Karolina Sarek is the Chair of the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund, where she has worked as a part-time fund manager since 2019. Previously, she was the Co-founder and Co-Executive Director at Ambitious Impact (formerly Charity Entrepreneurship). She also served as a board member and advisor for various nonprofits and think tanks.
KarolinaSarekšø
Karma: 4,185
Why did you assume hiring the best candidate would save senior staff 66 h/āyear.
The number, is the difference between the first and second candidate in $ cost per h saved (given their salary and how much time they save). The difference would be $66 per h. Later, I accidentally omitted the $ sign in the text, and that indeed created a mistake in further calculations. It turns out that making BOTEC late in the evening is not a good idea, in my case. :) Thank you for catching that error!
To refine the calculations by fixing the error you spotted and adding more considerations:
I say earlier.
āLetās assume the 2nd best candidate is half as good as the 1st and therefore saves us half as much time. Instead of saving us 35h per week (40h ā 5h management, meetings, review etc.), they save us 17.5h (requiring much more management and oversight to get the same results, which I actually think is conservative), for the same up to $120k spent on salary and benefits.In the first case, we get 35 Ć 52 workweeks in a year = 1,820h, and in the second 910h. The cost-benefit analysis is $65 per hour for the first candidate and $131 per hour for the second, with a difference of $66 per hour.ā
I was aiming to calculate the difference between the first and second candidates. The first would save 1820h (35h Ć 52 workweeks in a year), the second 910h (35h x 52 workweeks in a year).
The cost-benefit ratio of that time saved is: for the first, $65 per h ($120000/ā1820 hours saved per year), and for the second, it is $131 per h ($120000/ā910h saved), so the difference is $66 per h.
1820-910=910h difference in a year
And each hour, for the 2nd candidate, cost us $66 more than for the 1st.
910h difference, at $66 per h, the difference in cost is $60060.
Indeed, in that time, a senior fund manager could in theory, create 60 active grantmaking opportunities (910h/ā15h) at a cost of $60060.
So $60060/ā60 = $1001 difference in cost between candidates for generating one opportunity.
But you are right; we cannot generate 60 active grantmaking opportunities in a year, no matter the time spent. If we had an unlimited time (something I didnāt assume in the RFMF estimate), I think we could generate more than $2M estimated in the RFMF post, but indeed not 60 opportunities. My guess would be somewhere around 20-30. If we take those numbers and follow your reasoning, there is room for saving from 300h (=20*15) to 450h (=30*15), which could be achieved by hiring a candidate at least 16.4% (=300/ā(35*52)) to 24.7% (=450/ā(35*52)) as good as the best. While we have to remember to take into account the higher cost of generating that opportunity in the case of the 2ns candidate.
A significant limitation to that estimate is that we assume no increase in time when generating the next marginal opportunity. In fact, I expect that each marginal opportunity we generate will require a higher time investment to generate, simply because it will be harder to come up with ideas, find the right people who are not already busy, etc. So let me introduce this refinement to our estimate. For example, the first 10 opportunities may take 15h per idea, the next 10 can take 25h, and probably the next 10 would take significantly more, like 40h. If we take those numbers and the range for the number of potencial opportunities (20-30), the total time to generate 20 opportunities would be 400h (=(10*15)+(10*25)), and the time to generate 30 opportunities would be 800h (=(10*15h)+(10*25h)+(10*40h)). So the potencial of saving 400h-800h is generated by hiring a candidate at least 21.9% (=400/ā(35*52)) to 42.9% (=800/ā(35*52) as good as the best. While remembering that generating those opportunities by the 2nd best candidates would have a worse cost-benefit ratio. We also have to remember that in this case, we may need more than $2M for active grantmaking, which further complicates calculating the ābetter candidate to more funding trade-offā.
However, I will stop this estimate now, because the time for the AMA is running out and I have to get ready for the beginning of the holiday that starts in Poland today. :) If you have any comments about the calculation above, let me know. If I happen to have some free time after the holiday, I may swing back to finish and further improve the estimate, but I cannot commit to that, especially if it would trade off against vetting and selecting the best candidates in the current hiring round ;) Thanks for this exchange and all your questions, Vasco!
Hi Vasco! I answered your question in the recent Ask Us Anything, and here, I have written a more extensive list of when I think it is better to donate to an individual charity and when to a fund.
Hi Michael! You can find the announcement post and discussion in the comments here.
Thanks for the question. This is not a question the fund has to consider very oftenāweāre typically evaluating grants that would affect animals living lives we expect are negative lives.
Itās possible there are some cases where weāre evaluating some interventions to reduce the number of farmed animals (e.g., meat reduction or farm prohibitions) where some of the animals who would not come into existence because of the reform would have otherwise lived net positive lives (some have estimated under particular ethical assumptions that cows raised for beef could be living net positive lives), but the vast majority of the impact would still be aiming to affect animals that are experiencing net negative lives and donāt have a viable path on the table to achieve net positive lives instead.
To go a bit more in-depth and offer a more personal take rather than speaking for the AWF. Personally, even if I put on my 100% utilitarian hat, I would still have some uncertainty. First, I would need to have high confidence in:
Their lives being in fact, net positive. I think there is too much uncertainty about the welfare of animals and how to approach it depending on ethical theory. For example, if we give significant credence to negative utilitarianism or simply place a high weight on excruciating pain, then even if animals lead decent lives, slaughter at the end of their lives may outweigh it.
Methods to measure and aggregate their welfare, such as temporal welfare aggregation challenges.
Ability to determine where this threshold is and at which point life becomes net positive. Some claim that this concept is not even valid.
But yeah, if I was confident in all of that, or was risk permissive, with a 100% specific flavor of utilitarianism hat on, maybe I would.
But personally, Iām not sure Iām 100% utilitarian, and I have a more complex parliament, where some members/āethical theories say that it wouldnāt be ethical (e.g., rights-based). I could imagine a case where more members would agree if, for example, there was no slaughter before natural death would occur for a given individual, and animals would die being completely anesthetized. Additionally, farms would be completely open, where an animal could choose to leave the environment they are in (where they are taken care of, but their products are taken away from them) and choose another one (where perhaps they are not taken care of but are free to fully express their natural behavior (e.g., where their offspring would hatch from eggs instead of eggs being taken away from them)). There are still dilemmas, such as whether truly informed consent is possible for animals, whether the choice to stay implies positive welfare or just status quo bias, and whether providing choice is sufficient for moral permissibility, etc.
Then there is also the issue of whether we are obligated to bring into life beings who will lead net positive lives. I certainly donāt act in accordance with that now, and I think population ethics is something I cannot solve, so I donāt know what I would do. ĀÆ\(ć)/āĀÆ Jokingly, maybe spend my donation budget to fund Peter Singer to figure it out :P
One way to BOTEC this is by looking at how much time it saves us and what can be done with that time. Letās assume the 2nd best candidate is half as good as the 1st and therefore saves us half as much time. Instead of saving us 35h per week (40h ā 5h management, meetings, review etc.), they save us 17.5h (requiring much more management and oversight to get the same results, which I actually think is conservative), for the same up to $120k spent on salary and benefits.
In the first case, we get 35 Ć 52 workweeks in a year = 1,820h, and in the second 910h. The cost-benefit analysis is $65 per hour for the first candidate and $131 per hour for the second, with a difference of $66 per hour.
As discussed in our room for more funding post, we currently believe we could conduct more active grantmaking to a value of $2M. If we assume that with 15h, a more senior staff member whose time we saved by hiring can generate an active grantmaking opportunity that costs $200k, and assuming its cost-effectiveness is $1.4 per DALY ( I took the RP CCM DALY estimates (which you helpfully listed here in DALY/āk$, and I reversed to be $/āDALY), where the Cage-free Chicken Campaign was $1.4 per DALY.), that means 142k DALYs difference. In the 66h difference between candidates, we get 4.4 such opportunities, so 624k DALYs are lost due to hiring the 2nd best candidate. At $1.4 per DALY, thatās ~$873k.
Therefore, if the 2nd best candidate is half as good as the first, we would need $873k more to offset it. This could be a conservative estimate, because a half-as-good staff member might simply not generate as good evaluations no matter how much management time they get. Or it could be liberal because we may need more than 15h to generate the next marginal active grantmaking opportunity, or the 2nd best candidate could be more than half as good as the first. I think a range of $500k-$800k is reasonable.
That was a fun exercise; thanks for your question!
We are excited about efforts to increase the amount of funding that goes to high-impact animal interventions. That being said, we believe there are as many, if not more, promising opportunities to increase funds from these other sources, such as:
a) less effective animal sources, supporting work of animal-focused effective giving and fundraising initiatives such as FarmKind, or Farmed Animal Funders, and cross-cause ones, e.g., Effektiv Spenden and others. I believe AIM had a report offering an impact evaluation of those, but I cannot find it now.
b) less effective human sources, such as leveraging government R&D funding to be redirected to alt protein. This had significant successes, as described by Lewis in his new newsletter ā6. Putting Green into Going Green. Governments invested over $200 million into research and infrastructure advancing alternative proteins, including in the US ($71M via DOC, DOD, and Massachusetts), Denmark (DKK 420M /ā $59M), Japan (Ā„7.87B /ā $51M), the UK (Ā£27M /ā $34M via two grants), the EU (ā¬12M /ā $13M) and Beijing (80M Yuan /ā $11M). New alternative protein research centers, funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, opened in London, North Carolina, and Singapore.ā We also think that influencing climate philanthropy has a lot of potential.
We havenāt evaluated the two methods you described, and Iām not aware of any such estimates, so I cannot comment on their effectiveness. But I think that in any scenario, those interventions I mentioned would be better on the global net, species-agnostic welfare than, e.g., moving from the best interventions helping humans to the best ones helping animals.
Thank you for this thoughtful question and for your kind words about the Animal Welfare Fund! You raise an important point. Let me break down our approach:
First, we donāt operate with fixed portfolio allocations or minimum percentages per species. Instead, we aim to maximize the marginal impact of our grants based on our best current understanding. This means evaluating each opportunity on its own merits and seeing if it is above our bar. More about our bar here.
Secondly, it is worth noting that purely theoretical calculations often differ significantly from practical funding opportunities. While back-of-the-envelope calculations might suggest allocating a large percentage to certain species (like shrimps), we simply donāt see enough promising, implementation-ready opportunities in those areas to make such allocations feasible. Historically, we were more limited to the applications we received, but recently we started doing more active grantmaking to generate those opportunities in areas that are cost-effective but neglected, and in 2025 we plan to further invest in it.
Even still, if those opportunities existed, I think it would be unwise to make decisions purely based on those naive utilitarian calculations. I say naive, referring to the difference between an actual cost-effectiveness and estimated cost-effectiveness. If I knew the actual cost-effectiveness of given interventions, that accounts for all uncertainties:Empiricalāe.g., how many shrimps are we actually affecting?
Moralāe.g., how to trade off different intensities of pain and what moral weight should be assigned to different species?
Epistemologicalāe.g., how to account for far-future effects vs near-term effects of animal welfare interventions, given complex cluelessness?
that gives me a true number for cost-effectiveness, a āgod comes from the skyā kind of situation, then I would rely on it. However, any estimate of cost-effectiveness is going to be a naive one and merely a very uncertain estimate that may miss those important uncertainties. Additionally, I would refer here to the timeless classic āWhy we canāt take expected value estimates literally (even when theyāre unbiased)ā by GiveWell. While AWFās approach is different in some places than the one outlined in this GW blog post, I think the main point stands. They conclude that:
āI feel that any giving approach that relies only on estimated expected-value ā and does not incorporate preferences for better-grounded estimates over shakier estimates ā is flawed. Thus, when aiming to maximize expected positive impact, it is not advisable to make giving decisions based fully on explicit formulas. Proper Bayesian adjustments are important and are usually overly difficult to formalize.ā
In light of that all, I think that we have imperfect information and too much fundamental uncertainty to justify extremely undiversified allocation, even if explicitly utilitarian calculation would point to that.Additionally, in practice, our fund managers bring diverse perspectives on for example how to weigh speculative versus evidence-backed approaches. This natural diversity helps ensure we maintain a balanced portfolio between proven interventions and those with high expected value but less certain ones.
Currently, weāre working on refining our strategic framework, which may introduce additional allocation considerations. That said, our focus on neglected species and interventions already creates an implicit prioritizationāwe rarely fund work focused on cattle welfare, for instance, as other funders adequately cover this space.
For each grant we consider, we assess whether it meets our cost-effectiveness bar, which is influenced by other opportunities we see in our pipeline. This approach allows us to remain flexible and responsive to the most promising opportunities while maintaining high standards for expected impact.
I wish I had a more quantitative answer at this point. We have begun tracking grant impact, and forecasting its outcomes using a system that categorizes grants into four possibilities: successful as planned, successful pivot, unsuccessful due to theory of change, and unsuccessful due to execution. Once weāve collected more data through this system, weāll be able to provide more precise numbers. :)
For now, I can say that modifications to original outcomes happen fairly oftenāmy rough estimate is in about 30% of cases. These modifications can involve either scaling back to more modest goals or, in some cases, expanding to more ambitious ones.
Generally, we view pivots positively when grantees adapt their outcomes based on new information and the modified outcomes have led to (or are likely to lead to) meaningful impact. In these cases, we increase our confidence in the granteeās ability to execute this type of work while decreasing our confidence in the assumptions underlying the original theory of change. When grantees donāt deliver their planned outcomes, we look for evidence that theyāve learned valuable lessons that will help them either develop more realistic expectations and plans, or improve their tactics to better achieve their goals.
While we appreciate all the efforts that advocates undertake to improve the plights of animals, we do take track records into account when evaluating subsequent applications. Our tolerance for āmissesā before deciding not to fund a grantee depends on several factors, such as our priors about the effectiveness of their work, or the ambition of their undertakingātwo misses from a grantee that has been achieving significant impact for years but is now struggling with an ambitious campaign is different from a grantee who misses twice on their moderate goals and hasnāt had any positive track record before.
Ultimately, how we balance accountability versus flexibility is highly case-dependent, taking into account the full context of the granteeās work and circumstances.
As AWF, we havenāt made any direct comparisons between AWF and GW, so we wouldnāt be able to answer that. While I read your cost-effectiveness analysis, and Iām grateful for the work you do to publicly estimate that for a range of charities, I wonāt have the capacity to review it in depth in order to point out specific disagreements if they were to occur.
Hi Vasco! I indirectly address this question above. Indeed, we think that SWP is a great, highly cost-effective donation opportunity, and weāre proud to have been one of their early funders.
However, Iād be hesitant to make confident broad-stroke claims about comparative cost-effectiveness. That said, AWF have visibility across many different funding opportunities and can allocate funds to wherever theyāll have the highest marginal impact. If we believed funding SWP at a larger scale would be more cost-effective than other opportunities weāre considering, we could increase our support to them. This would indicate that itās better to donate to AWF since we can make that comparison and choose an opportunity that is more cost-effective on the margin.
However, some of the grants we make have a high expected value, but their impact is not as certain. At this point, SWP represents a more ācertainā opportunity for impact with a proven track record. Some of our grants may help start and scale the next SWP (as they did with SWP in the past), and some will not pan out and achieve 0 impact, so if a donor wants to have a higher certainty of impact, rather than rely on expected value-driven/āhit-based giving, then donating to SWP directly may be a better option for them.
Thank you, Charlotte! Indeed, that is one of the reasons why we are excited to do this AMA.
Thank you, Rick, for your kind words and thoughtful question! Let me break down when it might make sense to donate directly to individual charities versus contributing to the Animal Welfare Fund.
There are a few specific instances where donating directly to individual charities could be the better choice:
When you have strong specific views about effectiveness or moral weights that differ significantly from our approach. For example:
If you believe certain species should be prioritized based on moral weight calculations that differ substantially from current research.
If you want to focus exclusively on particular intervention types (like corporate outreach) or specific animal groups (like hen welfare).
If you are a large donor who feels strongly about donating to a specific organization and actively wants the experience of donor stewardship by that specific organization, such as regular impact updates or contributing your time and skills as a volunteer or a board member.
When you have unique opportunities to make high-impact donations in areas where AWF faces operational constraints. Fortunately, we donāt have many restrictions in our grantmaking and can fund a wide range of opportunities, but sometimes a grant is too complicated legally and operationally. For example, we can make grants to China, and we can make grants to for-profits, but for-profit in China is a stretch. If you can make grants in such a context, you can reach out to us, and we will be happy to refer you to a particular opportunity. You may also find yourself in a situation where you have the ability to support a talented person you know who would find it hard to put together an application (we try to make it a low-burden process, but can imagine there are still obstacles in terms of language, internet access, etc.).
However, for most individual donors, contributing to the Animal Welfare Fund offers several key advantages and is a better option:
Access to opportunities: Through our open application process, we discover and evaluate promising projects that individual donors typically wouldnāt encounter, including early-stage initiatives that arenāt yet widely known or opportunities that have to stay private for strategic reasons.
Evaluation capacity: Our fund managers bring extensive experience evaluating animal welfare projects and maintain a broad knowledge base across different areas. We also can put in a lot of time to evaluate a given opportunity, in many cases much, much more than an individual donor could.
Information advantage: We often have access to confidential information about organizations and the wider funding landscape that helps inform our grant decisions.
Complex active grantmaking: We can often create new grantmaking opportunities that require a lot of time, knowledge, network, and trust to shape up. Those are also often one of the highest-impact opportunities and are highly counterfactual since they wouldnāt exist if not for those efforts. This would be very hard for individual donors to arrange.
Operational efficiency: We make the donating and grantmaking process efficient, straightforward, yet robust. For example, you can donate to AWF tax-efficiently, and we can grant to many organizations where you wouldnāt be able to donate tax-efficiently directly yourself, or we conduct thorough due diligence on our grantees and set up a strong grant agreement.
Ability to have candid conversations, track progress, and conduct MEL: We have a capacity and systems in place that allow us to track granteesā progress and have candid conversations with organizations about their success, but also struggles and learnings that they may feel more hesitant to discuss in public, based on that we can also conduct monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) from the grants we make.
Comparing the value of funding to different projects: We evaluate not only the promise or impact of a project but also the value of marginal funding. Itās worth noting that many charities individual EA donors support directly are also AWF grantees, and we can decide to fund them at a larger amount (while ensuring they still have funding diversity and are not too reliant on AWF). With our broader view of the landscape, we can better assess whether additional funding to that charity would be more effective than funding the next marginal opportunity. This kind of comparative assessment is typically challenging for individual donors to make given limited information access.
That said, we respect that donors may have specific priorities or insights that make direct donations more appropriate in their situation. We aim to be transparent about our approach so donors can make informed decisions about what best aligns with their goals. We also care about organizations not being too reliant on AWF as their only source of funding, I think organizations that are unlikely to receive other funding (e.g., from Open Philanthropy or Farmed Animal Funders) are especially good donation opportunities for individual donors. In this case, there are still advantages that AWF has (eval ability, access to info, etc.), so if you are a large donor considering donation, you can reach out to us.
Thank you, Benjamin, for writing this in-depth profile and to the whole 80,000 hours team for your work!
Since grantmaking is one of the highlighted careers, Iām going to allow myself to shamelessly plug two opportunities at the EA Animal Welfare Fund that we posted today: full-time and part-time Fund Manager role (deadline is 29th of December) and our expression of interest form for the Fund Development Officer/āManager/āDirector position.
Thank you for these thorough reports and the project as a whole! As Chair of the EA Animal Welfare Fund, Iām very grateful for GWWCās continued work evaluating evaluators and grantmakers in the animal welfare space and personally grateful for their work across all cause areas. I think this sort of meta-evaluation is incredibly valuable. This year, Iām particularly excited to see ACEās Movement Grants join the recommended list this yearātheir improvements are great developments for the field. Last yearās evaluation of AWF was also very helpful for our team, and weāre looking forward to the re-evaluation next year. Itās encouraging to see the evaluation and funding ecosystem becoming increasingly robust. Thank you for your work!
Thank you, Angelina! Iām very excited about it, too!
Thank you for raising this question, Emre! We value transparency and recognize how outcome data helps potential donors make informed decisions. We would like to move more toward that direction, but there are some limitations to that.
First, we could only present the result in aggregation potentially with individual data for successful grants/āwork. Publishing individual grant outcomes, particularly unsuccessful ones, could discourage grantee candor and lead others to draw overly broad conclusions about interventions or grantee capabilities. Thatās why we lean toward aggregate reportingāfor example, sharing overall success rates or highlighting particularly impactful grants that make up the bulk of the impact.
The second limitation is our capacity. Even after I joined the fund in greater capacity, we still only have 1.3 FTE, most of which goes toward grant sourcing, evaluation, decisions, and internal impact tracking. While weāre planning to expand our team soon, we need to carefully balance any new initiatives with other strategic priorities. Therefore, even though we would be excited to increase the amount of public grant outcome reporting, weāre still assessing the extent to which we can implement it while balancing other goals.
We hope that the steps we are taking right now, like regularly publishing payout reports, and annual reports like the one above, will already help supporters assess our work until we could do more on that front.
Thank you for the update about your program!
In general, the examples we listed in the post are not exhaustive, and there are opportunities that havenāt been explicitly mentioned, so I encourage reaching out to me if one is interested in making a contribution and would like to learn more about the opportunities we identified.
Thanks! We are grateful for all the work that our grantees do.
From our experience, in general, work in Europe tends to be more tractable than in North America, especially on the margin. This is especially true for policy opportunities that show higher expected cost-effectiveness in the European context than in the US. When I look at the grants we funded in Europe over the last year, many are indeed focused on policy advocacy. What also plays a role is that we simply receive more applications from European organizations, which naturally affects our grant distribution.
Thatās amazing; thank you for this initiative and fundraising for the EA AWF!