Seeking donations from high net worth individuals/ financial ‘elites’ is a crowded market. The giving pledge is just one campaign targeting these people, which is already connected to networks of very wealthy person. Do we have good reasons to think that EA would have a comparative advantage in such a crowded market?
Another significant disadvantage I see to becoming another group that concentrates targeting high net worth individuals is that we would be perpetuating the myth that only very wealthy people can make a difference, which more moderately wealthy people often cite as their reason for not taking charity more seriously.
I would need to think about this more, but one argument for thinking we have a comparative advantage is that we’ve already demonstrated a surprising amount of headway in getting HNW people, particularly in Silicon Valley, on board. Plus there are some notable people in that group who weren’t recruited in any meaningful sense but who have strikingly similar goals, e.g. BIll Gates. Prima facie I think it’s plausible that very large donors tend to give more time to the question of where they should donate and do it on less personal grounds.
Neither of these is a knockdown argument, but the ‘crowded market’ claim has its own nuances. For instance, presumably the reason that the market is so crowded is because charities find it relatively easier to raise money from HNW’s despite the crowdedness (or at least not significantly harder).
Seeking donations from high net worth individuals/ financial ‘elites’ is a crowded market. The giving pledge is just one campaign targeting these people, which is already connected to networks of very wealthy person. Do we have good reasons to think that EA would have a comparative advantage in such a crowded market?
Another significant disadvantage I see to becoming another group that concentrates targeting high net worth individuals is that we would be perpetuating the myth that only very wealthy people can make a difference, which more moderately wealthy people often cite as their reason for not taking charity more seriously.
I would need to think about this more, but one argument for thinking we have a comparative advantage is that we’ve already demonstrated a surprising amount of headway in getting HNW people, particularly in Silicon Valley, on board. Plus there are some notable people in that group who weren’t recruited in any meaningful sense but who have strikingly similar goals, e.g. BIll Gates. Prima facie I think it’s plausible that very large donors tend to give more time to the question of where they should donate and do it on less personal grounds.
Neither of these is a knockdown argument, but the ‘crowded market’ claim has its own nuances. For instance, presumably the reason that the market is so crowded is because charities find it relatively easier to raise money from HNW’s despite the crowdedness (or at least not significantly harder).