Given the relatively small number of EA organizations with large cash reserves, I assume that youāve either reached out to most of them already or will do so eventually. Have any of them declined to pursue the project, even after seeing your analysis of how much they could gain? If so, what were their reasons for doing so?
(Also, this is a great post, and even if you could have done the same work through emails to organizations, Iām glad you took the time to write it up and share it in public.)
Based on our preliminary research into nonprofit financial documents, there may be quite a few organizations within or adjacent to EA that have significant cash reserves, so we think there is the chance we can increase funding for EA causes by millions of dollars relatively quickly.
Last year, we directly reached out to two well-known EA organizations and recommended that they move cash to a money market fund. This recommendation was more complex than our current StoneCastle recommendation. One of them implemented our recommendation with millions of dollars. The other felt like they werenāt large enough to gain a significant benefit (I am not sure the exact amount of cash they had on hand when making this judgement).
It is hard from our end to determine exactly how much an organization can gain because financial documents like the public Form 990 nonprofit tax return can be outdated (the latest Form 990s available are from 2016) and not clearly indicate how effectively an organization is managing its cash and exactly how much cash it has on hand.
We are currently evaluating whether to pursue a slow, networking-based outreach approach versus something like emailing staff members at dozens of EA and EA-aligned organizations to try to accelerate the rate of adoption.
We are being cautious with planning our outreach strategy because if a recommendation is accepted or rejected, in some cases a single charity may be holding tens of millions of dollars, and so a single successful or failed recommendation could impact funding by millions of dollars over the course of one year or several years.
Any insight into how we should approach outreach to maximize our impact would be appreciated! Perhaps emailing a lot of organizations as you mention is the best option.
Another interesting thought is that while EA is focused on driving a limited amount of funding to the most effective charities, we can essentially ācreate funding out of thin airā so to speak. That means that we may be able to have a very high impact even if we advise organizations that are likely a bit lower impact than say GiveWellās top charities. If anyone knows of a convenient list of dozens or hundreds of charities that are high impact enough where advising them would be a high impact use of time, Iād love to see it!
If anyone knows of a convenient list of dozens or hundreds of charities that are high impact enough where advising them would be a high impact use of time, Iād love to see it!
It seems thereās a good chance youāve thought of this already, but maybe GiveWellās standout (rather than top) charities, the Life You Can Saveās recommended charities, charities GWWC used to recommend, charities Open Phil has granted to in the past, and ACEās top and standout charities would be good starting points?
Itās also possible SoGive would have a larger list of potentially high-impact charities, though I know less about what they do and how they work.
Given the relatively small number of EA organizations with large cash reserves, I assume that youāve either reached out to most of them already or will do so eventually. Have any of them declined to pursue the project, even after seeing your analysis of how much they could gain? If so, what were their reasons for doing so?
(Also, this is a great post, and even if you could have done the same work through emails to organizations, Iām glad you took the time to write it up and share it in public.)
Based on our preliminary research into nonprofit financial documents, there may be quite a few organizations within or adjacent to EA that have significant cash reserves, so we think there is the chance we can increase funding for EA causes by millions of dollars relatively quickly.
Last year, we directly reached out to two well-known EA organizations and recommended that they move cash to a money market fund. This recommendation was more complex than our current StoneCastle recommendation. One of them implemented our recommendation with millions of dollars. The other felt like they werenāt large enough to gain a significant benefit (I am not sure the exact amount of cash they had on hand when making this judgement).
It is hard from our end to determine exactly how much an organization can gain because financial documents like the public Form 990 nonprofit tax return can be outdated (the latest Form 990s available are from 2016) and not clearly indicate how effectively an organization is managing its cash and exactly how much cash it has on hand.
We are currently evaluating whether to pursue a slow, networking-based outreach approach versus something like emailing staff members at dozens of EA and EA-aligned organizations to try to accelerate the rate of adoption.
We are being cautious with planning our outreach strategy because if a recommendation is accepted or rejected, in some cases a single charity may be holding tens of millions of dollars, and so a single successful or failed recommendation could impact funding by millions of dollars over the course of one year or several years.
Any insight into how we should approach outreach to maximize our impact would be appreciated! Perhaps emailing a lot of organizations as you mention is the best option.
Another interesting thought is that while EA is focused on driving a limited amount of funding to the most effective charities, we can essentially ācreate funding out of thin airā so to speak. That means that we may be able to have a very high impact even if we advise organizations that are likely a bit lower impact than say GiveWellās top charities. If anyone knows of a convenient list of dozens or hundreds of charities that are high impact enough where advising them would be a high impact use of time, Iād love to see it!
It seems thereās a good chance youāve thought of this already, but maybe GiveWellās standout (rather than top) charities, the Life You Can Saveās recommended charities, charities GWWC used to recommend, charities Open Phil has granted to in the past, and ACEās top and standout charities would be good starting points?
Itās also possible SoGive would have a larger list of potentially high-impact charities, though I know less about what they do and how they work.
Thanks for your suggestions! We didnāt look into Open Phil grant recipientsāthatās a great idea for expanding the scope of charities to advise.