I think that donating directly to the top charities might reducing funging (at least slightly) by affecting GiveWell’s information flows and ability to forecast—thereby reducing the chance that All Grants money gets freed up for this sort of potential animal donation program. Worst case, it’s a symbolic act against speciesism. What do you think?
AdamA
Karma: 160
Thanks, Vasco. I have no problem at all with GiveWell focusing on human welfare. I am opposed to donations of animals as a means of doing so, though, and I think that GiveWell should only consider this if they update their moral weights to account for the welfare of animals.
You’re probably right, but especially when it comes to estate planning (I can’t adjust based on the latest facts once I’m gone), I would really prefer 100% certainty.
Yea, let’s hope so. I’m primarily worried about direct donations of animals.
I hope so! But I think that as a potential livelihood program, this would come out of the All Grants Fund, not the Top Charities Fund, so the bar may be lower. And I worry that donating to the Top Charities Fund in this scenario would reduce the amount of flexible All Grants money GiveWell needs for top-charity gaps, thereby indirectly funding donations of animals.
Thanks, Jason. My concern is fungibility across buckets. I assume livelihoods (incl. any animal-based programs) won’t be funded via the Top Charities Fund, but do TCF inflows still reduce the amount of flexible All Grants money GiveWell needs for top-charity gaps—thereby freeing flexible dollars for non-TC opportunities (potentially animal-based)?
True! My worry is that giving to the Top Charities Fund (as I have been) might indirectly enable animal-based programs in the All Grants Fund because of fungibility.
I think that’s accurate. Not currently funding any of these, but they could as part of livelihood programs.
Thanks, Katriel. My concern isn’t that a GiveWell program would create the worst possible conditions; it’s that using animals as “productive assets” builds in certain, programmatic harm (tethering/work, painful procedures without analgesia, disease risk, separation of family members, and an endpoint of slaughter) while GiveWell’s current moral weights assign animals zero weight. Even if smallholder conditions are “better,” the harm is still intentional and guaranteed by the program design.
There’s also a scale effect: if a livelihoods program is successful, the economic logic pushes toward higher densities, so welfare can deteriorate over time. And the relevant counterfactual for GiveWell isn’t “factory farm in the U.S.”; it’s an animal-neutral livelihood or health intervention that achieves similar human benefits without guaranteed animal suffering.
All I’m asking for is a procedural guardrail: until GiveWell has publicly considered animal moral weights, please don’t fund animal-based aid.
Values-wise, I also firmly hold that sentient beings like non-human animals aren’t resources for us to deploy.