This seems to be a representative publicly available estimate from 4 years ago by Lewis Bollard:
āThis is a major question for us, and one we continue to research. 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. ā
I think several more up to date estimates will be available soon.
For advocacy evaluation, a concrete area for improvement is the following. Sauliusās analysis has a really nice section titled āWays this estimate could be misleadingā. Other advocates cite concerns similar to those when they argue against corporate welfare campaigns. They usually donāt have empirical evidence, but I donāt have super strong evidence to show them wrong either. Iām not very happy about that.
What did you think of the GiveWell policy advocacy CEAs & BOTECs I linked? I shared them in response to your ā...but Givewell doesnāt analyse cost-effectiveness of advocacy workā so I wondered if you had a different take.
I appreciate the correction. When I said āI generally feel much more comfortable standing behind Givewellās estimatesā that was for their main page recommendations. I currently wonāt prioritise reviewing these BOTECS in detail in the short term but as a future exercise I will look into the linked analyses and compare them to animal welfare ones.
This seems to be a representative publicly available estimate from 4 years ago by Lewis Bollard:
āThis is a major question for us, and one we continue to research. 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. ā
I think several more up to date estimates will be available soon.
For advocacy evaluation, a concrete area for improvement is the following. Sauliusās analysis has a really nice section titled āWays this estimate could be misleadingā. Other advocates cite concerns similar to those when they argue against corporate welfare campaigns. They usually donāt have empirical evidence, but I donāt have super strong evidence to show them wrong either. Iām not very happy about that.
Thanks for the pointers, much appreciated.
What did you think of the GiveWell policy advocacy CEAs & BOTECs I linked? I shared them in response to your ā...but Givewell doesnāt analyse cost-effectiveness of advocacy workā so I wondered if you had a different take.
I appreciate the correction. When I said āI generally feel much more comfortable standing behind Givewellās estimatesā that was for their main page recommendations. I currently wonāt prioritise reviewing these BOTECS in detail in the short term but as a future exercise I will look into the linked analyses and compare them to animal welfare ones.