Iâm the Finance Director at Animal Charity Evaluators. I co-founded and co-led EA Madison (Wis.) and have been involved in effective altruism since 2013.
Gina_Stuessyđ¸
Karma: 196
How many chicks per year will Egg Innovationsâ change save? (The announcement link is blocked for me.)
Thanks for writing this up!
I asked Chase (our orgâs bank) about the money market sweep option, and they said theirs is not a money market sweep, but an investment sweep, going through funds with JP Morgan, and itâs NOT FDIC-insured. The funds could increase or decrease in value; itâs a risk just like investing is. Other than those differences, it sounded similar to what you were writing about.
Were you actually writing about a couple different things, or is there a way to find an FDIC-insured option like this?
I agree we should try using accessible language (when it doesnât compromise our message). It makes our ideas more easily spread to people from various backgrounds (e.g. not just tech people), non-native English speakers, younger people, etc.
I think itâd be great if more EA orgs made this an official part of their style guides/âvoice guidelines/âsimilar. Was just thinking about this again when I was reading an 80k piece (https://ââ80000hours.org/ââ2023/ââ05/ââmoderation-in-doing-good/ââ) that used the term âsandboxesâ, when âtest environmentâ is probably clearer to a wider audience.
âAvoid âsex sellsâ tacticsââthe link there doesnât work.
Re: others organizing special events on the forum--
I think if CEA came up with a process for that, which included CEA promoting the event organized by a non-CEA person, that might help this happen.
There could be a âforum special eventâ form, where someone can suggest a theme, write up a description, and get feedback from CEA on it. Maybe the feedback would be to clarify the description, or to suggest a specific time for the event to be synchronized (or not) with related other events. E.g. if thereâs an insect welfare conference happening at time X, it might work well to have an insect welfare forum fortnight soon after that.
And then the promotion could be to include the event announcement in the EA Newsletter or pin the announcement post to the home page of the forum for a bit.
Formatting thing: you may have meant to indent some bullets under âWork on any single area can gain from our working on multiple areas:â
I think this b/âc it ends with a â:â
From my basic understanding of Open Phil, it does seem like Dustin & Cari have given up the reins to a large extent? Open Phil has hired lots of staff who are making the granting decisions, although maybe Dustin & Cari have a large influence over the cause areas.
Cool, thanks for doing this!
Iâm curious to know the main differences in purpose between this and the Impactful Animal Advocacy newsletter. One obvious one is that the latter is monthly and via email and this is more frequent and on the forum. Other differences?
Thanks for offering these fellowships! I have a couple questions:
Are they still ongoing; is there a new form people can use to apply?
Would you be open to supporting small remote EA orgsâ ~weeklong staff retreats in the Bahamas?
I agree re: ârareâ v âobscureâ. âObscureâ to me means weird (in a negative way) in addition to uncommon. âRareâ just means uncommon. Diamonds (non-synthesized) are valued highly because theyâre seen as rare, for example. People donât use the word âobscureâ to describe diamonds.
That said, neither word may turn out to be good to use in advertising.
There are at least ~70 EA-aligned or adjacent organisations (including national/âlocal/âuniversity groups)
Did you mean to say not including national/âlocal/âuniversity groups? There are about 300 national/âlocal/âuniversity groups (according to Ben West at CEA), and I would guess ~70 is about the number of orgs which identify as EA-aligned.
Hi Elliot, I would agree that organizing a single small meetup is pretty simple, low risk like you said, but organizing an ongoing, engaged group of people who are excited to show up again and again, and encouraging them to make high-impact life changes (like changing their area of study, career, or donating significantly) is much harder. At least it was for me. It takes ongoing motivation/âcommitment, good organizing skills, fresh ideas for activities or discussion topics, etc. I think we did pretty well for a few years but then moved across the country. Iâm appreciative of the folks who picked up coordinating the group, but do think it was challenging for them as well.
All that said, there are some great resources out there (like Catherine Low, as you mentioned), a Facebook group for group organizers, etc. So itâs definitely doable for someone who can make that ongoing commitment. Iâd just be wary of pitching it as a very simple thing to do. Organizers should be aware of what theyâre getting into if they want to have a long-lasting successful group :)
Animal Charity Evaluators accepts secure donations of a variety of cryptocurrencies via The Giving Block from anonymous donors or smart contracts: https://ââthegivingblock.com/ââdonate/ââanimal-charity-evaluators/ââ
Agree on all points :)
And thank you, again, for bringing up this issue of acceptance.
Thank you for posting. Iâm sorry to hear that some people in the community have been made to feel excluded or ânot EA enoughâ, and agree with ideas already shared above about how the community can behave better.
I generally agree with Aaronâs comments above, and just had a few points that I donât think people have already made:
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our general countermeasure is to think long and hard about potential missed opportunities and candidates for cause-X, trying to study and map ever greater territories⌠But is it the most efficient strategy to explore the space of opportunities? I suspect that in many cases you canât really see very clearly the full utility of acting in some space until you actually try to do it.
I agree that we shouldnât just think about other cause areas, but jumping into working on them directly is sort of on the other extreme, pretty costly. I think people wanting to assess other cause areas that seem promising should research their history, accomplishments, failures, etc. and talk to some of the key people working in those areas. I hope and expect that people working on cause prioritization are in fact doing something like this.
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From the perspective of the entire EA movement, it might be a better strategy to allocate the few individuals who possess the rare âEA mindsetâ across a diverse set of causes
As new potentially high-impact causes are identified, I agree, and think that this is happening. For causes which weâre pretty sure are generally not as high impact, I think that EAs will most likely do more good by working within priority causes rather than working to âlift upâ lower priority causes. This is based on my understanding that causes can vary in effectiveness by ~100x or more. There are surely exceptions though, where a certain intervention change in a âlow priorityâ cause area could have a huge impact, and itâd be exciting if we found more of those opportunities.
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Minor point here, but:
If we are in the business of giving career advice to wider publics
FWIW, 80k is not in that business. They say, âOur advice is focused on people who have the good fortune to have options for how to spend their career, and who want to make helping the world one of their main goals. We especially focus on college students and graduates living in rich countries like the U.S. or U.K. who want to take an analytical approach to doing good.â
ďOur thinkÂing on our recomÂmenÂdaÂtion of Wild AnÂiÂmal Initiative
Iâm part-time/âhourly, so have been tracking my time for years, âclocking outâ for short and long breaks. Iâve averaged about 6.2 hours/âday since the beginning of 2020 (to pick a random period of time). That excludes paid leave (holidays, PTO, sick).
I recall hearing from Alex Barry at the EA Summit a couple years ago who, at the time, was leading Cambridge EA (iirc) and they had an absolutely incredible rate of engagement from volunteer organizers/âmembers contributing time to the EA groupâs events and activities. And huge numbers of them. IIRC, he said the key for them was to have one basic requirement: the organizers had to commit to checking and responding to Slack daily. That way, theyâd know write away if someone didnât have time to keep working on something, and theyâd quickly find someone else to do it.
There are a few ways which allow me to get involved in other areas of our organization:
All of our Lead staff have weekly meetings, so in those meetings I can reflect on questions other Leads bring to the group, contribute ideas, etc.
Our whole team tries to allow pretty good visibility of what weâre working on by keeping project- or task-related information in the appropriate place in Asana and by posting brief weekly project updates in Slack.
We have a âreciprocityâ Slack channel where we can post if weâd like someoneâs help on something, and that can often be someone from a different competency area than the posterâs.
We encourage staff to join projects as Scrum Master, even if the project is outside their competency area
Thanks for writing this! It convinced me to do the investment sweep option for my org, and itâs definitely been worth it so far.