existing orgs that you think are very good that EA could support?
EA does support some too. One example that EA does support with stacks of cash in this space is the Center for Global Development. I’ve had one terrible interaction with them that lowered my confidence in whether they really are a good faith org and also their general competency, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing impactful stuff.
Great points Nick. Can I message you/are you open to moving this offline? I want to keep the conversation going and have a lot of thoughts but some I’m not comfortable sharing publicly yet (not 100% convinced of my position) and I need to be sensitive given my job and relationships with other orgs in the space.