Thanks for your post. I’m not exactly part of the EA “community”—I’ve never met someone who was an EA in person, but, at least from people’s online presences, it seems like EA leaders are generally thoughtful, earnest, and open to feedback. I hope your post will be some feedback they’ll consider.
From what I’ve seen of this community so far, I suspect that some EA’s reluctance to support your work could stem from a couple of things:
People don’t like to feel “duped”—I’m not saying you’re trying to pull one over on them, but there’s “safety” in just going with what GiveWell or some other EA vetting organization recommends. I know I wouldn’t feel good if I thought my donations were going to support corruption. So maybe think about how you could better establish credibility—perhaps ask some EA’s if this is a factor and what you could do to allay their fears (honestly, this may be tough, since the prevalence of online scams has made many people pretty skeptical of anything they only interact with online, although Remmelt’s comment seems like an example of something that could give one more confidence).
People don’t want to be wrong—this is related to #1, but instead of worrying about whether your organization is legit or not, it’s a question of if it’s the “best” thing for them to support it over other organizations. Again, it probably feels easier to trust that EA vetters know what they’re doing in their analyses of how to do the most good. I like a lot of what I’ve seen of GiveWell, the EA organization I’ve most looked into, but I personally feel they’re missing a couple of big chunks of the puzzle (and the real world is a hard puzzle, in my opinion). One big chunk is something your organization might bring to the table, but which can be difficult to quantify, namely, promoting personal responsibility and, in turn, self-esteem building due to the taking of more responsibility for oneself. I’m not sure what else you could do to help people see that your organization could be “better than its EA numbers” due to this effect, but from my end, I’ll keep trying to convince people in this community (as here) that it’s a real and significant effect, and hopefully it’ll start to catch on at some point (or someone will convince me I’m wrong, which is always a possibility).
Note that these are just my own “outsider” impressions of EA, and I could very well be mistaken, but I hope this comment might be helpful to both you and EA’s in your efforts to do more good.
Hi Sean, thanks so much for this really insightful message, and the things you have pointed out.
I just want to note two things:
1). Although I am now asking EA to help the UCF raise support, my original EA critique (which I made two years ago) was aimed at getting EA to change the way they work with the extreme poor and their local grassroots orgs in the global south as a whole, not just my own organization (the UCF).
2). As regards my own work at the UCF, a few people from The Life You Can Save, one of the EA charity evaluators, physically visited us in Namisita (Kamuli) in 2023, and even toured some sorghum fields of the local farmers that the UCF works with.
I believe their motivation to visit us was my EA critique, because their proposal to visit didn’t come from me. It came from them. Here are a few photos from that visit (I am the one putting on a black cap in those photos):
Thanks for your post. I’m not exactly part of the EA “community”—I’ve never met someone who was an EA in person, but, at least from people’s online presences, it seems like EA leaders are generally thoughtful, earnest, and open to feedback. I hope your post will be some feedback they’ll consider.
From what I’ve seen of this community so far, I suspect that some EA’s reluctance to support your work could stem from a couple of things:
People don’t like to feel “duped”—I’m not saying you’re trying to pull one over on them, but there’s “safety” in just going with what GiveWell or some other EA vetting organization recommends. I know I wouldn’t feel good if I thought my donations were going to support corruption. So maybe think about how you could better establish credibility—perhaps ask some EA’s if this is a factor and what you could do to allay their fears (honestly, this may be tough, since the prevalence of online scams has made many people pretty skeptical of anything they only interact with online, although Remmelt’s comment seems like an example of something that could give one more confidence).
People don’t want to be wrong—this is related to #1, but instead of worrying about whether your organization is legit or not, it’s a question of if it’s the “best” thing for them to support it over other organizations. Again, it probably feels easier to trust that EA vetters know what they’re doing in their analyses of how to do the most good. I like a lot of what I’ve seen of GiveWell, the EA organization I’ve most looked into, but I personally feel they’re missing a couple of big chunks of the puzzle (and the real world is a hard puzzle, in my opinion). One big chunk is something your organization might bring to the table, but which can be difficult to quantify, namely, promoting personal responsibility and, in turn, self-esteem building due to the taking of more responsibility for oneself. I’m not sure what else you could do to help people see that your organization could be “better than its EA numbers” due to this effect, but from my end, I’ll keep trying to convince people in this community (as here) that it’s a real and significant effect, and hopefully it’ll start to catch on at some point (or someone will convince me I’m wrong, which is always a possibility).
Note that these are just my own “outsider” impressions of EA, and I could very well be mistaken, but I hope this comment might be helpful to both you and EA’s in your efforts to do more good.
Hi Sean, thanks so much for this really insightful message, and the things you have pointed out.
I just want to note two things:
1). Although I am now asking EA to help the UCF raise support, my original EA critique (which I made two years ago) was aimed at getting EA to change the way they work with the extreme poor and their local grassroots orgs in the global south as a whole, not just my own organization (the UCF).
2). As regards my own work at the UCF, a few people from The Life You Can Save, one of the EA charity evaluators, physically visited us in Namisita (Kamuli) in 2023, and even toured some sorghum fields of the local farmers that the UCF works with.
I believe their motivation to visit us was my EA critique, because their proposal to visit didn’t come from me. It came from them. Here are a few photos from that visit (I am the one putting on a black cap in those photos):
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07941.jpg
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07951.jpg
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07943.jpg
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07945.jpg