The use of volunteers is a paradox I think about a lot. I volunteer for Sea Shepherd myself, I believe in the cause, and I wouldn’t want to be paid for it, because then it would feel like just another job. When we go to an event to raise funds or sell merchandise, we generally come away feeling that we raised the money, which is in a sense true: the money wouldn’t have been raised without us. So we feel that we saved the fish, and that’s not entirely wrong either. Surveys consistently show that being personally asked is the most common reason people cite for donating, so I doubt many of those donations would have happened without us. And yet the donors also, quite rightly, feel that it was thanks to them. But the fish only got saved once. It would be nearly impossible to determine who should get credit for how many fish saved. So from a marketing perspective, I think the smart move is to let everyone feel like the hero.
In your thought experiment, I would donate to the charity that uses volunteers to create their content. I save the 1,000 hens either way. By giving to the volunteer-run charity, I also give meaning to the volunteers’ work, and beyond that, volunteers who stay engaged will likely talk to friends and family, contributing to a broader shift in attitudes and hopefully bringing in additional donations.
But I also completely understand why you would give to the other charity.
Looking back I think my example wasn’t the best one. But this “the fish only get saved once” is exactly the point I’m trying to get to.
Take this example: another charity “Atlantic Shepherd” is doing exactly what you guys do, except they need ten times as many volunteers to raise the same funds. If we go by the model “everybody has impact” this would 10x the felt impact. Would you prefer to Atlantic Shepherd or to Sea Shepherd? Your reasoning would imply you would want to donate to Atlantic Shepherd but if we would take the Atlantic Shepherd volunteers and have them work on more efficient causes (like joining Sea Shepherd), we would increase impact. Modeling volunteer time explicitly as donations would help quantify this.
This example differs from the original in two important ways. In the hen scenario, an AI was doing all the creative work so my argument was that donating to the volunteer-run charity would save the same number of hens while also generating joy for the volunteers. In this new case, both charities rely on volunteers. Yes, Atlantic Shepherd may have more of them, but a larger volunteer base can also dilute each individual’s sense of ownership over the organisation’s success, so the joy produced might well cancel out.
The second difference concerns effectiveness. In the hen example, I assumed we were dealing with a well-run organisation, where volunteers spreading the word to friends and family would be a genuine bonus. Atlantic Shepherd, by contrast, appears to use volunteer labour rather inefficiently. In that context, volunteers are arguably more likely to vent about incompetent management than to attract new donors.
Personally I tend to see donating and volunteering as fundamentally distinct activities. When it comes to donations, impact is essentially all that matters to me. With volunteering, things like interesting work, like-minded company, and good conversations matter just as much. Comparing the two across those dimensions feels like comparing apples and oranges.
From an organisational perspective, I think charities should use volunteers whenever it genuinely makes sense. Building a strong community is a worthwhile goal in its own right, particularly in fields like animal advocacy. At the same time, they owe their volunteers meaningful, well-structured work. Nobody enjoys feeling like their time is being wasted.
I agree that from a personal perspecive, donations and volunteering are very different. I also love volunteering for the community, the energy I’m getting from it, and, let’s be honest, I’m getting zero in-the-moment good vibes from my donations, that’s a different category for me.
However as a donor, when evaluating charities, I do care how they use volunteers. Because in this framing the volunteers should get “part of the saved fish”. That leaves less “saved fish” for me.
In the thought experiment I gave I meant to assume that both orgs are identical except for that volunteering efficiency. Both are great to volunteer at, feel the same, everything the same, just that, for some reason, one is less efficient at using volunteer time.
However as a donor, when evaluating charities, I do care how they use volunteers. Because in this framing the volunteers should get “part of the saved fish”. That leaves less “saved fish” for me.
You definitely have a point here and I might even get convinced. However, I see educating volunteers and building a movement as ends in themselves. So maybe there is just more value to distribute? (The saved fish + the movement that was built.)
I do share your feeling that more value is attributed to donors than they really deserve. I see this as a problem especially when people want to compensate. Some EAs think that going vegan is not that important because compensating is so cheap. But the only tractable way of compensating would be to get others to eat plant-based in which case I think it would be fair to attribute most of the saved animals to the people who actually ate fewer animal products or went vegan, and not to the person who donated to the charity that “convinced” them.
Hahaha yes I love that compensating paradox. I think the issue with that one is that it’s very narrow-minded and short-term focused. Sure in the short term for this specific intervention compensation might work, but as a movement we lose if we think like this.
Also agree that building movement and activating volunteers is value that probably isn’t always accounted for.
Maybe if the offsetting is convincing people to go vegan. But I think a lot of the offsetting is corporate campaigns to get higher welfare standards. That has much higher leverage than individual actions to eat higher welfare meat. Maybe once all the corporations have reformed, individual actions could start being competitive, but we can re-evaluate then.
But I think a lot of the offsetting is corporate campaigns to get higher welfare standards.
I agree that these campaigns are promising, and I am a donor to Sinergia Animal myself. However, mass animal production creates issues beyond farmed welfare, such as climate change and resource diversion from starving populations. While those can be offset, my main concern is wild animal suffering caused by feed production.
Every farmed animal impacts multiple wild animals through agriculture. Unless we possess solid data on wild animal welfare ranges and how feed production affects them, we have no way of knowing how to offset a non-vegan diet’s impact on wild populations, or what the true cost would be. Consequently, I believe, claiming we can offset a non-vegan diet by sponsoring welfare campaigns is highly misleading at this stage.
That’s exactly what I said. Uncertainty is a big issue here. But that doesn’t mean one is justified in not offsetting the impact one’s dietary choices have on wild animals, simply because a handful of people have put forward the hypothesis of net negative lives.
Are you suggesting that all non-vegans offset the impact on wild animals? How does one do that, even if it were agreed that wild animals had net positive lives?
Of course not. At this point it simply isn’t possible.Which is exactly what I argued:
Unless we possess solid data on wild animal welfare ranges and how feed production affects them, we have no way of knowing how to offset a non-vegan diet’s impact on wild populations, or what the true cost would be.
I would argue, however, that vegans have less impact on wild animals which is precisely why framing welfare campaigns as an “offset” for a non-vegan diet strikes me as misleading. I have broader reservations about the concept of offsetting animal suffering altogether, but if such offsetting is to be meaningful in any real sense, it should focus on projects that reduce the consumption of animal products in order to replicate these effects.
Ok—so if one believes that wild invertebrate lives are net positive, then offsetting with animal welfare interventions means more feed is required, resulting in fewer wild invertebrates (and more deaths from pesticides, but I think this is small compared to the impact on the population of soil invertebrates of farming more land), meaning less utility overall. So this person would prefer an offset that is a scalable way of convincing people to go vegan. Though this may seem contradictory, I think there is a large variation in difficulty of going vegan (taste preferences, opportunity cost of time, impact on health, etc), so it is most effective if the people for whom it is easier to go vegan are exposed to the arguments. However, if the person thinks that wild invertebrates lives are net negative, they would prefer the animal welfare interventions offset, because not only would that help the farmed animals, but it would also reduce the bad utilities of wild invertebrates lives.
… then offsetting with animal welfare interventions means more feed is required, resulting in fewer wild invertebrates
There are two main effects. Higher welfare standards generally mean fewer animals are raised, since they and their products become more expensive. But those that are raised require more feed. As far as I know there is no consensus on which effect dominates.
However, if the person thinks that wild invertebrates lives are net negative, they would prefer the animal welfare interventions offset, because not only would that help the farmed animals, but it would also reduce the bad utilities of wild invertebrates lives.
They may prefer this kind of intervention and consequently donate to the relevant charities, but the amount they are supposed to pay to offset should stay the same. Since offsetting is generally framed around conservative estimates, it makes no sense to pay less just because you believe in something.
Though this may seem contradictory, I think there is a large variation in difficulty of going vegan (taste preferences, opportunity cost of time, impact on health, etc), so it is most effective if the people for whom it is easier to go vegan are exposed to the arguments.
I totally agree. However, I’m not aware of a single charity that turns people who had no inclination of becoming vegan into vegans. That would be an almost impossible achievement, unless you paid them to do so and set up control mechanisms to make sure they stood true to their word.
Charities like Veganuary are targeted specifically at people who are already motivated to go vegan in the first place. So if someone turns vegan during the challenge it’s impossible to know whether the donor was counterfactual. For all we know the person could have become vegan two months earlier but chose to wait for the challenge. So we may want to use Shapley values. There is also a broader principle at play here: there is general consensus that the same outcome cannot be claimed multiple times for offsetting purposes. This is precisely how certificate trading works, whether for carbon or anything else. So, if we assign some weight to the person who invented the challenge, some weight to the staff who work for below market rates, some weight to every organisation who had previously influenced the person who eventually went vegan, and of course the main weight to that person themselves, little value is left for the donor.
Without access to the relevant data it is hard to say anything definitive, but it seems worth asking whether the cost per outcome would look quite different if conservative estimates were applied more rigorously.
But the fish only got saved once. It would be nearly impossible to determine who should get credit for how many fish saved. So from a marketing perspective, I think the smart move is to let everyone feel like the hero.
Though Shapley values of impact have to add up to 100%, counterfactuals can add up to >100%.
Curious: Are you aware of these been used in the field / cost-effectiveness estimations etc.? I’m aware of the concept but have never seen it actually being used. But that I’m also not that deep in that space.
I’ve mainly worked at the cause area level, where I think these considerations are less relevant. But I have observed that if people are so enthusiastic about an area that many will volunteer (or take lower salaries), that does make progress in an area easier.
The use of volunteers is a paradox I think about a lot. I volunteer for Sea Shepherd myself, I believe in the cause, and I wouldn’t want to be paid for it, because then it would feel like just another job. When we go to an event to raise funds or sell merchandise, we generally come away feeling that we raised the money, which is in a sense true: the money wouldn’t have been raised without us. So we feel that we saved the fish, and that’s not entirely wrong either. Surveys consistently show that being personally asked is the most common reason people cite for donating, so I doubt many of those donations would have happened without us. And yet the donors also, quite rightly, feel that it was thanks to them. But the fish only got saved once. It would be nearly impossible to determine who should get credit for how many fish saved. So from a marketing perspective, I think the smart move is to let everyone feel like the hero.
In your thought experiment, I would donate to the charity that uses volunteers to create their content. I save the 1,000 hens either way. By giving to the volunteer-run charity, I also give meaning to the volunteers’ work, and beyond that, volunteers who stay engaged will likely talk to friends and family, contributing to a broader shift in attitudes and hopefully bringing in additional donations.
But I also completely understand why you would give to the other charity.
Looking back I think my example wasn’t the best one. But this “the fish only get saved once” is exactly the point I’m trying to get to.
Take this example: another charity “Atlantic Shepherd” is doing exactly what you guys do, except they need ten times as many volunteers to raise the same funds. If we go by the model “everybody has impact” this would 10x the felt impact. Would you prefer to Atlantic Shepherd or to Sea Shepherd? Your reasoning would imply you would want to donate to Atlantic Shepherd but if we would take the Atlantic Shepherd volunteers and have them work on more efficient causes (like joining Sea Shepherd), we would increase impact. Modeling volunteer time explicitly as donations would help quantify this.
This example differs from the original in two important ways. In the hen scenario, an AI was doing all the creative work so my argument was that donating to the volunteer-run charity would save the same number of hens while also generating joy for the volunteers. In this new case, both charities rely on volunteers. Yes, Atlantic Shepherd may have more of them, but a larger volunteer base can also dilute each individual’s sense of ownership over the organisation’s success, so the joy produced might well cancel out.
The second difference concerns effectiveness. In the hen example, I assumed we were dealing with a well-run organisation, where volunteers spreading the word to friends and family would be a genuine bonus. Atlantic Shepherd, by contrast, appears to use volunteer labour rather inefficiently. In that context, volunteers are arguably more likely to vent about incompetent management than to attract new donors.
Personally I tend to see donating and volunteering as fundamentally distinct activities. When it comes to donations, impact is essentially all that matters to me. With volunteering, things like interesting work, like-minded company, and good conversations matter just as much. Comparing the two across those dimensions feels like comparing apples and oranges.
From an organisational perspective, I think charities should use volunteers whenever it genuinely makes sense. Building a strong community is a worthwhile goal in its own right, particularly in fields like animal advocacy. At the same time, they owe their volunteers meaningful, well-structured work. Nobody enjoys feeling like their time is being wasted.
I agree that from a personal perspecive, donations and volunteering are very different. I also love volunteering for the community, the energy I’m getting from it, and, let’s be honest, I’m getting zero in-the-moment good vibes from my donations, that’s a different category for me.
However as a donor, when evaluating charities, I do care how they use volunteers. Because in this framing the volunteers should get “part of the saved fish”. That leaves less “saved fish” for me.
In the thought experiment I gave I meant to assume that both orgs are identical except for that volunteering efficiency. Both are great to volunteer at, feel the same, everything the same, just that, for some reason, one is less efficient at using volunteer time.
You definitely have a point here and I might even get convinced. However, I see educating volunteers and building a movement as ends in themselves. So maybe there is just more value to distribute? (The saved fish + the movement that was built.)
I do share your feeling that more value is attributed to donors than they really deserve. I see this as a problem especially when people want to compensate. Some EAs think that going vegan is not that important because compensating is so cheap. But the only tractable way of compensating would be to get others to eat plant-based in which case I think it would be fair to attribute most of the saved animals to the people who actually ate fewer animal products or went vegan, and not to the person who donated to the charity that “convinced” them.
Hahaha yes I love that compensating paradox. I think the issue with that one is that it’s very narrow-minded and short-term focused. Sure in the short term for this specific intervention compensation might work, but as a movement we lose if we think like this.
Also agree that building movement and activating volunteers is value that probably isn’t always accounted for.
Maybe if the offsetting is convincing people to go vegan. But I think a lot of the offsetting is corporate campaigns to get higher welfare standards. That has much higher leverage than individual actions to eat higher welfare meat. Maybe once all the corporations have reformed, individual actions could start being competitive, but we can re-evaluate then.
I agree that these campaigns are promising, and I am a donor to Sinergia Animal myself. However, mass animal production creates issues beyond farmed welfare, such as climate change and resource diversion from starving populations. While those can be offset, my main concern is wild animal suffering caused by feed production.
Every farmed animal impacts multiple wild animals through agriculture. Unless we possess solid data on wild animal welfare ranges and how feed production affects them, we have no way of knowing how to offset a non-vegan diet’s impact on wild populations, or what the true cost would be. Consequently, I believe, claiming we can offset a non-vegan diet by sponsoring welfare campaigns is highly misleading at this stage.
There is huge uncertainty once you consider wild animals—more feed could increase wild animal welfare.
That’s exactly what I said. Uncertainty is a big issue here. But that doesn’t mean one is justified in not offsetting the impact one’s dietary choices have on wild animals, simply because a handful of people have put forward the hypothesis of net negative lives.
Are you suggesting that all non-vegans offset the impact on wild animals? How does one do that, even if it were agreed that wild animals had net positive lives?
Of course not. At this point it simply isn’t possible.Which is exactly what I argued:
I would argue, however, that vegans have less impact on wild animals which is precisely why framing welfare campaigns as an “offset” for a non-vegan diet strikes me as misleading. I have broader reservations about the concept of offsetting animal suffering altogether, but if such offsetting is to be meaningful in any real sense, it should focus on projects that reduce the consumption of animal products in order to replicate these effects.
Ok—so if one believes that wild invertebrate lives are net positive, then offsetting with animal welfare interventions means more feed is required, resulting in fewer wild invertebrates (and more deaths from pesticides, but I think this is small compared to the impact on the population of soil invertebrates of farming more land), meaning less utility overall. So this person would prefer an offset that is a scalable way of convincing people to go vegan. Though this may seem contradictory, I think there is a large variation in difficulty of going vegan (taste preferences, opportunity cost of time, impact on health, etc), so it is most effective if the people for whom it is easier to go vegan are exposed to the arguments.
However, if the person thinks that wild invertebrates lives are net negative, they would prefer the animal welfare interventions offset, because not only would that help the farmed animals, but it would also reduce the bad utilities of wild invertebrates lives.
There are two main effects. Higher welfare standards generally mean fewer animals are raised, since they and their products become more expensive. But those that are raised require more feed. As far as I know there is no consensus on which effect dominates.
They may prefer this kind of intervention and consequently donate to the relevant charities, but the amount they are supposed to pay to offset should stay the same. Since offsetting is generally framed around conservative estimates, it makes no sense to pay less just because you believe in something.
I totally agree. However, I’m not aware of a single charity that turns people who had no inclination of becoming vegan into vegans. That would be an almost impossible achievement, unless you paid them to do so and set up control mechanisms to make sure they stood true to their word.
Charities like Veganuary are targeted specifically at people who are already motivated to go vegan in the first place. So if someone turns vegan during the challenge it’s impossible to know whether the donor was counterfactual. For all we know the person could have become vegan two months earlier but chose to wait for the challenge. So we may want to use Shapley values. There is also a broader principle at play here: there is general consensus that the same outcome cannot be claimed multiple times for offsetting purposes. This is precisely how certificate trading works, whether for carbon or anything else. So, if we assign some weight to the person who invented the challenge, some weight to the staff who work for below market rates, some weight to every organisation who had previously influenced the person who eventually went vegan, and of course the main weight to that person themselves, little value is left for the donor.
Without access to the relevant data it is hard to say anything definitive, but it seems worth asking whether the cost per outcome would look quite different if conservative estimates were applied more rigorously.
Though Shapley values of impact have to add up to 100%, counterfactuals can add up to >100%.
Curious: Are you aware of these been used in the field / cost-effectiveness estimations etc.? I’m aware of the concept but have never seen it actually being used. But that I’m also not that deep in that space.
I’ve mainly worked at the cause area level, where I think these considerations are less relevant. But I have observed that if people are so enthusiastic about an area that many will volunteer (or take lower salaries), that does make progress in an area easier.