I want to make the biggest positive difference in the world that I can. My mission is to cause more effective charities to exist in the world by connecting talented individuals with high-impact intervention opportunities. This is why I co-founded the organisation Charity Entrepreneurship to achieve this through an extensive research process and incubation program.
Joeyđ¸
Karma: 8,785
ExÂpecÂtaÂtions Scale with Scale â We Should Be More Scope-SenÂsiÂtive in Our Funding
I think a semi-decent amount of broadly targeted adult-based outreach would have resulted in me finding out about EA (e.g., I watched a lot of TED Talks and likely would have found out about EA if it had TED Talks at that point). I also think mediums that are not focused on a given age but also do not penalize someone for it would have been effective. For example, when I was young, I took part in a lot of forums in part because they didnât care about or know my age.
I think that EA outreach can be net positive in a lot of circumstances, but there is one version of it that always makes me cringe. That version is the targeting of really young people (for this quicktake, I will say anyone under 20). This would basically include any high school targeting and most early-stage college targeting. I think I do not like it for two reasons: 1) it feels a bit like targeting the young/ânaive in a way I wish we would not have to do, given the quality of our ideas, and 2) these folks are typically far from making a real impact, and there is lots of time for them to lose interest or get lost along the way.
Interestingly, this stands in contrast to my personal experienceâI found EA when I was in my early 20s and would have benefited significantly from hearing about it in my teenage years.
Joey âs Quick takes
Yes, reasonable points. I do think that there is a mediating size variable here. E.g., for organizations with sub-$1m budgets, having the knowledge that others would/âcould donate if you need it might be more optimal than diversifying, due to the time costs of doing so. I do think the x2 time is a lower bound, as some funders might take ~x10 more time, and you are more likely to put up with them if you are seeking diversification.
I think people model this in theory more often than it happens in practice. Three reasons why:
The total funding pie is pretty fixed; I expect it to be quite rare to grow it.
It could be that the next org on the list is much worse, but normally, if they are funding something effective, there is a non-random reason they came to the top of the list. I think itâs more common that a funder has different valuesâe.g., they are supporting global health and mental health, and you have a strong view that the one you are working on is significantly better (of course, someone working on the other would say the opposite). But I think that seems a bit immodest/âmorally presumptuous to then treat this counterfactual as massively different based on a pretty debatable value call.
You could, in fact, recommend your funding to go somewhere else with high EV (thus making the counterfactual higher). E.g., if someone says, âI like AIM, I want to give it $1m,â and I say, âSorry, we have no room for funding, but have you considered X charity? It is also really good and hits similar ground.â This is not possible in every fundraising situation, but it is doable, and if I know an opportunity that I think is $-for-$ better than AIM, I have been pretty successful at redirecting funding that would go to AIM there.
I think the suggestion here makes sense, although I likely have a more pessimistic model of funder (and charity, for that matter) rationality. E.g., I expect a charismatic but equally talented charity founder to have ~2x the fundraising ability, even in EA. This creates a bit more noise in the system and makes me inclined to set higher bars to compensate for it.
FundÂing DiverÂsifiÂcaÂtion is a Tradeoff
I think it depends quite a bit on the quality of the CEA. I would take a sub-5-hour WFM as more useful than a sub-5-hour CEA every time. At 50 hours, I think it becomes a lot less clear. CEAs are much more error-prone and more punishing of those errors compared to WFMs, thus the risk of weaker CEAs. We have more writing on WFMs and CEAs that go into depth about their comparative strengths and weaknesses.
I also think the assessment of GW as CEA-focused is a bit misleading. They have four criteria, two of which they do not explicitly model in their CEA, and many blog posts express their skepticism about taking CEAs literally (my favorite of these, though old).
ThinkÂing About DeÂciÂsions as a Weighted FacÂtor Model
We would not accept the next funder down the list so the relative to nothing bar is the correct bar to use.
Hey Vasco,
This is a complex question. I wouldnât say it has literally resulted in founders who meet our criteria not getting into the program, as we prioritize at a slightly higher level. However, the practical shift has been a change in AIM staff focus, moving from outreach/âresearch toward mid-stage funding and philanthropic ecosystem-building. On a smaller scale, I think it has made us more likely to discourage experiments or founders who have some potential but are less promising than other projects (e.g., solo founders).
I also donât think the bottleneck is really AIMâs funding itself. Itâs more related to the size of the ecosystem we are bringing charities into. For example, it might cost AIM around $150k to get a charity started, plus $150k for seed funding. That $300k is an enabling factor, but the charity may require that level of support each year for the next three years. So itâs more about the $900k gap in the mid-stage ecosystem than direct funding for AIM. One potential solution I see is funding circles (meta write-up here, circles we started here).
Taking all of this into account, I think a reasonable proxy would be around $1M per year donated to mid-stage/âAIM charities, which would be worthwhile versus one additional founder. However, I think the variance across cause areas is substantial (it could be half this for animals/âmental health and double for global health, or even four times higher for EA meta). I also think personal variance changes things a lot. For example, a top-third founder, I would say, would be twice as expensive as an average one.
Hey, short response, but indeed youâre right; HIP came out of this report/âidea. I agree that there is still room for another charity in this area, focusing on ETG/âE2G+. Even though we have already done an Effective Giving program and Founding To Give, both of which are also in that direction.
FundÂing CirÂcles: An AIM Guide to imÂprovÂing donor coordination
BuildÂing backÂwards: How to get more peoÂple into imÂpactÂful, high abÂsorbency careers
Hey Vasco,
Quick response below as I am limiting my time on the EA forum nowadays. I am far less convinced that life saving interventions are net population creating than I am that family planning decreases it. Written about 10 years ago, but still one of the better pieces on this IMO is David Roodmanâs report commissioned by GiveWell.
In addition, our welfare points are far less certain estimates when compared to our global health estimates. This matters a lot, e.g., I would regress weaker CEAs by over 1 order of magnitude even from the same organization using similar methods, and it could be 3+ orders of magnitude across different orgs and methods. AIM in general is pretty confident e.g. that our best animal charities are not 379x better than a top GiveWell charity even if a first pass CEA might suggest that.I think for externalities you can get yourself pretty lost down a rabbit hole based on pretty speculative assumptions if you are not careful. We try to think of it a bit like the weight quantitative modeling described here and only include effects that we think are major (e.g. 10%+ effect after uncertainty adjustments on the total impact). We also try to take into account what effects we expect founders considering these ideas would most likely consider to be decision relevant for them.
In general I think we aim to be more modest about moral estimates (particularly when they are uncertain or hotly debated) and try to recommend the peak intervention across different cause areas without making a final verdict. I also think this call in our case does not reduce our impact as there are pretty natural caps to every cause area, e.g., I do not think the animal movement could effectively absorbed 10 new charities a year anyways.
I hope this is helpful!
Best,
Joey- AmÂbiÂtious ImÂpactâs cost-effecÂtiveÂness esÂtiÂmates sugÂgest the best inÂterÂvenÂtions in anÂiÂmal welfare are much more cost-effecÂtive than the best in global health and deÂvelÂopÂment? by (Oct 11, 2024, 4:32 PM; 25 points)
- 's comment on A Case for VolÂunÂtary AborÂtion Reduction by (Oct 19, 2024, 12:57 PM; 4 points)
- 's comment on Cost-effecÂtiveÂness analÂyÂsis of Lafiya NigeÂria intervention by (Oct 31, 2024, 11:22 AM; -1 points)
Large scale animal funding is in a worse state compared to global health. https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââGFkzLx7uKSK8zaBE3/ââwe-need-more-nuance-regarding-funding-gaps
Joining another CE charity is pretty common, as is working at EA meta-orgs (AIM, GiveWell, etc.). I would guess that around 75% do something most people would regard as very high impact.
Agree regarding external marginal funding, but I would say, at least in AIMâs case, this correlates with early-stage success.
Personally, I do not think we have swung too far on this. Even in the AIM/âCE cohorts (from which both of the recent public shutdown posts came), I still think people err too much on the side of keeping projects running when they are not performing.
I think how to think about shutting down projects comes down a lot to counterfactuals. Itâs not that a project could not work or definitely will fail; itâs about how good a marginal bet it is. Every dollar and high-talent hour going into the project could, in theory, be going somewhere elseâoften somewhere with pretty high impact. When I think about a cohort of 6 charities founded out of AIM, after 2 years, I would expect shutting down the bottom 2 and having the staff/âfunding join the top 2 would result in far more impact for the world. That would result in a ~33% shutdown rate, which is way above what happens in the charity world and about double what happens in AIM right now.
Mostly basing this on the macro data I have seen that seems to suggest giving as a % of GDP has stayed pretty flat year to year (~2%).