Note – I will make separate responses as my original comment was too long for the system to handle. This is part two of my comments.
Some of you will be tempted to just downvote this comment because I wrote it. I want you to think about whether that’s the best thing to do for the sake of transparency. If this post gets significant downvotes and is invisible, I’ll be happy to post it as a separate EA Forum post. If that’s what you want, please go ahead and downvote.
I disagree with other aspects of the post.
1) For instance, the points about affiliation, of which there were 2 substantial ones, about GWWC and ACE (I noted earlier it was a mistake to post about the conversation with Kerry).
A) After Michelle Hutchinson sent the email, we changed the wording to be very clear regarding what we mean, stating that we engaged in “collaboration with Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly, The Life You Can Save, GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Giving What We Can, and others about them providing us with numbers of clicks and donations that they can trace to our article.” see link
In other words, to prevent any semantic and philosophical discussion about the meaning of the term “collaboration,” we gave a very specific and clear statement about the nature of the collaboration at hand to prevent folks from getting confused about what it means. I am very comfortable standing by this statement.
B) Leah’s words were not in any way indicative of a formal endorsement for InIn, nor did we claim they were. They were just a statement of the kind of positive impact that InIn had for ACE. And in fact, we did ask Leah about quoting her in our internal documentation, which is where this information is located, our internal document about our EA impact: see image
2) The claims about astroturfing are way out of line: by comparing it to what GiveWell did, the authors are creating a harsh horns effect – smearing by association, in other words. For context, GiveWell’s senior staff on their paid time as employees went to forums where donations were discussed, and made up fake names to pose as forum members singing the praises of GiveWell. I and many other folks were very disappointed upon finding out what GiveWell did, although I appreciate the way they handled it. I would never want to do anything of the sort.
So let’s compare it to InIn. What the authors of this document point to is instances of InIn volunteers and volunteer/contractors on their own, non-paid time, and without any direction from the leadership, and using their real names, engaging with InIn content and posting mostly supportive messages, although with some criticism as well. They did not at all try to hide their identity, nor did they do so on paid time, as did GiveWell employees. We pay people only for specific things, such as doing video editing or social media management, and our miniscule budget does not cover low-impact and unethical activities such as the kind of thing done by GiveWell employees employees in the past.
I do not control what our volunteers or volunteer-contractors do on their non-paid time. I don’t have time to monitor all that our volunteers do, and I generally leave it up to them to figure out, as I have an attitude of trust and faith in them. Volunteer management is a delicate balance, as anyone who actually managed volunteers knows. So I only intervene when I hear about problems, otherwise I focus on more high-impact activities such as actually doing the work of outreach to a broad audience that makes a difference in improving the world. When folks engaged in things that got pushback, such as posting on Less Wrong without sharing in their introduction statements their role with InIn, I asked them politely to revise their introduction statements in one-on-one conversations.
Now, since this blowup, I have had a thorough conversation with the Board of Directors and our Advisory Board, and we decided to institute a more formal Conflict of Interest policy. We decided it would be appropriate to have a systematic policy that applies to anyone with an official position in the organization, meaning holding an office or being paid. Hopefully this will help guide people’s behavior in a way that results in appropriate disclosures. However, we anticipate it will take some time to shift behavior and not everything will go right. You are welcome to point out to me any instances where there’s an issues, and I’ll talk to the person who engaged in problematic behavior.
3) I’m not sure why the volunteer/contractor is listed as a dubious practice. All people who are contractors started off by being volunteers. Over time, as we had a need for more work being done, we approached some volunteers who we knew already had a background as contractors on Odesk to do some part-time work for the organization. You can see the screenshots with my description for more details.
It is very common for nonprofit organizations to offer people who volunteer for them to do some part-time work. This is how many other EA organizations besides InIn got started – with volunteers who then went on to do some part-time work. Eventually, these organizations became large enough to have full-time employees, and we’d like InIn to be there eventually.
Some folks expressed disbelief that the volunteer/contractors are really there because they support the mission and instead believe that they are just there for the money. Well, that’s simply not the case. Let’s take the example of Ella, who in October 2015, in response to a fundraising email, made a $10/month donation: see image She voluntarily, out of her own desire, chose to make this donation. Let me repeat – she voluntarily, out of her own volition in response to a fundraising call that went out to all of our supporters, chose to make this donation. Just to be clear, we send out fundraising letters regularly, so it’s not like this was some special occasion. She did not have to do it, it’s just something she wanted to do out of her own volition.
Nor is this in any way an explicit or implicit obligation for contractors – about half of the contractors are also donors, and the others are not. I value, respect, and treasure Ella and all the others contractors, they are a great team and I feel close to them. We have a family environment in the organization, and care about and support each othyer. It makes me very upset and frustrated to see the relationship between us described in this twisted way as a “dubious practice.”
4) The claims about it being bad to call oneself a best-selling author if one did not do it through making the New York Times best-seller list are silly. There are many best-seller lists, and authors who make it to the top of any list describe themselves as best-selling authors: see link The document makes it seem like I’m not following standard author practice here, and that’s simply false.
5) The claims about not disclosing paid support are not backed up by any real evidence. I said that I ran the t-shirts by multiple people. Sure, some of them were volunteer/contractors for InIn. Does that fact cause them to not count as “people?” Wouldn’t they be more likely to want higher-quality products so the organization succeeds more? In fact, they gave some of the more stringent criticism of the initial design, because they are more invested in the success of the design.
6) Regarding the Huffington Post piece, the person – Jeff Boxell – did not hear of effective giving before. Now he did, and he intends to use GiveWell and TLYCS as the guide for his donations. I am very comfortable standing by that claim.
P. S. Based on past experience, I learned that back and forth online about this will not be productive, so I did not plan to engage with, and if someone wants to learn more about my perspective, they are welcome to contact me privately by my email.
Note – I will make separate responses as my original comment was too long for the system to handle. This is part two of my comments.
Some of you will be tempted to just downvote this comment because I wrote it. I want you to think about whether that’s the best thing to do for the sake of transparency. If this post gets significant downvotes and is invisible, I’ll be happy to post it as a separate EA Forum post. If that’s what you want, please go ahead and downvote.
I disagree with other aspects of the post.
1) For instance, the points about affiliation, of which there were 2 substantial ones, about GWWC and ACE (I noted earlier it was a mistake to post about the conversation with Kerry).
A) After Michelle Hutchinson sent the email, we changed the wording to be very clear regarding what we mean, stating that we engaged in “collaboration with Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly, The Life You Can Save, GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Giving What We Can, and others about them providing us with numbers of clicks and donations that they can trace to our article.” see link
In other words, to prevent any semantic and philosophical discussion about the meaning of the term “collaboration,” we gave a very specific and clear statement about the nature of the collaboration at hand to prevent folks from getting confused about what it means. I am very comfortable standing by this statement.
B) Leah’s words were not in any way indicative of a formal endorsement for InIn, nor did we claim they were. They were just a statement of the kind of positive impact that InIn had for ACE. And in fact, we did ask Leah about quoting her in our internal documentation, which is where this information is located, our internal document about our EA impact: see image
2) The claims about astroturfing are way out of line: by comparing it to what GiveWell did, the authors are creating a harsh horns effect – smearing by association, in other words. For context, GiveWell’s senior staff on their paid time as employees went to forums where donations were discussed, and made up fake names to pose as forum members singing the praises of GiveWell. I and many other folks were very disappointed upon finding out what GiveWell did, although I appreciate the way they handled it. I would never want to do anything of the sort.
So let’s compare it to InIn. What the authors of this document point to is instances of InIn volunteers and volunteer/contractors on their own, non-paid time, and without any direction from the leadership, and using their real names, engaging with InIn content and posting mostly supportive messages, although with some criticism as well. They did not at all try to hide their identity, nor did they do so on paid time, as did GiveWell employees. We pay people only for specific things, such as doing video editing or social media management, and our miniscule budget does not cover low-impact and unethical activities such as the kind of thing done by GiveWell employees employees in the past.
I do not control what our volunteers or volunteer-contractors do on their non-paid time. I don’t have time to monitor all that our volunteers do, and I generally leave it up to them to figure out, as I have an attitude of trust and faith in them. Volunteer management is a delicate balance, as anyone who actually managed volunteers knows. So I only intervene when I hear about problems, otherwise I focus on more high-impact activities such as actually doing the work of outreach to a broad audience that makes a difference in improving the world. When folks engaged in things that got pushback, such as posting on Less Wrong without sharing in their introduction statements their role with InIn, I asked them politely to revise their introduction statements in one-on-one conversations.
Now, since this blowup, I have had a thorough conversation with the Board of Directors and our Advisory Board, and we decided to institute a more formal Conflict of Interest policy. We decided it would be appropriate to have a systematic policy that applies to anyone with an official position in the organization, meaning holding an office or being paid. Hopefully this will help guide people’s behavior in a way that results in appropriate disclosures. However, we anticipate it will take some time to shift behavior and not everything will go right. You are welcome to point out to me any instances where there’s an issues, and I’ll talk to the person who engaged in problematic behavior.
3) I’m not sure why the volunteer/contractor is listed as a dubious practice. All people who are contractors started off by being volunteers. Over time, as we had a need for more work being done, we approached some volunteers who we knew already had a background as contractors on Odesk to do some part-time work for the organization. You can see the screenshots with my description for more details.
It is very common for nonprofit organizations to offer people who volunteer for them to do some part-time work. This is how many other EA organizations besides InIn got started – with volunteers who then went on to do some part-time work. Eventually, these organizations became large enough to have full-time employees, and we’d like InIn to be there eventually.
Some folks expressed disbelief that the volunteer/contractors are really there because they support the mission and instead believe that they are just there for the money. Well, that’s simply not the case. Let’s take the example of Ella, who in October 2015, in response to a fundraising email, made a $10/month donation: see image She voluntarily, out of her own desire, chose to make this donation. Let me repeat – she voluntarily, out of her own volition in response to a fundraising call that went out to all of our supporters, chose to make this donation. Just to be clear, we send out fundraising letters regularly, so it’s not like this was some special occasion. She did not have to do it, it’s just something she wanted to do out of her own volition.
Nor is this in any way an explicit or implicit obligation for contractors – about half of the contractors are also donors, and the others are not. I value, respect, and treasure Ella and all the others contractors, they are a great team and I feel close to them. We have a family environment in the organization, and care about and support each othyer. It makes me very upset and frustrated to see the relationship between us described in this twisted way as a “dubious practice.”
4) The claims about it being bad to call oneself a best-selling author if one did not do it through making the New York Times best-seller list are silly. There are many best-seller lists, and authors who make it to the top of any list describe themselves as best-selling authors: see link The document makes it seem like I’m not following standard author practice here, and that’s simply false.
5) The claims about not disclosing paid support are not backed up by any real evidence. I said that I ran the t-shirts by multiple people. Sure, some of them were volunteer/contractors for InIn. Does that fact cause them to not count as “people?” Wouldn’t they be more likely to want higher-quality products so the organization succeeds more? In fact, they gave some of the more stringent criticism of the initial design, because they are more invested in the success of the design.
6) Regarding the Huffington Post piece, the person – Jeff Boxell – did not hear of effective giving before. Now he did, and he intends to use GiveWell and TLYCS as the guide for his donations. I am very comfortable standing by that claim.
P. S. Based on past experience, I learned that back and forth online about this will not be productive, so I did not plan to engage with, and if someone wants to learn more about my perspective, they are welcome to contact me privately by my email.