My impression is that EA could do more to make existing philanthropy more effective.
There are many existing charities that process billions of dollars[^1] per year. Many of these do not focus on effectiveness or have only recently become interested. I believe that a lot of good could result from making these charities more effective at what they do, or slightly moving their cause area to one that has more proven benefits.
My feeling is that EA did not interact much with existing “classical” charities. Maybe there are differences in worldview that prevented this? For example, many existing charities are faith-based, whereas EA seems explicitly secular. I think it would be desirable to bridge these worldview gaps if it allows EA to leverage the existing resources and networks of classical charities.
Several classical charities that I know of have recently become interested in effectiveness (and efficiency) due to donors caring more about these values. This might be another way for EA to have a large effect: influence donors so that they demand more effectiveness from their charities of choice. Organizations like The Life You Can Save do this to some extent, but focus on a few existing good charities rather than expanding the scope to the big-but-not-necessarily-effective players.
Another way of achieving this goal might be to influence development spending of countries more strongly. I know several cases where countries give part of their development budget to classic charities (e.g., Helvetas in Switzerland, Brot für die Welt in Germany). EA might be able to exert more influence in this area, similar to what EAF did for Zurich.
[^1] Sorry for the sloppy imprecision here… I hope that this post conveys my idea even without real numbers.
My impression is that EA could do more to make existing philanthropy more effective.
There are many existing charities that process billions of dollars[^1] per year. Many of these do not focus on effectiveness or have only recently become interested. I believe that a lot of good could result from making these charities more effective at what they do, or slightly moving their cause area to one that has more proven benefits.
My feeling is that EA did not interact much with existing “classical” charities. Maybe there are differences in worldview that prevented this? For example, many existing charities are faith-based, whereas EA seems explicitly secular. I think it would be desirable to bridge these worldview gaps if it allows EA to leverage the existing resources and networks of classical charities.
Several classical charities that I know of have recently become interested in effectiveness (and efficiency) due to donors caring more about these values. This might be another way for EA to have a large effect: influence donors so that they demand more effectiveness from their charities of choice. Organizations like The Life You Can Save do this to some extent, but focus on a few existing good charities rather than expanding the scope to the big-but-not-necessarily-effective players.
Another way of achieving this goal might be to influence development spending of countries more strongly. I know several cases where countries give part of their development budget to classic charities (e.g., Helvetas in Switzerland, Brot für die Welt in Germany). EA might be able to exert more influence in this area, similar to what EAF did for Zurich.
[^1] Sorry for the sloppy imprecision here… I hope that this post conveys my idea even without real numbers.