Are big Orgs better than individuals/small orgs at achieving things?
This is a response to @Mo Putera’s quick take—on the notion that Big, elite, established orgs are more likely to succeed compared with individuals and smaller orgs. He looked at Scott Alexander’s grants and saw that individuals were more likely to fail compared with bigger orgs. “One disappointing result was that grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups (whether companies or nonprofits).”
First, yes on a basic level Individuals and small startups will have a lower probability of making their thing work than bigger organisations, for a few reasons.
- Less leverage on the issue they are trying to on (less relationships/connections built) - Lack of institutional knowledge and experience— Less organisational/relational cushions to lean on or fall back on when there are setbacks- either the individual has the skills/drive/luck to make it work or they don’t - Sometimes small orgs are going for bigger/moonshotty stuff that will have a high baseline failure rate no matter who is doing at it.
This is why I love Charity Entrepreneurship’s approach to starting new things, which mitigates many of these disadvantages 1. A team of researchers who pre-select causes/issues that are likely to be tractable. 2. Careful selection process looking for ability/resilience/commitment etc. 3. A 2 month incubation process learning about org building, M@E, operations etc. 4. Ongoing formal support both from the CE team and wider community after getting started
Many of the individuals/small orgs Scott Alexander gives to don’t have that support.
BUT Big Orgs may Lie more and Look the other way.
I also think that bigger organisations are FAR MORE likely to exaggerate their success than EA aligned individuals and small orgs. Big orgs fail ALL THE TIME on their projects (I see it all the time here in Uganda), and you almost never hear about it.
Admitting failures is unfortunately A huge negative for big orgs as it will attract media attention and donors will stop giving. Incentives are so wired against admitting even small shreds of failure
So they usually don’t tell us.
Some evidence for this is the standout Give Directly, who carefully outline their problems, mistakes and failures. including over a million dollars stolen in DRC. And I’m sure they still miss plenty. GiveDirectly are one of the least corruption/failure prone orgs due to their simple model of just sending people money, and yet still have plenty of failures/fraud to report. So what about all the other big orgs which will have far higher levels of failure/corruption than GiveDirectly? They either cover it up or don’t look. World Vision, Care, Save the children etc. fail at likely most of what they do and have big corruption issues, yet where are the reports? Even GiveWell funded orgs AMF and Malaria Consortium don’t report their no-doubt-many failures and corruption issues as far as I know.
I’ve seen enormous failure/corruption from big orgs in just my tiny patch of Northern Uganda but you’ll very rarely see these reported. In some cases when I expose corruption/uselessness to big NGOs I agreed to stay quiet on it so at least they would fix some of their issues.
Also big orgs often overstate how much difference more marginal money can make—there are many forms of subtle/soft” double counting that occur, through telling everyone who gives them money that they are funding the highest impact stuff, but that’s a whole ’nother mini-essay...
So yes, the variance is far higher with individuals/small orgs and they do probably fail more, but don’t just trust the rhetoric of big orgs either.
Are big Orgs better than individuals/small orgs at achieving things?
This is a response to @Mo Putera’s quick take—on the notion that Big, elite, established orgs are more likely to succeed compared with individuals and smaller orgs. He looked at Scott Alexander’s grants and saw that individuals were more likely to fail compared with bigger orgs. “One disappointing result was that grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups (whether companies or nonprofits).”
First, yes on a basic level Individuals and small startups will have a lower probability of making their thing work than bigger organisations, for a few reasons.
- Less leverage on the issue they are trying to on (less relationships/connections built)
- Lack of institutional knowledge and experience—
Less organisational/relational cushions to lean on or fall back on when there are setbacks- either the individual has the skills/drive/luck to make it work or they don’t
- Sometimes small orgs are going for bigger/moonshotty stuff that will have a high baseline failure rate no matter who is doing at it.
This is why I love Charity Entrepreneurship’s approach to starting new things, which mitigates many of these disadvantages
1. A team of researchers who pre-select causes/issues that are likely to be tractable.
2. Careful selection process looking for ability/resilience/commitment etc.
3. A 2 month incubation process learning about org building, M@E, operations etc.
4. Ongoing formal support both from the CE team and wider community after getting started
Many of the individuals/small orgs Scott Alexander gives to don’t have that support.
BUT Big Orgs may Lie more and Look the other way.
I also think that bigger organisations are FAR MORE likely to exaggerate their success than EA aligned individuals and small orgs. Big orgs fail ALL THE TIME on their projects (I see it all the time here in Uganda), and you almost never hear about it.
Admitting failures is unfortunately A huge negative for big orgs as it will attract media attention and donors will stop giving. Incentives are so wired against admitting even small shreds of failure
So they usually don’t tell us.
Some evidence for this is the standout Give Directly, who carefully outline their problems, mistakes and failures. including over a million dollars stolen in DRC. And I’m sure they still miss plenty. GiveDirectly are one of the least corruption/failure prone orgs due to their simple model of just sending people money, and yet still have plenty of failures/fraud to report. So what about all the other big orgs which will have far higher levels of failure/corruption than GiveDirectly? They either cover it up or don’t look. World Vision, Care, Save the children etc. fail at likely most of what they do and have big corruption issues, yet where are the reports? Even GiveWell funded orgs AMF and Malaria Consortium don’t report their no-doubt-many failures and corruption issues as far as I know.
I’ve seen enormous failure/corruption from big orgs in just my tiny patch of Northern Uganda but you’ll very rarely see these reported. In some cases when I expose corruption/uselessness to big NGOs I agreed to stay quiet on it so at least they would fix some of their issues.
Also big orgs often overstate how much difference more marginal money can make—there are many forms of subtle/soft” double counting that occur, through telling everyone who gives them money that they are funding the highest impact stuff, but that’s a whole ’nother mini-essay...
So yes, the variance is far higher with individuals/small orgs and they do probably fail more, but don’t just trust the rhetoric of big orgs either.