Thanks so much for your detailed and thoughtful response, we really appreciate your engagement. Some quick responses to your points:
On funding and room for funding: 1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots
You’re right that it’s a bit tough to place the Big Greens in a conceptual framework, because they do so many diverse activities. We place them more in the “insider” category since a lot of their activities for federal policy fall on the insider spectrum (lobbying, model bills, etc.) But you’re right that they do outsider activities too, so the categorization isn’t clear.
In any case, I don’t think getting the taxonomy right is so important. We still think that the big greens tend to have lot of funding, and we think in general the value of a marginal contribution (be it for insider or outsider) activities is likely not cost-effective. That’s not to mention what I think is the biggest problem with most of the Big Greens which is that they are not squarely focused on climate, which is enough to eliminate them in our criteria.
2. As discussed, 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative
We sometimes quote 2019 numbers because this is the last year that public 990s are available for most organizations, and in general these still allow meaningful order-of-magnitude comparisons. We are well aware that funding for certain orgs (such as Sunrise) have increased dramatically over the past couple of years, and are taking that into account in our analysis.
3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
Totally agree that overall budget or room for funding is a blunt instrument against which to measure marginal impact. It’s just one input into a complicated prediction. As far as calculating the actual return of funding effective activism, we are actively working on this going forward, and are going to post more on our thinking relatively soon. But we don’t agree that the marginal impact is ~0.
4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions
We’re relatively early into our assessment of Rewiring America, so thanks for your thoughts on them. Certainly, we agree that RA is not working on neglected tech, and that the solutions that someone like CATF are working on are likely more important in expectation. But we do think that RA have come on the scene with an effective framing of some of the decarbonization challenge (“electrify everything”), and are pushing a suite of policies based around household electrification that have not received much attention until recently. I wouldn’t ex-ante conclude that “accelerating already decarbonizing residential energy demand in the US was [not] super important,” from a cost effectiveness perspective. Anyway, I don’t want to spend much time defending RA because we are just starting our analysis, but I think do think they are at least worthy of consideration. We’ll definitely take your view into account as we move forward.
5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs
Yes, good point- I think there’s a lot of truth to this. As you say, there might be value in considering orgs that might change midterm outcomes (though we are restricted in political recommendations). And also, I think there’s some chance that some of the climate policy provisions fall to the 2022 legislative session, though I admit that’s probably not the most likely scenario.
I do think the timing issue is a bit tricky, and we’re trying to grapple exactly with the best perspective here. It can be hard to predict when the work of an advocacy organization will have impact, and I think there’s a lot of value in keeping strong organizations running and productive even when it’s not their political time to shine. Because otherwise they lose their chance to be influential when they face a welcoming political environment. Definitely something we are mulling, and I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
Hi Jackva,
Thanks so much for your detailed and thoughtful response, we really appreciate your engagement. Some quick responses to your points:
On funding and room for funding:
1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots
You’re right that it’s a bit tough to place the Big Greens in a conceptual framework, because they do so many diverse activities. We place them more in the “insider” category since a lot of their activities for federal policy fall on the insider spectrum (lobbying, model bills, etc.) But you’re right that they do outsider activities too, so the categorization isn’t clear.
In any case, I don’t think getting the taxonomy right is so important. We still think that the big greens tend to have lot of funding, and we think in general the value of a marginal contribution (be it for insider or outsider) activities is likely not cost-effective. That’s not to mention what I think is the biggest problem with most of the Big Greens which is that they are not squarely focused on climate, which is enough to eliminate them in our criteria.
2. As discussed, 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative
We sometimes quote 2019 numbers because this is the last year that public 990s are available for most organizations, and in general these still allow meaningful order-of-magnitude comparisons. We are well aware that funding for certain orgs (such as Sunrise) have increased dramatically over the past couple of years, and are taking that into account in our analysis.
3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
Totally agree that overall budget or room for funding is a blunt instrument against which to measure marginal impact. It’s just one input into a complicated prediction. As far as calculating the actual return of funding effective activism, we are actively working on this going forward, and are going to post more on our thinking relatively soon. But we don’t agree that the marginal impact is ~0.
4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions
We’re relatively early into our assessment of Rewiring America, so thanks for your thoughts on them. Certainly, we agree that RA is not working on neglected tech, and that the solutions that someone like CATF are working on are likely more important in expectation. But we do think that RA have come on the scene with an effective framing of some of the decarbonization challenge (“electrify everything”), and are pushing a suite of policies based around household electrification that have not received much attention until recently. I wouldn’t ex-ante conclude that “accelerating already decarbonizing residential energy demand in the US was [not] super important,” from a cost effectiveness perspective. Anyway, I don’t want to spend much time defending RA because we are just starting our analysis, but I think do think they are at least worthy of consideration. We’ll definitely take your view into account as we move forward.
5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs
Yes, good point- I think there’s a lot of truth to this. As you say, there might be value in considering orgs that might change midterm outcomes (though we are restricted in political recommendations). And also, I think there’s some chance that some of the climate policy provisions fall to the 2022 legislative session, though I admit that’s probably not the most likely scenario.
I do think the timing issue is a bit tricky, and we’re trying to grapple exactly with the best perspective here. It can be hard to predict when the work of an advocacy organization will have impact, and I think there’s a lot of value in keeping strong organizations running and productive even when it’s not their political time to shine. Because otherwise they lose their chance to be influential when they face a welcoming political environment. Definitely something we are mulling, and I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
Thanks again for all the thoughts!