EA Meta for 7 years!
COO of Ambitious Impact (previously Charity Entrepreneurship).
Co-Founder of High Impact Professionals. We enable working professionals to maximize their positive impact by supporting them in donating their time, skills and resources effectively.
Ex-CTO and MD of Germany for Founders Pledge. Big on promoting Effective Giving.
Originally from New York, living in Berlin.
@Federico Speziali and I both originally looked into support for this cohort of folks, but I ultimately got more pessimistic on it for two reasons:
There were fewer people doing E2G than I thought.
Those who were doing E2G were giving less than I thought.
I came to the view that those E2Gers giving significant amounts (100K+ letâs say) were an order of magnitude lower than Iâd hoped (maybe 50 instead of 500) and also that they were already known to the community for the most part and already pretty much maximizing their impact.
There could be room for an org that tries to bring more folks like this into the fold, but I am a bit pessimistic that it would be successful, as many EAs purport to do E2G and give smallish sums, and if card-carrying EAs who are saying they do E2G arenât doing that much on average, I donât think those unfamiliar with EA would likely convert to high-giving E2Gers. They might learn about EA and then E2G and then take it up, and we already have a pipeline for that.
I should say I wouldnât want to dissuade others from working on this as despite what I said I think this is underexplored on the margin and could bear fruit with some cheap experiments, but I think it is important to relay my true take here as well, even if it is a bit negative.
Should also note that GWWC is looking into this a bit so they might have a take they want to add.
What areas would you like to see EAs dedicate more of their human capital to?
What is EA getting the most wrong?
My hot take is that vegan alternatives generally just donât get to scale where the marginal unit cost is low.
Wow, amazing work!
Thanks for the great work as usual. This is a very good snapshot of where people are at.
I would love to see an analysis that normalizes for meta funds flowing into causes areas. In @Joel Tanâs recent Meta Funding Landscape post, he states that OP grants 72% of total meta funds and that the lionâs share goes to longtermism.
From his post:
And although the EA Infrastructure fund supports multiple cause areas, if you scroll through the recent grants you might be surprised at the percentage going to LT.
Funders should, of course, prioritize the cause areas they want, but I hope to make it clear to people that when a vast majority of funding goes to prop up one area, it should be no surprise that that area has lots of adherents that advocate it.
Normalizing some of this data for meta-funding received would show that, among other things, GH&D is on top DESPITE a significant LT funding advantage.
Hey Hauke, really interesting and importantâthanks!
A quick note:
The next $1k/âcap increase in a country at $10k/âcap is worth only 1/â10th as much as in a country with $100k/âcap, because, the utility gained from increasing consumption from $1k to $10k is much greater than the utility gained from increasing consumption from $11k to $20k, even though the absolute dollar amounts are the same.
The claim in the part I bolded should be reversed, no? E.g. Increasing $1K where GDP/âcap is $100K is worth 1/â10th as much...etc.
I think one of the major problems I see in EA as a whole is a fairly loose definition of âimpactâ.
I find the statement is more precise if you put âlongtermismâ where âEAâ is. Is that your sense as well?
I continue to be impressed by the Effektiv Spenden team. Well done everyone!
To me, based on what you said, you have provided a lot of value to many people at relatively low cost to yourself. I have the impression that the time was quite counterfactual given you didnât seem to have many burning projects at the time. So, seems pretty good to me on the face of it although for every given detail you know way more than I do!
I continue to be impressed by the breadth and depth of stuff you and the rest of the CE team pump out, seemingly on a monthly basis!
Really excited by this and all of the work the CE team has been pumping out!
Quick question regarding programming: You say the first month is about learning and the second about applying, but that the course is 11 weeks. What is the extra time dedicated to?
Strong agree with this. Most EAs would probably agree with these points abstractly, but there is likely a gap in that (I believe) most EAs have not e.g. taken the GGWC pledge.
Hey David, thanks for the question. I just want to chime in from High Impact Professionalsâ stand point.
High Impact Professionals has two main products, both of which are geared at getting professionals into more impactful roles. These are:
- Talent DirectoryâWe have a talent directory with over 750 impact-oriented professionals looking for work at high-impact organizations and over 100 organizations sourcing from it. We encourage both professionals and organizations to sign up. I think this doesnât have much overlap with SuccessIf, except with their matchmaking work, where weâd be excited if they matchmade using our talent directory as a source.
- Impact Accelerator ProgramâWe are currently running a 6-week program geared towards helping professionals form and execute on an impact plan, with a focus on identifying and removing barriers to impact. Participants meet weekly to discuss progress on their impact plan and take part in a mastermind session where they discuss current barriers. Iâd say this program has decent overlap with Successifâs programs, especially the peer support and overcoming barriers aspects.
I think one difference as I understand it is that SuccessIf is mostly focused on AI/âLongtermist work in terms of resources dedicated to those areas, whereas HIP is cause neutral in the sense that it doesnât seek to prioritize a particular cause area. But Iâll let Claire elaborate here.
I just want to say thank you for being courageous and sharing this and also sorry that you had to/âhave to go through this.
This is really great to hear!
Can I ask roughly how much it costs to commission such a report? Iâd love to see more investigations into different organizations to get more robust data on how impactful they are.
Great to hear! It was on my agenda to reach out to you today and I appreciate the proactivity!
I agree with you and also want to push back on the meme that âall the good stuff gets fundedâ.
Iâd be very surprised if the downside of the initiative were significant in any way, but it seems like the upside potential is quite high, so Iâve included it in all of my social media.
If you perceive any sort of downside from it, you can always remove it again.