I’ve successfully founded and grown two nonprofits from scratch, each reaching $1M+ budgets. These were The Center for Election Science and Male Contraceptive Initiative. I first learned about EA in 2016 and went to my first EA event in 2017. My formal education is in the social sciences and law. You can find my writing and resources at www.aaronhamlin.com.
aaronhamlin
Karma: 576
aaronhamlin’s Quick takes
Seeking Volunteers for Analyzing Voting Data and Accessing Academic Articles
AI Disclosure Ballot Initiative (and voting method)
Donation Opportunity: A Pivotal Moment for Voting Reform
The funding to gather the signatures wasn’t there. The main thing is just money and that tends to be why Irv campaigns take off instead. Money. Happy to talk with folks about supporting specific campaigns. Feel free to reach out.
While I support approval voting and election reform, I unfortunately can no longer personally recommend funding for this organization.
Note that funding was not sufficient to be able to move forward for this campaign. Feel free to reach out to me for other statewide funding opportunities.
The implementation keeps the primaries throughout the state as-is.
Right now, Missouri’s primaries are “open” in the sense that you must vote within a party, but you can choose which party at any time. This would stay the same, but in both the primary and general, approval voting would be used. The campaign chose this system-wide change as the easiest option.
Additionally, approval voting would allow for independents to be viable candidates in the general.
Transforming Democracy: A Unique Funding Opportunity for US Federal Approval Voting
Adding the link to CES was meant as a way of showing the need, but I don’t think it was taken that way. Removing to keep the focus on the poster’s idea and avoid my appearance of self promotion.
I consistently recommend Fidelity to others when talking about DAFs. Here’s an article I did on DAFs.
Why Fidelity Charitable?They’re the largest DAF in the world and have efficient internal processes. They approve pretty much everything and if it’s new or controversial to them, they get back to you quickly.
They make direct transfers to the charity’s bank account. You don’t want some check just flying around. Many banks send off paper checks. No need for that nonsense.
They also handle cryptocurrency, which is nice. There may be some extra paperwork, but it’s largely quite useful.
Their fees are low. If you quickly donate from your account anyway, there’s nothing to really get hit with. If you leave funds in there, minimal investments should cover any fee. Remember that the job of a DAF is not to have it sit around and make more money. You do that with investments before they go into the DAF.
They make it easy to transfer assets to the DAF from other banks. If you use Fidelity already, it’s even easier. They even have a tool that lets you see the most tax-efficient stocks to give (It looks at the most appreciated stocks you’ve held over a year).
Bonus tip:
Don’t forget to set a charitable beneficiary for your DAF, just as you can do for any other financial account.
If you like, I talk with lots of folks on technical aspects of giving, particularly as it also relates to balancing practical considerations like retirement. Feel free to message me.
You can also check out a number of essays I’ve written on this topic: https://www.aaronhamlin.com/articles/#philanthropy
I know our team isn’t super excited by this switch by Every.org. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
This is a big need for a lot of organizations, including ours at The Center for Election Science. We’re looking for especially well networked candidates, particularly those who could help with funding bottlenecks. We use committees to do internal board duties. See our board posting here: https://electionscience.org/join-our-board/
Hi Adam,
I think your response fairly addresses the concerns I initially raised, and I appreciate your effort there. Thank you for the delicate response.
“I am skeptical whether CES will be able to have much influence at the federal level . . .”
It’s worth mentioning that CES highlighted that approval voting was able to be used for US House, US Senate, Presidential general, and Presidential Primaries with state-wide ballot initiatives. This information seems to be missing in the write-up and instead states that it doesn’t influence Federal elections.
The write-up also seems to portray local-level reform is CES’ only goal. Again. we provided feedback on this issue. We also corrected the review on the cost efficiency, which is incorrect.
We hope that our feedback is more fully considered in future reviews and that this doesn’t dissuade others from supporting our critical work.
Job Title: Director of Operations & Outreach
Organization: The Center for Election Science
Location: Virtual (US Based)
Salary: $65,000 + great benefits
More info and application process in the link: https://electionscience.org/ces-updates/were-hiring-a-director-of-operations-and-outreach
Within a week would be best as the opening closes within a few weeks.
We’re hiring at the moment at The Center for Election Science for an operations director. We are open to EA and non EA applicants alike. We’d like to be able to pay more than $65K with a larger budget but we provide good benefits and are transparent. We are constantly trying to improve our process. If you have any feedback, feel free to share.
https://electionscience.org/ces-updates/were-hiring-a-director-of-operations-and-outreach/
Ethical Implications of AI in Military Operations: A Look at Project Nimbus
Recently, ‘Democracy Now’ highlighted Google’s involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion initiative to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government, including military applications. Google employees have raised concerns about the use of AI in creating ‘kill lists’ with minimal human oversight, as well as the usage of Google Photos to identify and detain individuals. This raises ethical questions about the role of AI in warfare and surveillance.
Despite a sit-in and retaliation against those speaking against the project, there has been little visible impact on the continuation of the contract. The most recent protesters faced arrest. What does this suggest about the power of AI in the hands of governments and the efficacy of public dissent in influencing such high-stakes deployments of AI use?