At Risk of violating @Linch’s principle “Assume by default that if something is missing in EA, nobody else is going to step up.”, I think it would be valuable to have a well researched estimate of the counterfactual value of getting investment from different investors (whether for profit or donors).
For example in global health, we could make GiveWell the baseline, as I doubt whether there is a ll funding source where switching as less impact, as the money will only ever be shifted from something slightly less effective. For example if my organisation received funding from GiveWell, we might only make slightly better use of that money than where it would otherwise have gone, and we’re not going to be increasing the overall donor pool either.
Who knows, for-profit investment dollars could be 10x −100x more counterfactually impactful than GiveWell, which could mean a for-profit company trying to do something good could plausibly be 10-100x less effective than a charity and still doing as much counterfactual good overall? Or is this a stretch?
This would be hard to estimate but doable, and must have been done at least on a casual scale by some people.
Examples ( and random guesses) of counterfactual comparisons of the value of each dollar given by a particular source might be something like....
I’m admittedly a bit more confused by your fleshed-out example with random guesses than I was when I read your opening sentence, as it went in a different direction than I expected (using multipliers instead of subtracting the value of the next-best alternative use of funds), so maybe we’re thinking about different things. I also didn’t understand what you meant by this when I tried to flesh it out myself with some (made-up) numbers:
Who knows, for-profit investment dollars could be 10x −100x more counterfactually impactful than GiveWell, which could mean a for-profit company trying to do something good could plausibly be 10-100x less effective than a charity and still doing as much counterfactual good overall?
If it helps, GiveWell has a spreadsheet summarising their analysis of the counterfactual value of other actors’ spending. From there and a bit of arithmetic, you can figure out their estimates of the value generated by $1 million in spending from the following sources, expressed in units of doubling consumption for one person for a year:
Government health spending: 5,639 units (this is also GW’s assumed value generated by philanthropic actors’s spending on VAS and vitamin A capsule procurement in other countries)
Suppose there’s an org (“EffectiveHealth”) that could create 50k units worth of benefits given $1M in funding. If it came from GW with their 33.5k units counterfactual value, then a grant to EffectiveHealth from GW would be creating 16.5k more units of benefits than otherwise, while if it came from domestic govt spending (7.5x lower value at 5k per $1M) it’d create 45k more units of benefits. A hypothetical for-profit investor whose funding generates 10x less good than domestic govt spending (500 units) would get you not 10 x 45k = 450k more units of benefits, but 49.5k units. And if EffectiveHealth got funding from OP it would actually be net-negative by −20k units.
(maybe you meant something completely different, in which case apologies!)
Questions would just be finding out what the cost-effectiveness of money from current individual donors, philanthropies, Gates Foundation was, then calculating the difference if it went to the most cost-effective rganisations.
At Risk of violating @Linch’s principle “Assume by default that if something is missing in EA, nobody else is going to step up.”, I think it would be valuable to have a well researched estimate of the counterfactual value of getting investment from different investors (whether for profit or donors).
For example in global health, we could make GiveWell the baseline, as I doubt whether there is a ll funding source where switching as less impact, as the money will only ever be shifted from something slightly less effective. For example if my organisation received funding from GiveWell, we might only make slightly better use of that money than where it would otherwise have gone, and we’re not going to be increasing the overall donor pool either.
Who knows, for-profit investment dollars could be 10x −100x more counterfactually impactful than GiveWell, which could mean a for-profit company trying to do something good could plausibly be 10-100x less effective than a charity and still doing as much counterfactual good overall? Or is this a stretch?
This would be hard to estimate but doable, and must have been done at least on a casual scale by some people.
Examples ( and random guesses) of counterfactual comparisons of the value of each dollar given by a particular source might be something like....
1. GiveWell 1x
2. Gates Foundation 3x
3. Individual donors NEW donations 10x
4. Indivudal donors SHIFTING donations. 5x
5. Non EA-Aligned foundations 8x
6. Climate funding 5x
7. For-profit investors. 20x
Or this might be barking up the wrong tree, not sure (and I have mentioned it before)
I’m admittedly a bit more confused by your fleshed-out example with random guesses than I was when I read your opening sentence, as it went in a different direction than I expected (using multipliers instead of subtracting the value of the next-best alternative use of funds), so maybe we’re thinking about different things. I also didn’t understand what you meant by this when I tried to flesh it out myself with some (made-up) numbers:
If it helps, GiveWell has a spreadsheet summarising their analysis of the counterfactual value of other actors’ spending. From there and a bit of arithmetic, you can figure out their estimates of the value generated by $1 million in spending from the following sources, expressed in units of doubling consumption for one person for a year:
Government social security spending: 2,625 units
Government education spending: 2,834 units
Donating to GiveDirectly’s cash transfer program (1x cash for reference): 3,355 units
Government spending on deworming: 3,525 units
Government spending on malaria, VAS, and immunization programs: 5,057 units (this is also what GW uses as their counterfactual value by domestic governments in assessing SMC)
Government health spending: 5,639 units (this is also GW’s assumed value generated by philanthropic actors’s spending on VAS and vitamin A capsule procurement in other countries)
Gavi spending (US allocations to Gavi and Maternal and Child Health): 6,952 units
Global Fund (calculations here): 15,433 units
HKI spending on vitamin A supplementation in Kenya, before final adjustments: ~19,000 units
GW’s 10x cash bar for reference: 33,545 units
AMF spending on ITN distribution in DRC, before final adjustments: ~36,800 units
Open Phil’s current 2,100x bar: very naively ~70,000 units (21x GiveDirectly to oversimplify, using OP’s 100x ≈ 1x cash to GD)
Suppose there’s an org (“EffectiveHealth”) that could create 50k units worth of benefits given $1M in funding. If it came from GW with their 33.5k units counterfactual value, then a grant to EffectiveHealth from GW would be creating 16.5k more units of benefits than otherwise, while if it came from domestic govt spending (7.5x lower value at 5k per $1M) it’d create 45k more units of benefits. A hypothetical for-profit investor whose funding generates 10x less good than domestic govt spending (500 units) would get you not 10 x 45k = 450k more units of benefits, but 49.5k units. And if EffectiveHealth got funding from OP it would actually be net-negative by −20k units.
(maybe you meant something completely different, in which case apologies!)
I think this kind of investigation would be valuable, but I’m not sure what concrete questions you’d imagine someone answering to figure this out.
Questions would just be finding out what the cost-effectiveness of money from current individual donors, philanthropies, Gates Foundation was, then calculating the difference if it went to the most cost-effective rganisations.