Maybe I am extending Khorton’s point but in addition to this simple calculation it might be interesting to consider the marginal counterfactual impact of your operations. I imagine that most of the $300k raised would have been raised for other longtermist causes like the EA long term future fund or similar donation opportunities.
Do you have some reasonable evidence for actually having “grown the pie” and added to the overall donation volume?
Otherwise your marginal impact would be the expected value difference to other donation opportunities like EA funds, which I expect to be somewhat close to zero (e.g., you make the analogy to EA funds yourself in the post).
This is a really hard analysis to do because it’s very hard to assess what the money would have been spent on counterfactually- see my comment above to Khorton.
My subjective impression is that the $75k for the Better Science campaign was heavily skewed towards EA donors and would have gone to EA causes anyway. However, assuming returns to research this might have still improved the quality of donation within the EA community, which counterintuitively can sometimes be more effective than growing the pie.
However, the $200k raised for the climate change campaign was heavily skewed towards non-EA donor and perhaps the counterfactual here were less effective charities or even conspicuous consumption.
I imagine that most of the $300k raised would have been raised for other longtermist causes
Certainly this is true of some of the money raised, but much of it came through us getting exposure to the broader public (read: non-EAs) on Vox; it’s not likely that those funds were otherwise destined for longtermist causes.
I’ll come back to you with a more detailed breakdown of donors by source.
Maybe I am extending Khorton’s point but in addition to this simple calculation it might be interesting to consider the marginal counterfactual impact of your operations. I imagine that most of the $300k raised would have been raised for other longtermist causes like the EA long term future fund or similar donation opportunities.
Do you have some reasonable evidence for actually having “grown the pie” and added to the overall donation volume?
Otherwise your marginal impact would be the expected value difference to other donation opportunities like EA funds, which I expect to be somewhat close to zero (e.g., you make the analogy to EA funds yourself in the post).
Yes, excellent question.
This is a really hard analysis to do because it’s very hard to assess what the money would have been spent on counterfactually- see my comment above to Khorton.
My subjective impression is that the $75k for the Better Science campaign was heavily skewed towards EA donors and would have gone to EA causes anyway. However, assuming returns to research this might have still improved the quality of donation within the EA community, which counterintuitively can sometimes be more effective than growing the pie.
However, the $200k raised for the climate change campaign was heavily skewed towards non-EA donor and perhaps the counterfactual here were less effective charities or even conspicuous consumption.
Certainly this is true of some of the money raised, but much of it came through us getting exposure to the broader public (read: non-EAs) on Vox; it’s not likely that those funds were otherwise destined for longtermist causes.
I’ll come back to you with a more detailed breakdown of donors by source.