This is incredibly good and generous of you, but also I suspect that even on purely altruistic grounds it makes more sense to save the money for yourself and become slightly less risk averse as a result?
I don’t have a good model or rigorous justification for this, just an intuition
Hypothesis: A big reason why organizations like Givewell exist is because developed currencies go further in developing countries—but, it’s hard for people in developed countries to know the best foreign orgs to give to. Givewell fills that gap by doing research and publicizing it.
Insofar as that hypothesis is true, we should encourage EAs in developing countries to look for giving opportunities in their personal network, if good opportunities seem to exist there.
Here’s another way of making the same argument:
GiveDirectly does blanket cash transfers for entire communities.
A hypothetical version of GiveDirectly which targets only the very neediest individuals, or only the most inspired entrepreneurs who will do the most to stimulate the local economy and reduce poverty, could be even more cost-effective. (IIRC, Givewell thinks most of the impact from their top charities comes from indirect “flow-through effects”.)
Sadly, targeting individual recipients isn’t possible at the scale GiveDirectly operates at. But, targeting individual recipients does seem feasible for an individual African donor who has a strong local network.
Note also that GiveDirectly has lost many thousands of dollars to fraud? Presumably, fraud would be less of an issue for a savvy local donor.
I think this argument is weakest in areas where local knowledge doesn’t help a lot for knowing what works.
Even though Givewell is based in the US, for a while they were ranking US educational charities. Having a strong local network in the US doesn’t necessarily help a ton for knowing which educational interventions work.
However, I still think a “randomized” giving algorithm such as “if your friends say this school really helped their kid, donate to that school” might work quite well for a lot of small donors at scale.
This is incredibly good and generous of you, but also I suspect that even on purely altruistic grounds it makes more sense to save the money for yourself and become slightly less risk averse as a result?
I don’t have a good model or rigorous justification for this, just an intuition
I disagree, giving habits are important to cultivate early, from a habit perspective even if from a dollar utility perspective you may be right.
Important to consider though!
Hypothesis: A big reason why organizations like Givewell exist is because developed currencies go further in developing countries—but, it’s hard for people in developed countries to know the best foreign orgs to give to. Givewell fills that gap by doing research and publicizing it.
Insofar as that hypothesis is true, we should encourage EAs in developing countries to look for giving opportunities in their personal network, if good opportunities seem to exist there.
Here’s another way of making the same argument:
GiveDirectly does blanket cash transfers for entire communities.
A hypothetical version of GiveDirectly which targets only the very neediest individuals, or only the most inspired entrepreneurs who will do the most to stimulate the local economy and reduce poverty, could be even more cost-effective. (IIRC, Givewell thinks most of the impact from their top charities comes from indirect “flow-through effects”.)
Sadly, targeting individual recipients isn’t possible at the scale GiveDirectly operates at. But, targeting individual recipients does seem feasible for an individual African donor who has a strong local network.
Note also that GiveDirectly has lost many thousands of dollars to fraud? Presumably, fraud would be less of an issue for a savvy local donor.
I think this argument is weakest in areas where local knowledge doesn’t help a lot for knowing what works.
Even though Givewell is based in the US, for a while they were ranking US educational charities. Having a strong local network in the US doesn’t necessarily help a ton for knowing which educational interventions work.
However, I still think a “randomized” giving algorithm such as “if your friends say this school really helped their kid, donate to that school” might work quite well for a lot of small donors at scale.