Hiya! I work on data stuff at CEA. I used to be the content lead on the EA Global team at CEA, and before that I did economic consulting. Here’s an old website I might update at some point.
Think I’m making a mistake? Want to give me feedback? Here’s my admonymous. You can also give feedback for me directly to my manager, JP Addison.
Kind of curious if you looked into this—obviously no pressure to share before you’re ready though, I was just scrolling through some old comments :) Good luck on your work!
Oh! Well I’m sorry for spreading misinformation :) Thanks for the correction!
Quick pushback: overhead is a part of the costs needed to make this product (good management is needed to keep systems running)[1] and ignoring that leads to weird conclusions.
e.g. I think under some versions of your view, if donor A pitches in $50k for a stunner, and then donor B pitches in last $5k, you give donor B all the credit. (Obligatory Nuno ref.) I might be misunderstanding you, apologies if so.
There’s a nearby thing about how “not all overhead costs are necessary program costs” or something, and I probably buy that multiplying by [total costs] / [program specific costs] might not be the right way to apportion overhead.
Good luck with fundraising! :)
One nit: SWP’s cost effectiveness numbers don’t seem to include any operational overhead in the denominator (see the CEA, where you’re only counting the cost of the stunners).
I understand you’ve fundraised for overhead separately, but IMO it should be best practice to include overhead costs in your denominator — obviously someone would have to cover those costs! Thought came from this thread with Vasco.
I’d be curious for the overhead inclusive costs if that was quick — maybe as a proxy, you can multiply by [total org costs] / [non operational costs]? :)
Edit: I think I was just wrong about this, per Aaron’s response here :) Whoops!
Small to medium nit: the costs reported in the SWP CEA you are using as a base don’t seem to include operational overhead (e.g. see Aaron’s comment that the stunners cost $55k, which is the same as the total cost reported in the CEA).
I understand SWP has fundraised for overhead separately, but IMO it should be best practice to include overhead costs in your denominator — obviously someone has to cover those costs, it’s not like they don’t exist!
@Greg_Colbourn just out of curiosity, did you end up pursuing this? I’d be interested in hearing how it went, if so — no pressure!
Thank you for the thoughtful reply!
I’m curious if you have general advice (top 3 tips? common mistakes?) for EA orgs who are just starting to experiment with more marketing.
No pressure, of course!
I was so excited to hear about you joining the team, @KarolinaSarek🔸! This is a great update, thank you!
Yeah, your second comment is the message I meant to convey :)
Woah, those are some impressive speakers! Nice work!
Light musings, I work with Ollie but am sharing personal thoughts only.
I overall feel sympathetic to the argument that folks should consider supporting meta orgs, and I find the “tipping” model interesting! E.g. I liked this post about effective giving :) But I have some pushback.
Take the example of university groups. My model is that groups can change pretty dramatically over time due to organiser turnover. Alumni who think their university group positively impacted their trajectory would almost definitionally be funding an entirely new set of organisers by the time this impact has been realised. I have a strong prior that organiser fit is one of the most important variables in how successful a group is. So in many cases, I think you should model the current EA group at your alma mater as a pretty different project, with a less strong track record than you might think.
I think the above is a specific application of a general problem:
The EA meta ecosystem changes pretty quickly, and smaller projects change more rapidly than large ones
Success stories usually come with pretty long lag times — It takes years for people to change their minds about important questions, decide to take action, and for those decisions to actually cache out into doing good for the world.
By the time someone has gone through this transition, the ecosystem has probably changed enough that the project which first helped them along might not recognizably exist anymore, or new meta projects might have an even greater impact.
I think this all means I’m more sceptical than Ollie that the tipping model is the right approach, even though I agree it has nice qualities :) I expect this idea works better for long standing projects (e.g. city and national groups) that experience less turnover, or meta projects with shorter lag times for impact. I could see myself changing my mind here!
Based on this, it appears shrimp welfare was an area affected by this, and that TNF has filled SWP’s funding gap until the end of 2026.
I’d be interested in updates about funding for the welfare of smaller animals in general!
Good luck finding a good volunteering project! Consider reaching out to 80K for advice? ( https://80000hours.org/speak-with-us/ ) I wonder if they might have a good sense of which orgs might be excited to use your support.
Woah!!! Those are some awesome impact stories 😱 I found the top three particularly impressive.
“Recruiting ~220 participants for BlueDot Impact’s courses, including employees from OpenAI, Meta’s RLHF team, and the WHO Assistant Director General”
That’s wild! Nice job!
I personally am a fan of the “both/and” approach to praise :)
I like it when people celebrate their favorite contributors, I think this is a great thing about the Forum! This also genuinely feels pretty rare for an online community IMO!
I think leaving a quick positive comment on posts you like, e.g. “I enjoyed reading this post, thanks!”, is an underrated move (even if you have nothing substantive to say) :) — as a post author, I’ve really appreciated these.
I would also love for people to highlight folks they think are going under-recognized & are making significant contributions.
My main uncertainty re: the specific debate question is whether the AW space can absorb an extra $100m in funding anytime soon (e.g. within the next 5 years).
This seems pretty relevant from the perspective of the ecosystem, but much less relevant to the choices I face as an individual person / donor.
So the question as written is not the one I care about most for my personal decision-making.
I’m mostly interested in whether I should be donating differently. In the past few years, I’ve given a substantial chunk of my donations to animal focused charities.
A lot of that is motivated by being bought-in on the general importance of focusing on non-human animals (particularly small animals), as opposed to ‘near-term’ human welfare (via global health interventions).
I could imagine reducing my animal focused donations if any of the below happened:
I changed my mind on the importance / tractability of prioritising welfare improvements for smaller farmed animals (currently what I’m most excited about within the AW space).
E.g. I haven’t delved into the two envelopes problem as much as I’d like, and I’m worried this might change my mind if I understood this better?
This is a potential crux because I feel substantially more confused about the current marginal ROI of corporate campaign work for larger animals + wild animal focused work.
This is mostly because I haven’t spent much time digging into these areas.
I thought the marginal animal giving opportunities no longer looked that great.
There are some unusually good GH giving opportunities I haven’t been tracking right now. E.g. I think some of the EA-driven accomplishments with lead exposure have been incredibly exciting.
I have a general worry that using the donation decision protocol of “FIRST choose a cause area to focus on, and THEN choose the interventions to support” is not quite right and might lead to missed rare opportunities.
Mostly this seems probably fine from the perspective of an individual donor though. E.g. I’m not aiming purely to maximise the impact of my donations, I’m also aiming to bound the time I spend figuring this out.
I’m not sure yet where I’d give if I updated negatively on the marginal ROI of AW donations. I’d want to think about this more.
I don’t think I’d change my job in the short term based on this question alone. But it seems plausible this might change what I focus on within my job.
<3 This is so lovely @Allan_Saldanha! I think it is such a lovely and remarkable thing about our community that so many people have been quietly living their lives and just giving their 10, 20, 40, 75(!) percent to causes they care about, some now over the course of 10+ years. “Generous and thoughtful giving is normal here” continues to be one of my favorite facts about EAs :’)
Thanks for doing this AMA!