I think generally any kind of criticism of people trying to do good without first having built a relationship on common ground leads to “soldier mindset” where people become defensive about their actions. People who donate money or time by default expect to be thanked and feel good about it, in proportion to the amount of money or time that they donated. I suspect it’s always more productive to build a relationship with someone and find out what motivates them to give, and share relevant organizations or articles in line with their motivation, as opposed to approaching with foremost intention to convince people to change. And EAs should definitely have a scout mindset about this—There’s lots of reasons people might not think primarily of effectiveness when donating, and they’re not things we should change about people, but things we can build on. E.g. maybe some people donate to what’s convenient, or what they read about from a specific publisher that they trust, or this organization did a presentation at their church. That’s good to know.
I think generally any kind of criticism of people trying to do good without first having built a relationship on common ground leads to “soldier mindset” where people become defensive about their actions. People who donate money or time by default expect to be thanked and feel good about it, in proportion to the amount of money or time that they donated. I suspect it’s always more productive to build a relationship with someone and find out what motivates them to give, and share relevant organizations or articles in line with their motivation, as opposed to approaching with foremost intention to convince people to change. And EAs should definitely have a scout mindset about this—There’s lots of reasons people might not think primarily of effectiveness when donating, and they’re not things we should change about people, but things we can build on. E.g. maybe some people donate to what’s convenient, or what they read about from a specific publisher that they trust, or this organization did a presentation at their church. That’s good to know.