I found this post arguing that we should donate more when interest rates are lower interesting, but I’m not a finance professional so I don’t know if it holds any water.
Even with attempts to prevent it, I think annual risk of value drift for me is greater than the annual expected real return on equities, which tends to defeat the usual argument for giving later.
Another exercise I’ve done occasionally is to look at my donations from say 5-10 years ago and muse on whether I would rather have invested the money and given now. So far that hasn’t been close to true, and that’s in spite of an impressive bull market in stocks over the last decade. Money was just so much more of an issue back then. I thought this from Will MacAskill was a good reflection on just how money-constrained things were ‘in the old days’, for those who didn’t see it:
At the time, there was very little funding available in EA. Lunch was the same, every day: budget baguettes and plain hummus. The initial salaries offered by CEA were £15,000/yr pre-tax. When it started off, CEA was only able to pay its staff at all because I loaned them £7,000 — my entire life savings at the time. One of our first major donations was from Julia Wise, for $10,000, which was a significant fraction of the annual salary she received from being a mental health social worker at a prison.
Of course the directly relevant question is: When I look back on this relatively abundant period in 2034, will I feel the same way? I honestly don’t know, realistically the biggest factors will be what Good Ventures decides to do with their money and how well EA attracts other money.
How do you decide the timing of your donations?
I initially felt a strong sense of urgency to donate as soon as I can:
There are likely compounding positive returns to donations (e.g. LLINs could slightly increase the rate of growth of the local economy)
I thought that the best funding opportunities get covered with time
I might lose all the money
I might stop wanting to donate it (e.g. if a family member gets ill)
I’m considering leaning a bit on the “investing to give later” side for 2025:
Interest rates seem much higher[1]
Inequality seems to be increasing (which means that by investing now I might be able to pay more people in the future to work on impactful projects)
I see many people like you haven’t lost interest in donating after 11 years
But I don’t know how to balance all those considerations, and if I do decide to give later I wouldn’t know how to decide when.
I found this post arguing that we should donate more when interest rates are lower interesting, but I’m not a finance professional so I don’t know if it holds any water.
Even with attempts to prevent it, I think annual risk of value drift for me is greater than the annual expected real return on equities, which tends to defeat the usual argument for giving later.
Another exercise I’ve done occasionally is to look at my donations from say 5-10 years ago and muse on whether I would rather have invested the money and given now. So far that hasn’t been close to true, and that’s in spite of an impressive bull market in stocks over the last decade. Money was just so much more of an issue back then. I thought this from Will MacAskill was a good reflection on just how money-constrained things were ‘in the old days’, for those who didn’t see it:
Of course the directly relevant question is: When I look back on this relatively abundant period in 2034, will I feel the same way? I honestly don’t know, realistically the biggest factors will be what Good Ventures decides to do with their money and how well EA attracts other money.
Would value drift be mitigated by donating to a DAF and investing there? Or are you afraid your views on where to donate might also shift