I have very strong opinions on which organization in the cause area I care about is doing the most effective work, and I don’t think that the relevant evaluating organization is any better equipped to opine on it than I am. I sometimes compare evaluating charities to doing a fermi estimation. If there are a sufficient number of steps to estimating a fermi problem or if you are sufficiently off on your intermediate steps, and you have a some idea about the general magnitude of the target that your are estimating, it becomes better to just directly take a guess on the end-estimate rather than attempting intermediate guesses to guide you. It seems to me that even though evaluators are often very thorough and transparent, they end up making a ton of assumptions on top of high-error estimates (because one has to in order to make any progress, not because they don’t do a great job given what they are working with). I am not at all suggesting I could do a better job of rigorously estimating which organization is better, but I don’t think that is the right approach given the complexity of some of these problems. In other words, I’m far more convinced by the arguments and track record of the direct work charity that they are doing the most efficient work than I am by the evaluator charity that they should be trusted to make that evaluation.
As I’m reading more,I’m realizing that multiplier organizations are not as much about evaluation as my post makes them out to be, so I will just say that I agree with the point in the post about wanting to give the single most effective charity rather than a mix, and not really understanding the value added of an intermediate organization.
To give you some updated numbers, in 2019 TLYCS raised over $6 for AMF for every dollar we spent on operations plus another $7 for other recommended charities. If you look only at GiveWell recommended charities, our multiplier was 10X.
As I mentioned to HStencil, if these multiplier numbers are remotely accurate, there’s a huge margin of safety. You could believe that donations to any charity other than AMF are totally worthless AND that TLYCS overestimated donations to AMF by 3x, and you still would have doubled your impact by giving to TLYCS. And our multiplier is going to be even higher this year. (I’m talking about TLYCS because that’s what I’m familiar with, but I also recall seeing strong multipliers from e.g. RC Forward and REG.)
I have very strong opinions on which organization in the cause area I care about is doing the most effective work, and I don’t think that the relevant evaluating organization is any better equipped to opine on it than I am. I sometimes compare evaluating charities to doing a fermi estimation. If there are a sufficient number of steps to estimating a fermi problem or if you are sufficiently off on your intermediate steps, and you have a some idea about the general magnitude of the target that your are estimating, it becomes better to just directly take a guess on the end-estimate rather than attempting intermediate guesses to guide you. It seems to me that even though evaluators are often very thorough and transparent, they end up making a ton of assumptions on top of high-error estimates (because one has to in order to make any progress, not because they don’t do a great job given what they are working with). I am not at all suggesting I could do a better job of rigorously estimating which organization is better, but I don’t think that is the right approach given the complexity of some of these problems. In other words, I’m far more convinced by the arguments and track record of the direct work charity that they are doing the most efficient work than I am by the evaluator charity that they should be trusted to make that evaluation.
As I’m reading more,I’m realizing that multiplier organizations are not as much about evaluation as my post makes them out to be, so I will just say that I agree with the point in the post about wanting to give the single most effective charity rather than a mix, and not really understanding the value added of an intermediate organization.
The multiplier for the single organization you want to support within the mix could still be > 1. From this:
These are old numbers, though.
I think this is a really important point.
To give you some updated numbers, in 2019 TLYCS raised over $6 for AMF for every dollar we spent on operations plus another $7 for other recommended charities. If you look only at GiveWell recommended charities, our multiplier was 10X.
As I mentioned to HStencil, if these multiplier numbers are remotely accurate, there’s a huge margin of safety. You could believe that donations to any charity other than AMF are totally worthless AND that TLYCS overestimated donations to AMF by 3x, and you still would have doubled your impact by giving to TLYCS. And our multiplier is going to be even higher this year. (I’m talking about TLYCS because that’s what I’m familiar with, but I also recall seeing strong multipliers from e.g. RC Forward and REG.)
Really appreciate that you spelled out your thinking so clearly- thank you!
I think intermediaries make more sense for more casual donors, unlike people like yourself who are putting lots of thought into where to give.