Anecdotally, the match did lead a non-EA friend of mine to make a BTC gift she otherwise wouldn’t have. So it could still lead to more 2021 giving to GD overall.
jared_m
Karma: 532
Ah, well—you can see how even the agreeable Forum norms you aren’t directly responsible are enhanced by association with you!
Hope your final 1.5 Forum-wrangling weeks are smooth ones.
Agree that GAP is a great cause for small U.S. donors! Their team is approaching the opportunity in a sophisticated way.
We’ve given to GAP twice this fall, and expect to give more this winter / next year.
Empathetic, welcoming — and a lively, wise writer. Even Aaron’s commenting guidelines (↓) are warm and concise.
Your guiding voice will be missed here, Aaron. We look forward to cheering your EGQ and OP work next year!
Completely agree with the thrust of this post.
I do have one small phraseology suggestion here:
I’d especially encourage ‘medium’ donors (e.g. people who might donate $200k - $2m per year) to think seriously about making ‘angel’ donating a significant focus e.g. choose an area to specialise in and spend 1-2 days per month on research...
You might reconsider labeling this group as ‘substantial’ donors (rather than ‘medium’ donors) given the historic average of <$10K/year for EA donors. That survey data suggests the $2M donor level is likely close to the far right end of the donor distribution. There may be a risk that framing the $200K-$2M range as ‘medium’ raises eyebrows and undoes some of the goals of the post. Given efforts to reduce legacy ETG-centric perceptions of EA from the 2010s, I worry this tack could rub those new to EA the wrong way. The average donor may be surprised to learn EA orgs perceive a $1.99M/year donor as medium-sized. They may wonder if a ≤$199K donor would be a small donor, and perhaps a ≤$99K donor is extra-small and (core message of this post aside) near-inconsequential? If a donor with a typical income perceives four- or five-figure annual donations as a source of real financial anxiety — but perhaps ‘extra-small’ in the lights of EA leaders — that may be demoralizing, and reduce their warm glow for making future donations at that scale in the future.
One point I really like is:
making donations also helps to build the effective altruism community, since it’s a hard-to-fake symbol that we’re serious about doing good, and that helps to get more people on board.
For new and small-scale charities, I also hope there’s a warm glow on the recipient side when individuals chip in $100 here and there to smaller meta and other charities via opportunities like this.
If you are looking to donate to CEA, the Every.org donation matching program still has $60K in matching funds available (for a 1:1 match up to $100 [USD]).
No time like the present to convert 100 USD for CEA into 200 USD! The link to CEA’s giving page on Every.org is here.
For those interested in the work Michael Kremer (Giving What We Can member and 2019 Nobel Laureate in Economics) and his spouse and fellow GWWC member Rachel Glennerster have done on COVID-19 vaccine supply, our team profiled one of their co-authors this week — Juan Camilo Castillo of UPenn. An excerpt is below / the link is here: https://innovationexchange.mayoclinic.org/market-design-for-covid-19-vaccines-interview-with-upenn-professor-castillo/
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JCC: Michael Kremer had worked on groundbreaking pneumococcal vaccine research in the past. Early in 2020, he realized there would be a profound need for research into financing COVID-19 vaccines. He thus reached out to several people and put together a team of economists that included some of his former colleagues and some new people (such as myself).
At the start of our work, we saw that some of the hurdles that had to be cleared to develop a vaccine were no longer a problem, since phase I and II clinical trials were already underway for several vaccine candidates. However, we realized that it would not be easy to translate successful trials into large-scale vaccination quickly, since few steps had been taken to set in place the capacity to manufacture vaccines. So we focused our work on financing large-scale manufacturing capacity that would allow for quick, large-scale vaccination as soon as vaccine trials were successful.
Cute animal cards never hurt. We bought a mug last winter with the logo of the cause we gave the most to in 2020. It has been a nice reminder of that giving, and well worth the price. (Proceeds from the mug also went to that cause.)
A few other “end-of-year ritual” thoughts:
1. Outdoor rituals, paired with giving: holiday walks (or kicking a soccer ball around) have made our holidays more memorable. We live near a beach, so giving to environmental and animal welfare charities over coffee feels more meaningful right after watching chipper coastal birds racing around the surf2. Movie or story rituals, paired with giving: without debating her politics, I think there’s a potentially nice model in Elizabeth Warren’s annual NYE viewing of Casablanca with her husband. As she has shared several times: “It’s a story about love & sacrifice, & also how people survive & fight back. Every time we watch it on New Year’s, it gives me hope.” Stories or movies like Casablanca can give one a sense of a) ennobling solidarity, b) perspective that making effective donations and reducing one’s bank account is both great to do, and an easier lift for us than (say) fighting totalitarianism has been for many
+1. This was fun, it was a great excuse to bring up some EOY giving by a month — and your instructions were ultra-clear. Thank you, William!
Congratulations on the launch, Jan-Willem!
Good luck in the final months of 2021 and the new year—and if/when you expand to the Americas, feel free to drop me a line. Would be happy to chat and share any resources that may be helpful.
Thank you for sharing this, Peter. My old organization brought Hauser’s and Green’s group — The Management Center — in for a training session in 2019. It was excellent. TMC also has plenty of free resources on its website, for those who are interested. I’ll check out the book this winter.
Will be interested to see if Training for Good (which sounds very promising) also adopts any of TMC’s free resources. TFG looks like it’s mainly focused on EMEA audiences and time zones, while I’m not sure if TMC is well-known outside North America. There may be potential for valuable cross-pollination of best practices, etc.
Agreed: I also started with the CATF episode today, and look forward to moving on to the 80K, GWWC, and Singer episodes in the weeks to come!
Thank you for sharing this question, more better!
As someone whose day job involves some work at the intersection of climate change and public health, I’m curious to learn more about your work. Would you feel comfortable sharing a bit more about your / your group’s work and goals for the coming months and years?
Thanks again for kicking off a great question and discussion.
On another global health note, eligible U.S. residents may be interested in these 10+ newly posted roles on USAID’s COVID-19 Task Force. The Task Force has some fantastic people on it — and a friend at USAID has enjoyed the pace at the agency under Samantha Power.
Roles and application instructions here: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/614447700
Thanks for sharing this write-up, and I look forward to learning more at the 10⁄12 call.
I also chipped in via the ActBlue link — and would encourage other U.S. citizens thinking about their 2021 and 2022 effective giving to do the same. Contributions also have a greater impact earlier in the election cycle (e.g., in fall 2021 versus fall 2022) so there’s no time like the present.
Our Mayo Clinic team featured Charity Entrepreneurship alumna and Giving What We Can member Dr. Lucia Coulter and the Lead Exposure Elimination Project on our blog several weeks ago.
Links here, for those interested!
Congratulations, Aryeh!
Look forward to following your work.
Thank you for this post!
Would add this plug for ex-consultants interested in GCBRs and global health interventions: consider opportunities at well-resourced academic health systems. Examples in North America include Cleveland Clinic, Mass General Brigham (the umbrella for many of Harvard Medical School’s teaching hospitals), Mayo Clinic, UCSF, and UHN in Ontario.
To pick one institution: if you go to this Jobs page and enter “strategy” in the keyword search, a number of roles oriented toward ex-consultants and/or those with MBAs and other business experience will pop up.
This list may give an idea of other opportunities in your region: https://www.newsweek.com/best-hospitals-2021
Coming out of this interview, I really look forward to seeing the work Open Phil pursues around air quality in Asia. Those interested in this topic may enjoy following:
- This Asian Development Bank project with insurers Prudential, etc., to finance the early closure of coal-fired power plants across the continent
The work of EPIC India, a program of the air quality- and climate-focused Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, on their YouTube channel
Helping to stand up this emissions trading scheme in Punjab is a characteristic project
Several EAs have accurately updated prominent individuals’ bios (e.g., the profile of Michael Kremer) to highlight their founding roles in Giving What We Can — or other notable EA affiliations.
I can’t take credit for those additions, but think they are smart, consistent with the spirit of Wikipedia, and worthwhile.