Pet peeve: For posts relevant to the US only, state it. Preferably in the title.
Karla Still šø
Karma: 217
[Question] Why is āanĀiĀmal welfareā more comĀmon in EA than āanĀiĀmal rightsā?
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing
Congrats on organising such a successful conference! Iām impressed by how much interest there was in the event :)
Uncertain of how big of a %-increase a $100m addition is for the animal advocacy movement. But definitely a lot higher than for global health. While animal advocacy is much more neglected Iām wondering how much more funding it can effectively absorb, or how fast the cost-effectiveness would decline. Given the scale of the problem probably not that fast? For global health, I believe this funding wouldnāt have substantial decreasing marginal returns. (Some quick thoughts without having read othersā comments)
I second that the recommendations could be more ambitious but mostly the calculator feels way too simple because life situations can vary so vastly between people within a country and income group.
In the calculator, I fall below their 1% recommendation while living in Finland, but I believe I could donate 25% āwithout undue hardshipā. On the one hand, this is unrealistic or at least not financially smart in the long run for many with higher living costs. On the other hand, I have friends who I think would be fine donating an even larger share if they had the income I have.
So, the calculator is, in my opinion too simple to give any meaningful recommendation.
So exciting! Can community members donate to more than one project? I understood so from the post. And if they do, then there is probably some beautiful optimum(s?) of how much they should diversify, as a vote can be a lot more powerful than the size of the donation when it is matched. Maybe that math is explained in one of the links on quadratic funding. I havenāt checked them out yet :)
Is there a site or calendar where we can see upcoming Forum events/ā theme weeks? The events often take me by surprise (although draft amnesty week was announced in advance in the newsletter iirc). I believe that I would participate in some of them if I had a reminder about it in my calendar.
Thank you for sharing the update Jessica! Wishing HI-Eng all the best in transitioning into the volunteer-led model
Thank you for sharing! I like the structure of the post and that you are providing links to what has influenced your decision on what to emphasize. Iāll keep your strategy in mind when working on EA Finlandās.
EA FinĀland AnĀnual ReĀview 2023
Thank you GergÅ for initiating this! On EA Finlandās part we are just happy if we can save other group organisersā time.
Thank you for sharing your outreach strategy at ET with such detail! I bookmarked this post earlier and finally found a good moment to read it :)
For EA Finland my main takeaways from the post are:
- We should take some time to develop/āunify the branding of EA Finland further and especially our tone of voice.
- Identify more broadly which our most promising target audiences could be and organise discussions/ā 1-1s with people from the reference groups to get insights to qhat kind of communication appeals to them and if they are interested in EA in the first place. Now founder effect and existing networks are impacting our community building efforts quite a lot.
- Create Google Analytics for altruismi.fi so we can develop our website based on more detailed data.
- I believe your results from the messaging strategy are interesting and we could try to emphasise the inspirational part as well in our communications. (I acknowledge you also had a section on diversifying outreach strategies between EA groups but this is quite a general approach)
- I had some initial ideas about creating an influencer-focused effective giving campaign. It was good to get some more information on how time consuming it can be and your experience updated me against its cost-effectiveness.
Impressive work you have done and clearly written report! Looking forward to follow how you scale it up/āduplicate your effort to other countries :)
Could you tell more about the engagement metric? What was the questions asked to the respondents? Wondering if it about engagement with other EAs or local groups or generally with EA ideas and how the different levels are defined
My blockers for donating more:
1) Not being confident that I give to the very best program(s). I feel dissatisfied about my current donation behavior. Iād like to have a stronger personal hierarchy of the charity recommendations by GWWC. Now I give roughly 1ā3 of my pot to GiveWell (because of their strong evidence base), 1ā3 to either ACEās recommended charities fund or Humane League (because of neglectedness in animal welfare funding), and 1ā3 to Founders Pledge Climate change fund (as a relatively safe longtermist bet). These also seem highly cost effective to me, but the true reason Iām dividing my donations equally between them is not because I think all charities could have an equally big impact on the margin, but because I havenāt put enough effort into thinking what my values are, how Iād prioritize across cause areas, and how strongly I believe the recommended charities within the fields can effectively solve the problems they are focusing on. If I was more confident that the expected value of my donations is as I high as it could be with the information I have available, I would likely feel motivated to donate even more. Iād be happy to hear how other people who might have put more thought into it donate and whyāso any resources are welcome!2) Uncertainties about the trade-offs of donating. Should I increase my donations or are there potential self-development or volunteer opportunities that increase my impact long-term?
Example: Iām currently in Tanzania for 2 months volunteering for an EA-minded company. Iāve only been here for 2 weeks, so I donāt know if it is an effectively altruistic use of my money, and it is hard to quantify in advance. When deciding to go on this trip months ago, I was quite sure that donating the cost of the plane ticket wouldāve been more virtuous, but my curiosity drove me to go anyway. Now Iām not as sure anymore what wouldāve been more virtuous, but in general I would bet more on donating to evidence-based charities than investing in myself.I believe answering to 2 is easier if I get clarity to 1
Iāve been thinking along the same lines but wouldnāt have verbalised it as well as you. Thank you for writing this up!
I assume that especially in countries with less EA presence of direct impact orgs, the local EA communities can play an vital role in supporting people to get more engaged with EA ideas and potentially become leaders of their own high-impact projects.
I thought having many different forms of engagement at each stage was implicit to the funnel model as well, but having it explicit as āaction, ideas, and diverse connectionsā seems like a useful framework. Iāll think more about what this could mean in practice for us in my group
Thank you for your kind words!
It would indeed be interesting to see impact assessments across groups and projects to get a rough idea of the expected value of different projects and improve intuitions on community building.
Thanks for writing the post! Iām not an expert in the area and would be interested in learning more about the topic.
Regarding R&D in the US, it reminds me of the Founders Pledge Climate Change Fundās strategy which focused on reducing energy poverty (at least some years ago. Their strategy might have changed based on their website.)
In general, why are you focusing mainly on US development policies in the section āWhat would we need to do to make this work?ā I understand itās one of the biggest players, but one could make arguments for policy work in other countries as well, e.g., citizens of small EU countries trying to impact the EU, as the representation and power relative to the population size can be high.
When it comes to āshould EA do thisā I think of it as, would I recommend someone who is doing EA-focused career planning to pursue a career influencing long-distance development policy if they are a good fit for it? Even if this post doesnāt result in new āEA orgsā getting founded I think it is valuable discussion as this might be read by people with an EA mindset considering pursuing development policy careers or working in the field.