Yep I agree with this, in a minority of situations it might be plausible to merge orgs. I doubt mergers would usually achieve more efficiency, and would be interested to hear of an example, I would imagine it has worked well in some cases. The Givewell examples are combinations of interventions not merged organisations, and make a lot of sense.
One thing I’ve been dubious about along these lines is that some big orgs that seem to be moving into cost effective interventions they might not be expert at rolling out to access Givewell funding. For example One Acre fund, an org which has a great mission to maximize crop yield for substance farming, was funded by Givewell to test a chlorination program in Rwanda. I dont love this and my instinct would be I would rather a dedicated experienced chlorination org scaled up to take this on.
In saying that I was super impressed that OneAcre fund and GiveWell decided to stop this trial early because it didn’t seem to be working and one acre fund effectively returned some of the money. Kudos to this high integrity approach to effective aid, super rare to see.
Yep I agree with this, in a minority of situations it might be plausible to merge orgs. I doubt mergers would usually achieve more efficiency, and would be interested to hear of an example, I would imagine it has worked well in some cases. The Givewell examples are combinations of interventions not merged organisations, and make a lot of sense.
One thing I’ve been dubious about along these lines is that some big orgs that seem to be moving into cost effective interventions they might not be expert at rolling out to access Givewell funding. For example One Acre fund, an org which has a great mission to maximize crop yield for substance farming, was funded by Givewell to test a chlorination program in Rwanda. I dont love this and my instinct would be I would rather a dedicated experienced chlorination org scaled up to take this on.
In saying that I was super impressed that OneAcre fund and GiveWell decided to stop this trial early because it didn’t seem to be working and one acre fund effectively returned some of the money. Kudos to this high integrity approach to effective aid, super rare to see.