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!)
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!)