This year I’m planning to meet with a friend to make a shared donation decision.
Before meeting up I want to create a longlist of potential places to donate to. I’m open to charities in any of the main EA cause areas, as well as evaluators / funds, and smaller projects that aren’t yet established.
What are good places to crowdsource a list from?
The role of the EA movement in the case of FTX seems surely to meet the level of influence for some of the impact win’s that EA has had so far here.
Perhaps most prominently, the movement:
Gave the idea of ‘Earning to Give’ to Sam
Provided a primary motivation to Sam and other FTX leadership to build the exchange
For example, when comparing to the case of Sendwave, the influence seems at least comparable and if not larger e.g. played a motivational role in founding a company, for the purpose of improving the world. (I’m not familiar with Wave’s founders motivations, so could be wrong here)
In welfare terms alone, the impact of FTX’s collapse on it’s customers seems plausibly comparable to some of the impact win’s of the movement to date. I.e. of the order of $1bn in lost funds. Given this, I think that an honest impact evaluation of the EA movement would include the harm caused to customers through FTX’s collapse.
This is relevant not for blame assignment, but because it’s very decision-relevant to EA’s mission of improving the world. For example, when in the future deciding how much to emphasise harm avoidance when encouraging the (good and novel) idea of Earning to Give.