Do you think Open Philanthropyās animal welfare grants should have write-ups whose main text is longer than 1 paragraph? I think it would be great if you shared the cost-effectiveness analyses you seem to be doing. In your recent appearance on The 80,000 Hours Podcast (which I liked!), you said (emphasis mine):
Lewis Bollard: Our goal is to help as many animals as we can, as much as we can ā and the challenge is working out how to do that.
[...]
If thereās not a track record, if this is maybe more speculative or a longer-term play, we try to vet the path to impact. So we try to look at what are the steps that would be required to get to the long-term goal. How realistic are those steps? Do they logically lead to one another? And what evidence is there about whether weāre on that path, about whether the group has achieved those initial steps? But then there is also some degree of needing to look at plans and just assess plausibly how strong do these plans look? Itās not always possible to pin down the exact numbers. We try as hard as we can to do that, though.
To be clear, the main text of the write-ups of Open Philanthropyās large grants is 1 paragraph across all areas, not just the ones related to animal welfare. However, I wonder whether there would be freedom for a given area to share more information (in grant write-ups or reports) if the people leading it thought that to be valuable.
I think this is a fair criticism. For now, I think the costs to longer write-ups outweigh the benefits. I see the costs primarily as:
The time to write something longer and align with the grantee on acceptable language
The reduced willingness of groups to share confidential info with us if they know it will end up online
The risk that people will take our analysis out of context, e.g. making confident statements based on rough cost-effectiveness analyses
The benefit also feels limited given my sense is that few people would read these write-ups, and most wouldnāt have the ability to move significant funding or org decision making based on them. But feel free to make the case for this in the replies!
For now, I think the costs to longer write-ups outweigh the benefits.
Instead of writing write-ups with a main text longer than 1 paragraph, have you considered asking prospective grantees to share a version of their application which you could publish? By default, the public application could be the same as the private one to save time, but some parts of this could be anonymised or removed at grantees discretion. Manifund does this, and I think it is a nice way of minimising costs while keeping much of the benefits.
The benefit also feels limited given my sense is that few people would read these write-ups, and most wouldnāt have the ability to move significant funding or org decision making based on them.
Do you think GiveWell should also share much less information about their grants? If not, why?
Thanks Vasco. We actually used to share granteesā applications (with their permission) by default. I suspect you can still find them linked on the older grant pages.
My experience was that this significantly limited the information grantees were willing to share in their application, or forced them to create a second application just for sharing. I was also frustrated at how often these were taken out of context. For example, the meat industry used the Guardianās proposal to us to fund content on factory farming (which we posted) as evidence that the Guardian was biased and just in this for the money.
Iām not sure if GiveWell should share less info. But Iād note that theyāre in a very different position to Open Phil, in that their aim (as I understand it) is to influence individual donors through rigorous analysis. If I thought we could positively influence the donations of lots of individual donors through longer write-ups, Iād probably think it was worth us doing them.
Do you think Open Philanthropyās animal welfare grants should have write-ups whose main text is longer than 1 paragraph? I think it would be great if you shared the cost-effectiveness analyses you seem to be doing. In your recent appearance on The 80,000 Hours Podcast (which I liked!), you said (emphasis mine):
To be clear, the main text of the write-ups of Open Philanthropyās large grants is 1 paragraph across all areas, not just the ones related to animal welfare. However, I wonder whether there would be freedom for a given area to share more information (in grant write-ups or reports) if the people leading it thought that to be valuable.
I think this is a fair criticism. For now, I think the costs to longer write-ups outweigh the benefits. I see the costs primarily as:
The time to write something longer and align with the grantee on acceptable language
The reduced willingness of groups to share confidential info with us if they know it will end up online
The risk that people will take our analysis out of context, e.g. making confident statements based on rough cost-effectiveness analyses
The benefit also feels limited given my sense is that few people would read these write-ups, and most wouldnāt have the ability to move significant funding or org decision making based on them. But feel free to make the case for this in the replies!
Thanks, Lewis!
Instead of writing write-ups with a main text longer than 1 paragraph, have you considered asking prospective grantees to share a version of their application which you could publish? By default, the public application could be the same as the private one to save time, but some parts of this could be anonymised or removed at grantees discretion. Manifund does this, and I think it is a nice way of minimising costs while keeping much of the benefits.
Do you think GiveWell should also share much less information about their grants? If not, why?
Thanks Vasco. We actually used to share granteesā applications (with their permission) by default. I suspect you can still find them linked on the older grant pages.
My experience was that this significantly limited the information grantees were willing to share in their application, or forced them to create a second application just for sharing. I was also frustrated at how often these were taken out of context. For example, the meat industry used the Guardianās proposal to us to fund content on factory farming (which we posted) as evidence that the Guardian was biased and just in this for the money.
Iām not sure if GiveWell should share less info. But Iād note that theyāre in a very different position to Open Phil, in that their aim (as I understand it) is to influence individual donors through rigorous analysis. If I thought we could positively influence the donations of lots of individual donors through longer write-ups, Iād probably think it was worth us doing them.