I work part-time with a foundation that sometimes uses a “hits-based” approach to global development support. Here are some of the things we’ve looked at, though we didn’t end up funding all of them:
Funding fundraising (especially fundraising “experiments”) for some of GiveWell’s recommended charities
Funding the Innovation in Government Initiative
Funding various studies through J-PAL’s regional offices
Funding IPA program officers to work alongside governments
My impression from this experience, though I’m certainly not an expert in the area:
For a donor who is giving sub-$10,000 amounts, many of these approaches are difficult to take; there isn’t a lot of public information on individual research projects, the state of a project might change quickly, and it’s hard to get much additional information by talking to researchers. Because the foundation gives larger amounts, we’re able to routinely arrange phone calls with charities and even with outside researchers who are interested in an opportunity to educate a large donor.
Something like a crowdfunding platform (or some other running list of “underfunded projects”) might help to close the gap, but it would take a lot of work from J-PAL, IPA, and other development research organizations to put this together, and I don’t know how high the demand would be outside a fraction of the EA community.
I agree that individuals will find it hard when donating individually but the call to action is about using the EA fund or creating a separate one with these aims in mind.
Similar to how people might choose to invest in a low/medium/high risk fund for their own savings.
I work part-time with a foundation that sometimes uses a “hits-based” approach to global development support. Here are some of the things we’ve looked at, though we didn’t end up funding all of them:
Funding fundraising (especially fundraising “experiments”) for some of GiveWell’s recommended charities
Funding the Innovation in Government Initiative
Funding various studies through J-PAL’s regional offices
Funding IPA program officers to work alongside governments
My impression from this experience, though I’m certainly not an expert in the area:
For a donor who is giving sub-$10,000 amounts, many of these approaches are difficult to take; there isn’t a lot of public information on individual research projects, the state of a project might change quickly, and it’s hard to get much additional information by talking to researchers. Because the foundation gives larger amounts, we’re able to routinely arrange phone calls with charities and even with outside researchers who are interested in an opportunity to educate a large donor.
Something like a crowdfunding platform (or some other running list of “underfunded projects”) might help to close the gap, but it would take a lot of work from J-PAL, IPA, and other development research organizations to put this together, and I don’t know how high the demand would be outside a fraction of the EA community.
I agree that individuals will find it hard when donating individually but the call to action is about using the EA fund or creating a separate one with these aims in mind.
Similar to how people might choose to invest in a low/medium/high risk fund for their own savings.