I run the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH), a cause prioritization research and grantmaking organization.
Joel Tan🔸
Karma: 1,909
Hi Vasco,
(1) In hypertension/salt reduction policy, CEARCH (in collaboration with the donors we advise) has made 150k in grants (specifically, projects advocating for—and assisting governments in implementing—reformulation policies to reduce sodium in food).
In diabetes/soda taxes, CEARCH has made 63k in grants (specifically, technical assistance to improve enforcement of and compliance with SSB taxes).
(2) For the the bigger GW grantmakers, I’m unsure how much I can share given confidentiality, and I don’t want to falsely give the impression that these grantmakers have already developed any specific views/positions/recommendations in this area, but I think I can broadly share that:
(a) FP previously asked us to help evaluate two large global NGO that worked on salt policy, with a specific focus on trying estimate the counterfactual advocacy success rate of salt policy advocacy campaigns (it’s about 10%). We ended up making a positive recommendation, particularly for RTSL and its salt reduction work. Note that FP already supports RTSL’s trans fat reduction work.
(b) GiveWell is currently considering making a salt grant to RTSL, but I understand it’s exploratory in nature (see how this goes, then follow-up from there). They have also done some internal CEAs of SSB taxation projects; I think their major concern (a frustration shared by us) relates to high uncertainty over the existing GBD estimates of the SSB burden (n.b. the estimates changed wildly from one iteration of the GBD to the next, and it’s not clear to us how or why the methodology changed). FWIW, I don’t see any evidence that the GBD estimates are systematically biased (particularly upwards, which would be the main concern), so we’re happy to go ahead.
(3) Broadly speaking, I’ll say that while there is very good reason think that health policy to prevent NCDs is extremely cost-effective (NCDs are a big and growing problem + policy offers large scale of impact at low cost), it’s also very risky, and very much hits-based EV-maximizing grantmaking, which is not something many grantmakers or donors are comfortable with. Correspondingly, we’ve only been able to move about 100k per annum so far in this area (compared to something like mental health, where we helped a partner move 10x that).
Hi Vasco,
Apologies if I didn’t explain clearly. Yes, the 10% estimate from GWWC was used as a sense-check, against our own calculation based on the assumptions laid out above (i.e. 1st decile of funding is 10 units of impact out of 55, 2nd decile is 9⁄55, 3rd decile is 8⁄55 … 8th decile is 3⁄55, 9th decile is 2⁄55, and 10th & final decile is 1⁄55 - and since 70% of the budget is already funded, the remaining 30% is 3+2+1=6 units of impact out of 55).Definitely not scientific, but I wanted to model a smooth decline across each decile of funding, and I ended up not worrying too much as Sjir’s own subjective assessment converging with ours.
Hi Vasco,
Just copying over the analysis from within the spreadsheet:We expect that the typical funding decision will be made in a context where GWWC has already raised—or will likely go on to raise—a meaningful portion of its budget anyway from other donors.
Hence, I discount for diminishing marginal returns, based on (a) the assumption that the initial 10% of baseline funding has 10 units of marginal returns, and marginal returns decline by 1 unit for every 10% increase in baseline funding; and (b) the assumption that GWWC’s funding situation at the end of 2023 (about 70% of baseline budget expected to be secured) is representative of how much funding will usually be left after institutional and other reliable individual donors have made their contributions or have had their expected contributions factored in. In other words, we are assessing the value specifically of filling the last 30% of GWWC’s baseline budget.
Note that we have gotten an independent estimate from GWWC as to the likely marginal value of the last 30% of their baseline budget, and they ballpark it at 10%.
However, the uncertainty is radical; and both we and GWWC expect better calibration once GWWC trials out different pledge outreach strategies over the next year and measures their returns in terms of pledges secured.
Hope that helps!
Hi Vasco,
We ended up deprioritizing this perhaps 2 years ago—I can’t remember the precise reason, but it was something alone the lines of being concerned with tractability and suspecting that the estimates would probably fall, potentially even by a couple of magnitudes, especially given how sensitive they are to even small methodological changes.
Right now, CEARCH thinks that food security policies to mitigate nuclear & volcanic winter (i.e. ALLFED-style work but with more of a policy bent) is more promising; particularly more common-sense asks related to trade, crop relocation, redistribution (rather than technology-focused asks).
As a matter of fact, early this year we finished evaluating project proposals from ALLFED and some other GCR policy organizations for food security/nuclear winter projects, and have been recommending grants to some of our GCR-inclined donor partners. Unfortunately, there’s been no concrete interest so far, and we’ve not been able to move any money in this area, compared to GHD (where we’ve funded or advised the funding of stuff in nutrition policy and mental health). All things considered, nuclear is definitely more neglected within EA compared to AI and bio.
Hope this is helpful, and thanks for the new tags!
Joel
Just to address some of the valid points you raise:
(1) On charity effectiveness: At least in global health & development, GiveWell is considered the gold standard, and they are extremely rigorous in their evaluations—whether in terms looking at the scientific evidence or consulting experts or surveying beneficiaries or crunching the numbers in cost-effectiveness analysis or monitoring and evaluation.
I strongly suggest taking a look at their intervention reports (e.g. on mosquito nets to combat malaria: (https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets) and their CEAs (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18ROI6dRdKsNfXg5gIyBa1_7eYOjowfbw5n65zkrLnvc/edit?gid=1364064522#gid=1364064522), to see just how meticulous and thorough they are, and to judge whether they take into account the concerns you have on corruption etc.
To provide some examples of what GiveWell adjust for, in their typically obsessive way—they adjust for (i) risk of wastage from double treatment/ineffective goods/goods purchased and left in storage till expiry, (ii) risk of misappropriation and of false monitoring, (iii) risk in the charity changing priorities or having non-funding bottlenecks or funging funding between more vs less effective programmes; (iv) % of mosquito nets actually used, (v) coverage years lost due to use of residual nets from previous distributions, (vi) program not having impact because it simply moved distributions closer together, (vii) internal & external validity issues with the randomized control trails used as evidence etc.
(2) On giving now vs later. I think it generally comes down to the following considerations.
(a) Value drift: I do think it’s a real risk that by not donating, you lose the motivation to do so (it’s easy to come up with excuses to put it off, not unlike exercise or dieting or quitting smoking/drugs/alcohol etc) and just end up not giving at all.
(b) Reduced cost-effectiveness over time: For most top GHD interventions available to the public, their cost-effectiveness will decline over time, because economic growth makes countries richer and reduces poverty and disease burdens over time—so if you give later, some of the cheapest ways of saving lives or reducing poverty will no longer exist (e.g. think of how expensive it is to save a life in America vs in the Congo, as an extreme example).
(c) Interest rates—as you point out, saving allows for your donation pool to grow (whether you invest in stocks or bonds or whatever).
Overall, (a) + (b) probably outweigh (c), making it more optimal to give now rather than later.
This might be of interest—goes through the various substantive issues with VSL as a method
Hey Ozzie—the MCF runs biannual grant rounds, and this round also seems to have moved less than the average so far (e.g. see the winter 2023 round which moved about 700k and summer 2024 which moved 2m). In general, I would expect the average annual amount moved to be higher than what was granted this time, but Joey would know more than me.
I know a couple of MCF members, and I understand some are “2nd tier” members—they have access to the applications but I’m not sure if they commit to the annual 100k. @Joey ?
Thanks for the thoughts!
(1) I’m in strong agreement with worries over people leaving/disengaging from EA due to applying for a huge number of jobs and getting disillusioned when not landing any. From my conversations with various EAs, this seems a genuine problem, and there are probably structural reasons for this: (a) the current EA job market (demand > supply); and (b) selection effects in terms of who gives advice (by definition, us EA folks at EA organizations giving advice on EA jobs, have been successful in landing a direct EA job, and may underrate the difficulties of doing so).
(2) On whether the average early career EA should try for E2G—I’m not sure about this. It’s true that they’ve been selected for, but they’re still fundamentally at a big disadvantage in terms of experience, and I’m seriously worried about a lot of selection into low career-capital but nominally EA roles that disadvantage them later on, both in terms of impact and financial security.
In any case, at EAGx Singapore last weekend, I did a talk to a crowd of mainly these early career EAs on having impact with and without an EA career, and I basically pitched trying for an EA job but also seriously considering impact by effective giving in a non-EA job as a Plan B. I think it’s especially relevant for LMIC EAs, who cannot move to the UK/US for high-impact roles (or find it harder to do so).
Hi Alex. It’s a great idea to have this AMA! Hopefully it helps raise more awareness of earning to give as a potential path to impact for more people.
Two questions that I’d be keen to get your views on, and which may be of interest to the community:
(1) How do you balance your earning to give/effective giving commitments with your family commitments? (e.g. in my own experience, one’s partner may disapprove of or be stressed out by you giving >=10%, and of course with a mortgage/kids things get even tougher)
(2) Would you say currently, the median EA should consider trying some E2G (or at least non-EA work while giving significantly) early on in their career?
The main considerations, as far as I see, relate to: (a) the EA labour market (where currently, demand for jobs outstrip supply—so chances of landing a job are low & counterfactual impact relative to next best hire is small); (b) whether money is the bottleneck for EA (it does seem so, at least for GHD/AW—and importantly, you can’t always choose to work at the most effective charities but can choose to donate to them); and (c) miscellaneous issues like financial stability, building career capital, and ability to switch career paths (traditional work in finance/consulting/tech for 1-3 years of E2G seem to be stronger on all three counts, relative to the marginal EA job that a fresh grad is likely to land)
Cheers,
Joel
My own experience, and my sense from talking to other organizations, is that management time is a significant opportunity cost, while the benefit (the work done by the intern) is both highly variable in quality and potentially not that great in expectation—not just because interns may be less experienced, but also because you probably put in fewer resources into the selection process, commensurate to the expected duration, cost and amount of work the intern puts in (all low relative to a full hire).
Some organizations leverage internships better, typically in roles that require time but not a lot of experience/expertise, and that require minimal supervision—but precisely because of that, the internship because less valuable from a talent pipeline perspective (since by definition you already have an existing source of free labour).
I don’t see any strong theoretical reason to do so, but I might be wrong. In a way it doesn’t matter, because you can always rejig your weights to penalize/boost one estimate over another.
I generally agree, and CEARCH uses geomeans for our geographic prioritzation WFMs, but I would also express caution—multiplicative WFM are also more sensitive to errors in individual parameters, so if your data is poor you might prefer the additive model.
Also general comment on geomeans vs normal means—I think of geomeans as useful when you have different estimates of some true value, and the differences reflect methodological differences (vs cases where you are looking to average different estimates that reflect real actual differences, like strength of preference or whatever)
Spectacles do look fairly promising, especially if conventional estimates of the benefits factor in income and not the pure health/sight aspect (depends on how much you think GBD disability weights of vision loss transfer over to myopia)
Yep, the idea is more the former. And While GWWC is mainly OP funded, that’s not entirely the case (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/a8wijyw45SjwmeLY6/gwwc-is-funding-constrained-and-prefers-broad-base-support), and could expand on the margin with individual donor contributions.
The point isn’t specific to GWWC though—rather, I think it’s potentially promising that cause-neutral effective giving organizations have the potential to effectively launder GHD dollars into AW dollars, by persuading GHD donors to support GHD effective giving (rather than persuading them to support animals, which is presumably harder).
This is somewhat offtopic, but getting GHD donors to give to GWWC and other GHD-focused effective giving orgs that also fundraise for AW, is effectively turning GHD dollars (from people who are emotionally uninvested in AW) into AW dollars for ACE et al.
And through this method, no appeal to animals is needed.
Intersectoral reallocation of resources doesn’t mean an overall increase in demand, and hence even influx of labour and capital into YIMBY-initiated housebuilding won’t cause higher inflation economy-wide—if anything, it pushes it down due to expanded supply bringing down rents, and as you note housing is an important part of PCE.
Generally, you would prefer lower interest rates from the perspective of LMICs, because you risk debt crises when high US interest rates intersect with LMIC dollar denominated debts, plus everything from food subsidies to investing in health/education/infrastructure becomes far more difficult.
Hi James, on the South Asian Air Quality portfolio, would be it be fair to say that OP’s grants so far have been focused on research and diagnosing both the problem and potential solutions, rather than executing on interventions themselves? Is the current bottleneck a lack of cost-effective and feasible ideas—and if so, what looks most promising so far?
This is something Sjir’s team and myself have discussed at length—we’re definitely more pessimistic than GWWC on this point.
CEARCH’s view is that the raw numbers look good, but if you regress dollar donated against year since pledging, while controlling for pledge batch (and hence the risk that earlier pledgers are systematically different/more altruistic), there is a positive but statistically insignificant relationship between average annual donations and years since pledging (n.b. increase in 35 dollars per annum at p=0.8). The experts we spoke to were split, with a weak lean towards it increasing over time—some were convinced by the income effects, while others were sceptical that you can beat attrition.
Ultimately, we chose to model a very marginal increase (<0.01% per annum); we’re really not confident that you can reasonably expect an increase in giving over time for the 2025 and future pledge batches.
For how expected donations generated by a dollar evolves over time (ignoring discounts), available evidence suggests that it’s flat (and so the graph is just a horizontal line terminating around 30 years later). There’s a lot of uncertainty, not least on how long the giving lasts, given that we can only observe a little more than a decade of giving at this point.
Hi Vasco, I made a consolidated comment here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/k7NjuGEKdRSrrJHmZ/deep-report-on-hypertension?commentId=weQHRcDt53BkCuLct