I would just make the observation that one doesn’t have to buy into GiveWell’s moral weights to make user of their research and recommendations. A donor can build their own moral weights, plug that into GiveWell’s research, and come up with a top choice for the donation. GiveWell is in my experience pretty happy to walk larger donors through this process.
True! My worry is that giving to the Top Charities Fund (as I have been) might indirectly enable animal-based programs in the All Grants Fund because of fungibility.
You could give to AMF directly. But it would still most likely be funged by GiveWell. I don’t think there is any good way out of this, short of funding something you are confident GiveWell wouldn’t (like GiveDirectly); but by doing that, you are also implicitly choosing a worse charity.
I think that donating directly to the top charities might reducing funging (at least slightly) by affecting GiveWell’s information flows and ability to forecast—thereby reducing the chance that All Grants money gets freed up for this sort of potential animal donation program. Worst case, it’s a symbolic act against speciesism. What do you think?
I would just make the observation that one doesn’t have to buy into GiveWell’s moral weights to make user of their research and recommendations. A donor can build their own moral weights, plug that into GiveWell’s research, and come up with a top choice for the donation. GiveWell is in my experience pretty happy to walk larger donors through this process.
True! My worry is that giving to the Top Charities Fund (as I have been) might indirectly enable animal-based programs in the All Grants Fund because of fungibility.
You could give to AMF directly. But it would still most likely be funged by GiveWell. I don’t think there is any good way out of this, short of funding something you are confident GiveWell wouldn’t (like GiveDirectly); but by doing that, you are also implicitly choosing a worse charity.
I think that donating directly to the top charities might reducing funging (at least slightly) by affecting GiveWell’s information flows and ability to forecast—thereby reducing the chance that All Grants money gets freed up for this sort of potential animal donation program. Worst case, it’s a symbolic act against speciesism. What do you think?