How do your criteria for making a grant differ from ACE’s criteria for recommending a charity? Do you have different goals, or are the differences between you and ACE more a matter of reading the same evidence differently? For context, I’m a donor wondering when it makes sense to donate to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund versus through the Animal Welfare Fund.
A good rule of thumb is that ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund tends to donate to fewer, larger charities that have a demonstrated track record of success. In contrast, the EA Animal Welfare Fund tends to donate to more numerous, often earlier-stage projects that are higher-risk and, arguably, higher-reward. Perhaps also relevant, ACE Movement Grants focus on a wider-range of interventions with less rigorous supporting evidence that aim to build a more pluralistic farmed animal advocacy movement.
The EA Animal Welfare and ACE Recommended Charity Fund sometimes act as a pipeline, where a nascent project will seek support from the EA Animal Welfare Fund before growing into a more established charity that receives support from the ACE Recommended Charity Fund. One example of this pipeline is Wild Animal Initiative, which has received EA Animal Welfare Fund grants since 2017 (under the name Wild Animal Suffering Research), and became an ACE Top Charity in 2020.
As Mikaela said, the EA Animal Welfare Fund has a lot of leverage to strategically diversify the effective animal advocacy movement:
The EA Animal Welfare and ACE Recommended Charity Fund sometimes act as a pipeline, where a nascent project will seek support from the EA Animal Welfare Fund before growing into a more established charity that receives support from the ACE Recommended Charity Fund. One example of this pipeline is Wild Animal Initiative, which has received EA Animal Welfare Fund grants since 2017 (under the name Wild Animal Suffering Research), and became an ACE Top Charity in 2020.
I’m lucky enough to work for Wild Animal Initiative, and I can confirm that the EA AWF’s support was essential to establishing enough of a track record that ACE could evaluate us. Without that funding, ACE just wouldn’t have much to evaluate, and whatever we might have accomplished could not have been accomplished nearly as professionally.
As a former donor to the EA AWF, it’s really important to me that it keep playing this role as the beginning of the high-impact project pipeline. So we’re taking care to design a fundraising strategy that allows the EA AWF to dial down their funding for us as soon as possible. Over the next 2-5 years, we plan to grow a donor base rooted more and more in the broader wildlife advocacy movement. We’ll need the EA AWF’s support to get there, but once we get there, we’re looking forward to freeing up more funding for fledgling ventures.
[Adding some unoriginal thoughts on risky donations]
As Mikaela said, which fund you donate to depends in large part on how safe/risky you want your donations to be:
In contrast, the EA Animal Welfare Fund tends to donate to more numerous, often earlier-stage projects that are higher-risk and, arguably, higher-reward.
When I first got involved in EA, I thought “high-impact donations” obviously had to be “safe donations.”
Over the past several years, I’ve changed my mind. I now think EAs should generally lean toward riskier donations than the average donor, for three reasons:
Preferring safety too strongly can be irrational. As this article on risk aversion concludes, “it may be best for altruists to be approximately risk-neutral overall.”
Neglected causes are both especially likely to be high-impact and especially likely to be relatively risky to work in. In order to pick low-hanging karmic fruit, you may have to start a new charity or try a new method. They might not be the safest bets, but they can still be good bets.
Non-EA donors tend to be risk-averse. That means those relatively risky projects in neglected cause areas are likely to stay neglected until risk-neutral donors support them. In other words, EAs have a comparative advantage in making relatively risky donations.
I think all that makes the EA Animal Welfare Fund an incredibly exciting place to donate to. So much karma to pluck, and so few plucking it!
How do your criteria for making a grant differ from ACE’s criteria for recommending a charity? Do you have different goals, or are the differences between you and ACE more a matter of reading the same evidence differently? For context, I’m a donor wondering when it makes sense to donate to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund versus through the Animal Welfare Fund.
A good rule of thumb is that ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund tends to donate to fewer, larger charities that have a demonstrated track record of success. In contrast, the EA Animal Welfare Fund tends to donate to more numerous, often earlier-stage projects that are higher-risk and, arguably, higher-reward. Perhaps also relevant, ACE Movement Grants focus on a wider-range of interventions with less rigorous supporting evidence that aim to build a more pluralistic farmed animal advocacy movement.
The EA Animal Welfare and ACE Recommended Charity Fund sometimes act as a pipeline, where a nascent project will seek support from the EA Animal Welfare Fund before growing into a more established charity that receives support from the ACE Recommended Charity Fund. One example of this pipeline is Wild Animal Initiative, which has received EA Animal Welfare Fund grants since 2017 (under the name Wild Animal Suffering Research), and became an ACE Top Charity in 2020.
[Observations from inside the charity pipeline]
As Mikaela said, the EA Animal Welfare Fund has a lot of leverage to strategically diversify the effective animal advocacy movement:
I’m lucky enough to work for Wild Animal Initiative, and I can confirm that the EA AWF’s support was essential to establishing enough of a track record that ACE could evaluate us. Without that funding, ACE just wouldn’t have much to evaluate, and whatever we might have accomplished could not have been accomplished nearly as professionally.
As a former donor to the EA AWF, it’s really important to me that it keep playing this role as the beginning of the high-impact project pipeline. So we’re taking care to design a fundraising strategy that allows the EA AWF to dial down their funding for us as soon as possible. Over the next 2-5 years, we plan to grow a donor base rooted more and more in the broader wildlife advocacy movement. We’ll need the EA AWF’s support to get there, but once we get there, we’re looking forward to freeing up more funding for fledgling ventures.
[Adding some unoriginal thoughts on risky donations]
As Mikaela said, which fund you donate to depends in large part on how safe/risky you want your donations to be:
When I first got involved in EA, I thought “high-impact donations” obviously had to be “safe donations.”
Over the past several years, I’ve changed my mind. I now think EAs should generally lean toward riskier donations than the average donor, for three reasons:
Preferring safety too strongly can be irrational. As this article on risk aversion concludes, “it may be best for altruists to be approximately risk-neutral overall.”
Neglected causes are both especially likely to be high-impact and especially likely to be relatively risky to work in. In order to pick low-hanging karmic fruit, you may have to start a new charity or try a new method. They might not be the safest bets, but they can still be good bets.
Non-EA donors tend to be risk-averse. That means those relatively risky projects in neglected cause areas are likely to stay neglected until risk-neutral donors support them. In other words, EAs have a comparative advantage in making relatively risky donations.
I think all that makes the EA Animal Welfare Fund an incredibly exciting place to donate to. So much karma to pluck, and so few plucking it!