david_reinstein

Karma: 576

I am a ‘Senior Economist’ at Rethink Priorities (https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/our-team)

Podcasts: “Found in the Struce” https://anchor.fm/david-reinstein

and the EA Forum podcast: https://anchor.fm/ea-forum-podcast (co-founder, regular reader)

My previous and ongoing research focuses on determinants and motivators of charitable giving (propensity, amounts, and ‘to which cause?’), and drivers of/barriers to effective giving, as well as the impact of pro-social behavior and social preferences on market contexts.

I’m working to impact EA fundraising and marketing; see https://daaronr.github.io/ea_giving_barriers/index.html, innovationsinfundraising.org, and giveifyouwin.org.

Twitter: @givingtools

david_reinstein 27 Nov 2021 20:50 UTC
1 point
in reply to: sreers’s comment on: Experience with Donation Matching Initiatives?
Essentially yes. I was giving my impression of the consensus of the academic literature, partly from memory. But I’m fairly confident in my memory of this, and you can see the citations in that resource.

david_reinstein 27 Nov 2021 18:48 UTC
7 points
on: Notes on the risks and benefits of kidney donation
Maybe worth considering: would there be a way to donate a kidney in exchange for the recipient making a large donation to an effective charity?

david_reinstein 22 Nov 2021 1:06 UTC
2 points
in reply to: trammell’s comment on: 2-week summer course in “economic theory and global prioritization”: LMK if interested!
Yes, it makes sense to first play with this in a flexible way, to figure out what works best and holds together best.

But I would love to see your notes and think about ways to incorporate and organize them. (For me ‘markdown syntax raw text’ files are best … but whatever you can share is great).

By the way, I assume you are familiar with DRB’s reading syllabus—An introduction to global priorities research for economists

david_reinstein 21 Nov 2021 0:06 UTC
1 point
on: Differences in the Intensity of Valenced Experience across Species
Audio fans: I read the first half of this into the Found in The Struce podcast HERE

… will also cross-host on EA Forum podcast

… second half coming soon.

david_reinstein 20 Nov 2021 3:51 UTC
4 points
on: 2-week summer course in “economic theory and global prioritization”: LMK if interested!
I’d be interested in these materials. I’ve wanted for a while to help integrate this into an open source web textbook. (Something like THIS, but more EA oriented)

david_reinstein 15 Nov 2021 22:23 UTC
2 points
in reply to: PeterSlattery’s comment on: New Effective Thesis services and opportunities to get involved
I think that there are strong reasons to give awards to the ‘best work’ as well.

For example:
- It will help EA research orgs with vetting
- It will give ‘top performing students’ a strong reason to go for this, and for their universities to encourage it

david_reinstein 13 Nov 2021 15:37 UTC
1 point
on: EAs should be careful with jargon
I’d suggest
1. Continuing to build the EA forum wiki as the canonical source of definitions of these terms, with links/citations. Link to this whenever possible.
2. Adding explicit “disambiguations” to the definitions there, starting with pasting in the ones you mention here

david_reinstein 11 Nov 2021 14:50 UTC
1 point
in reply to: WilliamKiely’s comment on: Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)
FB promo: Wasn’t it something like “we will donate the first $1”?

david_reinstein 11 Nov 2021 14:49 UTC
3 points
in reply to: WilliamKiely’s comment on: Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)
Just some quick counterpoints to consider, in weighing whether to post ‘update: funds still available’:
- the match amount might be increased again
- something like this may occur again in future, and it may be good to be aware of it
- I’m curious how close to ‘fully taking advantage of this’ we can come
- 85k seems fairly substantial in comparison with some ‘money/action’ things that get attention on EA Forum (epistemic status: not so sure about this)
- you could probably combine this with the “here’s how it went” post … without much loss, and also get more feedback on questions surrounding ‘why is it that EAs were able to get so much of these funds’

david_reinstein 9 Nov 2021 20:40 UTC
3 points
in reply to: WilliamKiely’s comment on: Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)
I also worry that if our EA efforts fade, some other non-EA group will discover this and pick up the slack.

Worth your/our making another ‘update’ post on this as a CtA?

Could also be noted: If you don’t have much money to donate now, you can still

Get $25 free for signing up with a link like yours (and another $25 to the ‘linker’).

Donate $10 to each of a handful of charities and ‘aggregators’ of these (like Founders Pledge and GiveWell) and get the $10 match, $5 for adding bank details, plus a $10 addition from copying the social media link, and a few more bucks from ‘liking’ donations.

So, e.g., “you can get $215 in donations for just $50!)” … might be a good pitch for the less cash-liquid in our midst.

25 + 25 + 5*(10 + 10 + 10 + 3)

david_reinstein 9 Nov 2021 20:08 UTC
2 points
in reply to: WilliamKiely’s comment on: Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)

The difference is just that the Facebook match is far more competitive (approximately a million people make a donation of Facebook on Giving Tuesday each year)

Why do you think the FB GT match is so much more popular. Is it just more prominent? That sort of goes with my proposed HA1.

david_reinstein 9 Nov 2021 20:07 UTC
1 point
in reply to: WilliamKiely’s comment on: Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)

Point 3 above also suggests that the number of people interested in the match is clearly limited.

If it’s this, and not lack of awareness, it’s bizarre. Millions of Americans donate small-ish amounts to eligible charities each year. They could increase the amounts the charities receive, or reduce their out-of-pocket donations ‘for free’.

If Amazon.com was having a ‘spend $100 on each store, get $100 more for free’, this would be used up in a sneeze. Can it be that people really only care about the amount they sacrifice and not the amount the charities get?

Alternative hypothesis HA1: Most relevant people are not aware of this match HA2: People don’t trust it, it seems ‘too good to be true’ HA3: People think “it’s not really getting free money/free charity, because if I don’t take advantage, an equally good charity/donor will do

Of these, only HA1 seems plausible to me.

In fact, even within EA the number of people interested is limited. This Forum post has not dropped off the front page of the EA Forum as of November 8th and yet the number of new EAs participating in the match has continually decreased each day since November 2nd and is now quite low.

How is this possible? Isn’t it an easy gain for GWWC and other pledgers? Do we all have such high value of time that the small effort involved here doesn’t merit the $400-$4000 (oom) gain from giving to an overlapping set of charities we care about?

david_reinstein 9 Nov 2021 0:15 UTC
2 points
in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)
… I was also thinking about this in the sense of “from the individual EA donor’s point of view, is the match really counterfactual/marginal if it’s capped? If it’s all going to end up captured by other EA charities then individually it may not be counterfactual, but collectively among EAs it still is..

david_reinstein 9 Nov 2021 0:13 UTC
3 points
on: Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)
I’m wondering how it was we in effective altruism more able to capture so much of this?
- Is it that every.org is EA affiliated and somehow gave us an early scoop?
- Or is it we are the main group of smallish donors that really care about the amount the charities receive and thus pay attention to these things
-… on the second point, you might think that Facebook giving Tuesday match is a counter example, as most of that ends up going to jonEA charities. However, FB giving Tuesday is heavily publicised.

david_reinstein 8 Nov 2021 13:24 UTC
1 point
on: Experience with Donation Matching Initiatives?
I’ve also been encouraging HIP and others to try to keep a systematic record of what works in convincing employers and mainstream organisations to support effective charities in their CSR and employee matching activities. … Or at least to not limit their charity support to local (and usually less effective) organisations.

You can see some of my earlier thoughts and attempts to try to get this knowledge sharing going at innovationsinfundraising.org. I think it may be a good project for HIP to take the lead on?

david_reinstein 8 Nov 2021 13:21 UTC
1 point
on: Experience with Donation Matching Initiatives?
Some quick thoughts… Seem e.g. innovationsinfundraising.org

The evidence suggests that donation matching may not actually lead to people who donations are matched to necessarily donate more out of their own pocket.

However, it could be that by advocating donation matching you get more donations In total, as the idea of donation matching motivates the matcher to give more as well.

david_reinstein 8 Nov 2021 0:56 UTC
3 points
on: What Makes Outreach to Progressives Hard
Also, I wanted to ask for more evidence for “EAs tend to reject person-affecting views of population ethics”.

I am personally fairy sympathetic to this view, at least in a common sense moderated version as suggested by Michael st Jules. I know some prominent voices (Wiblin) seem to favor the totalist view, but my impression is that they typically they moderate this with “but even if you have other views of population ethics we think the recommendations are similar”.

david_reinstein 8 Nov 2021 0:51 UTC
2 points
on: What Makes Outreach to Progressives Hard
Perhaps overlooked take? (Somewhat echoing other commenters, though)

US politics is supremely polarised. Those self-identifying as progressive are mainly motivated by opposing the right, and vice versa.

EA doesn’t particularly focus on labelling the biggest issues as problems that are the “fault” of the right (or left).

Thus our reasoned and goal-driven approach will leave people on each side cold.

But conversely, I think some of the steps suggested, could, at the very least, make outreach to people to the right of center or (‘anti-woke’) more difficult.

E.g., “ commitment to using my class privilege…” narratives.

david_reinstein 7 Nov 2021 18:18 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Dvir Caspi’s comment on: Proposal: alternative to traditional academic journals for EA-relevant research (multi-link post)
which one?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GFISlF5TieCuA6jDYkYlNWaEpuEYrr_zTmaVpTfBg4A/edit#heading=h.iqq0k5uqyg8x

https://bit.ly/unjournal

https://app.gitbook.com/o/-MfFk4CTSGwVOPkwnRgx/s/-MkORcaM5xGxmrnczq25/plan-of-action

david_reinstein 5 Nov 2021 22:55 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Dvir Caspi’s comment on: Proposal: alternative to traditional academic journals for EA-relevant research (multi-link post)
Thanks. Watch this space and also https://freeourknowledge.org/.