Good post. I think you miss the biggest benefit of all though: growing the size of the donor pie is more effective than fundraising from EA donors’ set budgets. If you’re promoting a public health charity to EA funders you’re competing for funding with the likes of AMF. If you’re promoting it to the wider public, you’re mostly competing for funding with other less effective charities or the money being spent on consumer goods.
(corollary: the efforts of a moderately efficient charity to fundraise from the general public via low-cost, viral gimmicks like ice bucket challenges can result in more net DALY gain than a more efficient charity securing funding from an EA fund. Yes, I’m inverting MacAskill’s ‘funding cannibalism’ argument… )
This benefit is likely much bigger than the positive externalities, provided you have a cause which is actually suitable for public fundraising (something like AMF has a much better chance of success than a meta charity or research org), or at least a subset of the public reasonably easily reached via interest groups (e.g “animal lovers” for campaigns against factory farming)
The feedback and “red teaming” aspect might be less useful than you think though, even for organisations that lack enough contact with the non-EA world (unless you’re counting non-EA HNWIs, corporations and funds with the time and inclination towards in-depth engagement as the general public)
Many areas of public fundraising don’t actually involve any real interaction with the public at all, so all you really get to do is A/B test your messaging.
As for actually talking to random members of the public… the feedback is probably going to disappoint, even when people are really nice. If you’re asking for non-trivial commitments, people will be in “say no” mode, which means you’ll hear quite a bit about which other charities they give to, how tight their financial circumstances are and the odd middlebrow dismissal of your pitch or the general area of charity you fit. But you won’t get any criticism of the “I spotted this error in your paper” sort that EAs seem to value most. If you’re shaking a bucket, conversations will be shorter still.
Literally talking to as many people as possible works with well organised teams on low wages and the right logistics (there’s a reason even big name charities use agencies). Even with only five new donor signups a day, low attrition rates can make it cost-effective in the long run and more so than paid media, but talking to the public all day for such a low response isn’t something it makes much sense to ask the core team (or volunteers) to be doing as anything more than an experiment. I’m speaking from experience here, having spent a couple of summers a row knocking on doors for a health-related charity with a strong local angle, and doing well enough to get invited to the meeting where all the metrics were discussed. It’s hard work and won’t work equally well for all causes
Lastly, because of all of the above, an EA central team that helps incubated causes with public fundraising strategy and implementation is probably a good idea if one doesn’t already exist...
Great point about the counterfactual for the funding, I should have thought of it and included in the post in the first place. Thanks a lot for sharing this great comment!
Good post. I think you miss the biggest benefit of all though: growing the size of the donor pie is more effective than fundraising from EA donors’ set budgets. If you’re promoting a public health charity to EA funders you’re competing for funding with the likes of AMF. If you’re promoting it to the wider public, you’re mostly competing for funding with other less effective charities or the money being spent on consumer goods.
(corollary: the efforts of a moderately efficient charity to fundraise from the general public via low-cost, viral gimmicks like ice bucket challenges can result in more net DALY gain than a more efficient charity securing funding from an EA fund. Yes, I’m inverting MacAskill’s ‘funding cannibalism’ argument… )
This benefit is likely much bigger than the positive externalities, provided you have a cause which is actually suitable for public fundraising (something like AMF has a much better chance of success than a meta charity or research org), or at least a subset of the public reasonably easily reached via interest groups (e.g “animal lovers” for campaigns against factory farming)
The feedback and “red teaming” aspect might be less useful than you think though, even for organisations that lack enough contact with the non-EA world (unless you’re counting non-EA HNWIs, corporations and funds with the time and inclination towards in-depth engagement as the general public)
Many areas of public fundraising don’t actually involve any real interaction with the public at all, so all you really get to do is A/B test your messaging.
As for actually talking to random members of the public… the feedback is probably going to disappoint, even when people are really nice. If you’re asking for non-trivial commitments, people will be in “say no” mode, which means you’ll hear quite a bit about which other charities they give to, how tight their financial circumstances are and the odd middlebrow dismissal of your pitch or the general area of charity you fit. But you won’t get any criticism of the “I spotted this error in your paper” sort that EAs seem to value most. If you’re shaking a bucket, conversations will be shorter still.
Literally talking to as many people as possible works with well organised teams on low wages and the right logistics (there’s a reason even big name charities use agencies). Even with only five new donor signups a day, low attrition rates can make it cost-effective in the long run and more so than paid media, but talking to the public all day for such a low response isn’t something it makes much sense to ask the core team (or volunteers) to be doing as anything more than an experiment. I’m speaking from experience here, having spent a couple of summers a row knocking on doors for a health-related charity with a strong local angle, and doing well enough to get invited to the meeting where all the metrics were discussed. It’s hard work and won’t work equally well for all causes
Lastly, because of all of the above, an EA central team that helps incubated causes with public fundraising strategy and implementation is probably a good idea if one doesn’t already exist...
Great point about the counterfactual for the funding, I should have thought of it and included in the post in the first place. Thanks a lot for sharing this great comment!