Eevee🔹

• Eevee🔹Apr 28, 2025, 9:12 PM

  20 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: Reflec­tions on the $5 Min­i­mum Dona­tion Bar­rier on the Giv­ing What We Can Plat­form — A Stu­dent Per­spec­tive from a Lower-In­come Coun­try.

  You can donate to AMF via PayPal Giving Fund on this page and to Giving What We Can here. Currently, 100% of the donation amount goes to charity, as PayPal covers all payment processing fees on donations through this portal. I haven’t tried making a small donation recently, but it looks like there is no minimum amount you can donate, and users regularly make $1 donations through the Give at Checkout feature. (Caveat: These links may only work in certain countries.)

  I’ve included a screenshot below of the user interface for when you donate, though I didn’t complete the checkout so I don’t know if it’d work.

  

  (Disclosure: I worked at PayPal from 2021 to 2024.)

• Eevee🔹Apr 24, 2025, 10:34 PM

  24 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: eve­lyn­ciara’s Shortform

  I’ve been thinking a lot about how mass layoffs in tech affect the EA community. I got laid off early last year, and after job searching for 7 months and pivoting to trying to start a tech startup, I’m on a career break trying to recover from burnout and depression.

  Many EAs are tech professionals, and I imagine that a lot of us have been impacted by layoffs and/​or the decreasing number of job openings that are actually attainable for our skill level. The EA movement depends on a broad base of high earners to sustain high-impact orgs through relatively small donations (on the order of $300-3000)—this improves funding diversity and helps orgs maintain independence from large funders like Open Philanthropy. (For example, Rethink Priorities has repeatedly argued that small donations help them pursue projects “that may not align well with the priorities or constraints of institutional grantmakers.”)

  It’s not clear that all of us will be able to continue sustaining the level of donations we historically have, especially if we’re forced out of the job markets that we spent years training and getting degrees for. I think it’s incumbent on us to support each other more to help each other get back to a place where we can earn to give or otherwise have a high impact again.

Should some philan­thropists give coun­ter­cycli­cally?

• Eevee🔹Apr 14, 2025, 7:12 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Cullen 🔸’s comment on: eve­lyn­ciara’s Shortform

  I was thinking of a different organization, but thanks!

• Eevee🔹Apr 11, 2025, 1:50 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: eve­lyn­ciara’s Shortform

  Does anyone remember which EA org lets people specify in their wills that they are leaving money to effective charities?

• Eevee🔹Mar 26, 2025, 5:06 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: I made an in­fo­graphic for the In­tro­duc­tion to Effec­tive Altru­ism post (feed­back wel­come!)

  Great work!

  Please note, if you copied substantial portions of the “Intro to effective altruism” article, you should include a link to the CC-BY 4.0 license in your PDF, as it is required by the license terms. This helps inform users that the content you used is free to use. Thanks for helping build the digital commons!

More vir­tual/​hy­brid EAG(x) par­ti­ci­pa­tion op­tions?

[Question] What are typ­i­cal pay­ment terms for a grant-funded pro­ject con­tract?

• Eevee🔹Jan 14, 2025, 6:20 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The ugly sides of two ap­proaches to charity

  Great piece! I noticed that you wrote “Goldstein” a few times.

• Eevee🔹Jan 12, 2025, 8:44 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  I think this is a really thoughtful and constructive critique – thanks for sharing! I think you raise a great point about varying the depth of due diligence needed for donors based on the volume of their donations.

• Eevee🔹Jan 10, 2025, 11:12 PM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  Larks, I’ve noticed that your comments on this post focus on criticizing the specific rules in the CC donor policy document that I shared as an example for other EA organizations to consider. You rightly point out that some of these rules might be impractical for EA orgs to follow. However, I feel frustrated because I think your responses have missed the point of my original post, which was to highlight the value of having a written donor screening policy, and to offer the CC document as a resource that other orgs can legally copy and adapt to their own needs (under the CC-BY license), rather than to recommend that others adopt the policy verbatim.

  I would appreciate it if we could keep the conversation focused on discussing the broader idea of implementing donor screening policies or processes for EA orgs, rather than getting bogged down in the specifics of this document tearing down this specific policy without suggesting alternatives. By focusing on the bigger picture, we can ensure that EA organizations develop systems that promote transparency and trust, especially in light of past controversies such as FTX. I think this approach would help build more confidence in the community, while still allowing for flexibility in implementation.

  If you have thoughts on how these policies or processes could be better adapted to fit the needs of EA organizations, I’d be glad to discuss them here. I hope we can continue this conversation in a collaborative and constructive way.

• Eevee🔹Jan 10, 2025, 9:26 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  Also, what makes PopVax “high-risk” according to CC’s criteria, in your opinion?

• Eevee🔹Jan 10, 2025, 9:23 AM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: huw’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  Is this what you have in mind?

• Eevee🔹Jan 10, 2025, 9:13 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

  I just posted the CC policy as an example of a donor screening policy, and by posting it I don’t necessarily endorse its exact contents. As you helpfully pointed out, the terms of this policy could be overbroad and burdensome, and would have to be adapted to the different context in which EA orgs operate.

  “a $10k donation from a Palantir employee would simply be totally prohibited”

  First, many EAs donate a lot more money ($1-10k/​year) than the average non-EA donor, so $10k would likely be on the high end for a gift to CC but typical for an EA org. So I think the threshold for an EA org to scrutinize a donor should be much higher than CC’s threshold - $50-100k might be appropriate.

  Second, by “totally prohibited” I think you are referring to the section on exclusionary criteria. The most relevant criteria for your Palantir example might be these ones:

  the Donor’s involvement in:

  1. The manufacture or sale of arms, including any direct or indirect involvement in the manufacture or sale of illegal or controversial weapons;

  2. International crimes; this encompasses International crimes as defined in treaty and customary law, which include violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and violations of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), such as crimes against humanity, genocide, torture; as well as other international crimes such as piracy, transnational organized crime, human trafficking, financing of terrorism, amongst others;

  Even if taken literally, this would only apply to Palantir employees who work directly on weapons systems or any software that is being used to commit violations of international law (such as war crimes). Palantir has branches that work with the private sector, and most employees there would likely be exempt.

  That said, if it applied to literally all employees who worked on a particular project at Palantir, it’s probably too broad. Taking money from rank-and-file employees of Palantir (or any large tech company) is unlikely to bring CC into disrepute, but taking money from a senior executive might. (That said, there is a group trying to disparage the events startup Partiful based on its founding employees’ connections to Palantir, though it’s hard to say how much influence they will have.)

  Decisions are taken after thorough examination of such Donation [emphasis added]

  As @huw suggested in another comment, this could be outsourced to an organization or team that can do centralized donor vetting and risk scoring for the whole EA community. Impact Ops comes to mind (and in fact does this).

Sam­ple donor screen­ing guidelines (by the Creative Com­mons org)

• Eevee🔹Dec 27, 2024, 5:33 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: OpenAI’s new structure

  Our impact is not just what we create ourselves, but how we influence others. In part due to our progress⁠, there’s vibrant⁠ competition⁠ in the space, from commercial products similar to ChatGPT to open source LLMs, and vigorous innovation⁠ on⁠ safety⁠.

  Color me cynical. OpenAI cites its own, Anthropic’s, and DeepMind’s approaches to AI safety. However, Meta has also expressed an ambition to build AGI but doesn’t seem to prioritize safety in the same way.

• Eevee🔹Dec 27, 2024, 5:11 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: eve­lyn­ciara’s Shortform

  EA Forum Wrapped 2024 👀

• Eevee🔹Dec 20, 2024, 10:22 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EA Fo­rum au­dio: help us choose the new voice

  Thanks for all your hard work on the audio narrations and making EA Forum content accessible!

  Question: Do you intend to license the audio under a Creative Commons license? Since EA Forum text since 2022 is licensed under CC-BY 4.0, all that’s legally required is any attribution info provided by the source material and a link to the license; derived works don’t have to be also licensed under CC-BY. However, to the extent that AI-generated narrations can be protected by copyright at all (e.g. in the UK and Hong Kong), it seems appropriate to use CC-BY, or maybe CC-BY-SA to enforce modifications being under the same terms.

• Eevee🔹Dec 19, 2024, 12:06 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Prize Money ($100) for Valid Tech­ni­cal Ob­jec­tions to Icesteading

  PayPal as in PYUSD or fiat money sent thru PayPal?

• Eevee🔹Dec 5, 2024, 2:40 AM

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Xing Shi Cai’s comment on: Fac­tory farm­ing as a press­ing world problem

  EA Forum posts since 2022 are licensed under CC-BY, so they are free to use. If you want to translate any portions of the 80k page that aren’t part of this forum post, you should ask them.