One modelling assumption that may be favouring corporate campaigns for chicken welfare over GiveWell’s Maximum Impact Fund is that you’re using an oldaverage cost-effectiveness estimate for CCCWs, but an up-to-date marginal cost-effectiveness estimate for the MIF based on their funding bar. The old average cost-effectiveness estimate could be a few times off or more. I’m not well-informed here; maybe Open Phil or my colleagues at Rethink Priorities would know better.
I think this would hardly change the ratio between the mean cost-effectiveness of CCCW and MIF by more than 1 OOM:
As I mentioned here (which was not visible, so I have moved it to the Discussion):
According to this comment, Saulius recently estimated that “in 2019-2020 chicken welfare reforms affected 65 years of chicken life per dollar spent”.
I used a mean value of 45.6 cyear/$, which is 30 % lower. Therefore I would have obtained a higher cost-effectiveness if I had used Sauliu’s more recent estimate.
As described here, OP’s grants do not present a significant downwards trend. So, assuming OP’s animal welfare bar has not moved much, the marginal cost-effectiveness of CCCW has arguably not moved much either.
Ok, thanks for explaining and making this more prominent.
Also, I just remembered Lewis Bollard wrote this comment in February 2021:
Our current very rough estimate is that our average $ spent on corporate campaigns and all supporting work (which is ~40% of our total animal grant-making) achieves the equivalent of ~7 animals spared a year of complete suffering. We use this a rough benchmark for BOTECs on new grants, and my best guess is this reflects roughly the range we should hope for the last pro-animal dollar.
I think 7 years of complete suffering spared is intended to be better than 7 years of life with the average suffering reduction of CCCW, though, so it’s possible the estimates you use and Lewis’s here are consistent, but I’m not sure, and it could still be a few times less cost-effective than your estimate.
One modelling assumption that may be favouring corporate campaigns for chicken welfare over GiveWell’s Maximum Impact Fund is that you’re using an old average cost-effectiveness estimate for CCCWs, but an up-to-date marginal cost-effectiveness estimate for the MIF based on their funding bar. The old average cost-effectiveness estimate could be a few times off or more. I’m not well-informed here; maybe Open Phil or my colleagues at Rethink Priorities would know better.
Thanks for pointing this out.
I think this would hardly change the ratio between the mean cost-effectiveness of CCCW and MIF by more than 1 OOM:
As I mentioned here (which was not visible, so I have moved it to the Discussion):
According to this comment, Saulius recently estimated that “in 2019-2020 chicken welfare reforms affected 65 years of chicken life per dollar spent”.
I used a mean value of 45.6 cyear/$, which is 30 % lower. Therefore I would have obtained a higher cost-effectiveness if I had used Sauliu’s more recent estimate.
As described here, OP’s grants do not present a significant downwards trend. So, assuming OP’s animal welfare bar has not moved much, the marginal cost-effectiveness of CCCW has arguably not moved much either.
Ok, thanks for explaining and making this more prominent.
Also, I just remembered Lewis Bollard wrote this comment in February 2021:
I think 7 years of complete suffering spared is intended to be better than 7 years of life with the average suffering reduction of CCCW, though, so it’s possible the estimates you use and Lewis’s here are consistent, but I’m not sure, and it could still be a few times less cost-effective than your estimate.