So it is more important to convince someone to give to e.g. the EA animal welfare fund if they were previously giving to AMF than to convince a non-donor to give that same amount of money to AMF.
I’ve run into a similar dilemma before, where I’m trying to convince non-EAs to direct some of their charity to AMF rather than their favorite local charity. I believe animal welfare charities are orders of magnitude more cost-effective than AMF, so it’s probably higher EV to try to convince them to direct that charity to e.g. THL rather than AMF. But that request is much less likely to succeed, and could also alienate them (because animal welfare is “weird”) from making more effective donations in the future. Curious about your thoughts about the best way to approach that.
I have a sense that there could be a mutually beneficial trade between cause areas lurking in this kind of situation, but it would be tricky to pull off as a practical manner.
One could envision animal-welfare EAs nudging non-EA donors toward GiveWell-style charities when they feel that is the highest-EV option with a reasonable probability of success, and EA global-health donors paying them a “commission” of sorts by counterfactually switching some smaller sum of their own donations from GH to AW.
In addition to challenges with implementation, there would be a potential concern that not as much net money is going to GH as the non-EA donor thinks. On the other hand, funging seems to be almost an inevitable part of the charitable landscape whether it is being done deliberately or not.
Yeah, this seems a little… sneaky, for want of a better word. It might be useful to imagine how you think the non-EA donors would feel if the “commission” were proactively disclosed. (Not necessarily terribly! After all, fundraising is often a paid job. Just seems like a useful intuition prompt.)
Another option, if they’re sensible to the environment, is to redirect them to charities that are also impactful for sustainability, such as The Good Food Institute. According to the best guess by Giving Green, they can avoid 17 tons of CO2eq for 50$.
This way, they can make a positive contribution for the environment (not to mention the positive impact on human health pandemics).
I’ve done it for a charity that does similar stuff in my country and at the very least people didn’t give any pushback and seemed comprehensive. You can mention concrete stuff about the progress of alternative proteins like they’re the default choice at burger king.
I’ve run into a similar dilemma before, where I’m trying to convince non-EAs to direct some of their charity to AMF rather than their favorite local charity. I believe animal welfare charities are orders of magnitude more cost-effective than AMF, so it’s probably higher EV to try to convince them to direct that charity to e.g. THL rather than AMF. But that request is much less likely to succeed, and could also alienate them (because animal welfare is “weird”) from making more effective donations in the future. Curious about your thoughts about the best way to approach that.
I have a sense that there could be a mutually beneficial trade between cause areas lurking in this kind of situation, but it would be tricky to pull off as a practical manner.
One could envision animal-welfare EAs nudging non-EA donors toward GiveWell-style charities when they feel that is the highest-EV option with a reasonable probability of success, and EA global-health donors paying them a “commission” of sorts by counterfactually switching some smaller sum of their own donations from GH to AW.
In addition to challenges with implementation, there would be a potential concern that not as much net money is going to GH as the non-EA donor thinks. On the other hand, funging seems to be almost an inevitable part of the charitable landscape whether it is being done deliberately or not.
Yeah, this seems a little… sneaky, for want of a better word. It might be useful to imagine how you think the non-EA donors would feel if the “commission” were proactively disclosed. (Not necessarily terribly! After all, fundraising is often a paid job. Just seems like a useful intuition prompt.)
Another option, if they’re sensible to the environment, is to redirect them to charities that are also impactful for sustainability, such as The Good Food Institute. According to the best guess by Giving Green, they can avoid 17 tons of CO2eq for 50$.
This way, they can make a positive contribution for the environment (not to mention the positive impact on human health pandemics).
I’ve done it for a charity that does similar stuff in my country and at the very least people didn’t give any pushback and seemed comprehensive. You can mention concrete stuff about the progress of alternative proteins like they’re the default choice at burger king.