I thought about making another ‘update’ post, but it’s not clear to me that it’s good to try that hard to promote this one way people can increase the effectiveness of how some money is spent. Afterall, $85k (the amount of matching funds left currently) is a very small amount relative to the amount of money that people spend on charitable endeavors in general (and also relative to the amount of money in EA). Arguably EAs’ limited attention would be better spent working towards more ambitious goals (such as trying to ifluence how many millions or billions of dollars are spent).
The reason why I don’t think this logic applies to sharing about this match in the first place is because I think this match was valuable from a community engagement perspective. I think many EAs enjoyed participating in it and there’s value in that in terms of making them feel more engaged with EA and the EA community in general, which I expect will make them more effective over the course of their lives on average.
That said, while two posts promoting the same opportunity in the same channel seems like too much when the opportunity is as “small” as this match, I may post a brief “here’s how it went” post at the end of the match since that’s a different kind of post and I think people may be interested.
Just some quick counterpoints to consider, in weighing whether to post ‘update: funds still available’:
the match amount might be increased again
something like this may occur again in future, and it may be good to be aware of it
I’m curious how close to ‘fully taking advantage of this’ we can come
85k seems fairly substantial in comparison with some ‘money/action’ things that get attention on EA Forum (epistemic status: not so sure about this)
you could probably combine this with the “here’s how it went” post … without much loss, and also get more feedback on questions surrounding ‘why is it that EAs were able to get so much of these funds’
I thought about making another ‘update’ post, but it’s not clear to me that it’s good to try that hard to promote this one way people can increase the effectiveness of how some money is spent. Afterall, $85k (the amount of matching funds left currently) is a very small amount relative to the amount of money that people spend on charitable endeavors in general (and also relative to the amount of money in EA). Arguably EAs’ limited attention would be better spent working towards more ambitious goals (such as trying to ifluence how many millions or billions of dollars are spent).
The reason why I don’t think this logic applies to sharing about this match in the first place is because I think this match was valuable from a community engagement perspective. I think many EAs enjoyed participating in it and there’s value in that in terms of making them feel more engaged with EA and the EA community in general, which I expect will make them more effective over the course of their lives on average.
That said, while two posts promoting the same opportunity in the same channel seems like too much when the opportunity is as “small” as this match, I may post a brief “here’s how it went” post at the end of the match since that’s a different kind of post and I think people may be interested.
Just some quick counterpoints to consider, in weighing whether to post ‘update: funds still available’:
the match amount might be increased again
something like this may occur again in future, and it may be good to be aware of it
I’m curious how close to ‘fully taking advantage of this’ we can come
85k seems fairly substantial in comparison with some ‘money/action’ things that get attention on EA Forum (epistemic status: not so sure about this)
you could probably combine this with the “here’s how it went” post … without much loss, and also get more feedback on questions surrounding ‘why is it that EAs were able to get so much of these funds’