Nonprofit accounting researcher. I mostly study private foundations and how donors use accounting information in their giving decision-making. My agenda aligns strongly with the effective giving topic.
Trustee at CEEALAR
Kyle Smith
Karma: 449
That’s fair. Though I would counter that GiveWell says that they have directed $2 billion over 10+ years to effective charities. Private Foundations in the US give collectively around $100 billion a year. So there is a lot of money out there with potential to be influenced.
There certainly was a perception among who we spoke with that EA was very “white/tech bro/elitist”, so I think you are correct in that assessment.
Your point about PF accountability is well-taken as well. There is functionally 0 accountability in regards to effectiveness.
It’s pretty clear to me that these constraints are bad (and to me core EA is partially about breaking the self-imposed constraints of giving) but the simple reality is that private foundations are legally required to follow their charter. If the board wanted to radically change their charter, in most instances they could (my understanding), but boards tend to be extremely deferential to the founder’s original intent. They begin with a fundamental assumption: “We will focus our giving on X cause area or Y geographic area” and then they have the power to make decisions beyond that.
The concern I have is that EA has basically written off all private foundations that are not already EA-aligned as a lost cause.
Yes I think this is an area of misconception that could be explored more and ultimately addressed.
Yeah I am really only referring to a perception of all-or-nothing. And like you say, I think it is a product of a maximizing philosophy.
At the end of the day, it really just seems to be an EA marketing/outreach problem, and I think it is entirely addressable by the community. I think the paper idea I mention (discussing the perceived incompatibility of TBP and EA) could be a step in the right direction.
I think this is key. I get the impression (and others do as well) that EA is all-or-nothing. Either you give 100% to AMF or you are not EA.
A private foundation that is focused on the state of New York can use EA principles in trying to identify the biggest impact they can have, within their constraints, and that is still EA. I think even the cause area constraints that are the least EA (say, the arts), can still find ways to improve their impact using EA principles. Though of course that would be more difficult.
The Lack of EA in US Private Foundations
As someone who has been a huge believer in CE and the theory of change, I’m honestly just not really seeing it for this.
A few thoughts:
I am a buyer that a group (CE) can identify numerous very high value and high-impact nonprofit organization ideas (because there is not really a robust “market” for doing so), and I think that this is the major innovation of CE. But I am very skeptical that the same can be said of for-profit ideas. If you are expecting participants to bring their own ideas, I’m not sure the value proposition is really there for the program.
I’m skeptical that investing resources into trying to create successful entrepreneurs that are EA-aligned is more effective than just trying to convince existing successful entrepreneurs to become EAs.
Your assumption that the “average chance of a graduate of the Founding to Give program getting into YC of 40%” feels WILDLY optimistic to me. YC and this program may bring in very strong applicants along many dimensions, but I actually think the overlap between those interested in EA and founding unicorns is weak. In addition, the “not funding a company that will make the world worse” constraint on this program likely makes unicorn status substantially less likely, and YC doesn’t really have that constraint. I think it would be helpful to re-estimate the model with a much lower % on this (5%,10%?).
All that said, I am rooting for you!
I’ve been thinking very similarly for a while. Would love to read it.
I study US private foundations, and I’ve observed two things: EA has made virtually no progress in influencing grantmaking, while trust based philanthropy (TBP) has had massive adoption. I think that many believe that EA and TBP are in conflict with one another, but I don’t think that is necessarily the case. I am thinking about writing a post/research paper that makes the case these two movements are compatible with one another.
I generally agree with this critique.
A while back I wrote about an idea for an org that focuses on redirecting US private foundation grants toward more effective causes. Got a lot of feedback, and the consensus was that existing private foundations just aren’t tractable. And I tend to agree with that.
But I have been working on a research paper where we interview private foundation grantmakers to try to better understand how they operate and the information used in their decision making. One of the takeaways is that trust-based philanthropy has had HUGE influence on private foundation grantmaking, despite being very new (every participant we interviewed indicated their foundation had implemented at least some trust based philanthropy practices).
This got me thinking—has EA had any influence? Not a single participant indicated that EA had influenced their grantmaking, and I would say that 75% were neutral and 25% were openly hostile to the idea of EA influencing their grantmaking.
I think EA would benefit from conversations around how to sell EA ideas to these other groups. I think it would require what some would view as “watering down”[1] of EA principles, but could substantially increase the overall impact of EA. Definitely interesting to think about what aspects of EA could be compromised before it ceases to be EA at all.
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For example, most US private foundations are severely constrained by the original founder’s intent, such as spending funds in X geographic area. Could these foundations be persuaded and made more effective through a version of EA that encourages effective giving, given existing foundation constraints?
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I think this is a good question. To me, EA is pretty ruthless in how it assesses effectiveness, and that leads to many causes feeling left out (especially when those causes are close to you personally).
Taken to an extreme, if all charitable acts/giving was done through an EA lens, it would feel pretty brutalist to any cause not included in its scope. Though from an EA lens, this would be a *more effective* charitable sector and ultimately reduce suffering/increase overall wellbeing.
But the simple reality is EA is small relative to the universe of charitable acts. And I think having a portion of charitable acts approached with an EA lens is a good thing. And I think the actual % is significantly lower than the optimal %.
Writing about my job: Academic Researcher
Quick question—my wife is a provisionally licensed LPC in the US. I know there’s a lot of rules on how they are allowed to practice (like they must be with a client within their state of licensure). Do these rules just not apply when working internationally?
I think yes. I agree with the overall assessment that if this is the organization you would choose to give to, it would be optimal to reduce your pay.
I have an early-stage research project where I have identified nonprofit CEOs who earn a very low wage relative to their expected earnings, which I am calling a labor donation. I am going to examine the determinants and consequences (how will donors think about this?) of these labor donations, which I hope will be interesting!
That’s fair. I’ll revise a bit—I think in the current EA landscape, boards should at least consider bringing on some board members that are more junior. Or we should find ways to allow junior professionals the chance to gain the experience necessary to be effective board members.
I think it depends a lot on the org and their needs. In an EA context, I think it makes sense for junior boards to possibly take on a larger share of the board work, while taking a smaller share of the decision making. Then eventually they can move into more senior board positions when they have more experience.
My experience is with university young alumni boards, which do a few things differently than the main board:
The junior board is pretty large, and a big purpose is to bring in the successful early career alumni to cultivate them as future board members/donors.
Junior boards do a lot of committee/active work with students/departments. In part this is good because they are more relatable than big time CEOs in their 50s, and in part it keeps them engaged for point 1 above.
They have pretty much no decision making authority, other than their own internal board rules/membership. Though my experience is with college-level boards, where even the main board has no real power/authority.
I appreciate this post and agree with your points. Especially that of having some outside-EA board members. I am an academic and my research is EA-adjacent, but I have no ties to any EA org/cause area, which would reduce perceived conflicts of interest (which I have seen discussed on the forum). I also believe there is a lot that an EA org could learn (especially related to governance/transparency best practices) from a board member that has a lot of experience in traditional nonprofit work (especially at a large organization).
I would add that it would be very desirable for prominent EA organizations to also create junior boards (or just have a few designated junior board members). Junior boards have a lot of benefits:
Younger professionals may be able to invest more time than more senior/prominent professionals
It creates a pipeline of board talent in the EA community
There are a TON of early-career EAs who are passionate about advancing their career and a junior board is an excellent opportunity for them to do so
For me personally, I am a relatively-early career professional (not working at an EA org) who wants to give back to the community as a board member, but frankly I don’t believe I quite have the experience to join a big-time board (for example, I applied for the EV open call, but really have 0 expectation that I qualify for a short list). The alternative is to find a smaller org to join, but that is also quite challenging.
I’m an early career academic (accounting) and this was a big discussion in my phd program.
As a phd student, we completed multiple replications as an exercise in learning the research process. It is exhausting work, in part because authors often don’t explain their methodology in sufficient detail to complete an exact replication. Best we could hope for was similar sample/descriptives/coefficients on main tests after following their process as best we could.
Another issue is that in many cases, the data used is proprietary and cannot be shared due to a data license agreement.
As you allude to, the main problem is that there is no real incentive for active researchers to work on replications, because generally journals do not usually publish replications (and of course, publish or perish!). You do occasionally see papers that are published which point out a major flaw in a published article, but these are rare and controversial (why make an enemy?).
I know there have been some studies that basically show that a very large (50%?) percentage of papers (I think in econ/finance/accounting) cannot be replicated, which is obviously concerning, and points to the scope of the problem.
I think the most successful work that could be done in this area is lobbying journals to:
Require authors to include both their data and code and open-source it.
If that isn’t possible, require authors to include data and code specifically to the anonymous reviewers + editor.
If that isn’t possible, journals should employ an expert on methods who’s full time job is replicating new studies.
I cannot stress enough how expensive this person would be and journals probably wouldn’t be willing to pay.
You would have to 3x my compensation AND you would have to guarantee me I would only replicate studies in my niche research area to do this job. And I still would probably decline an offer to do this work, it would suck that much.
The grantmaker training program I think may be the best intervention in this space. Training grantmakers and getting them hired at major US private foundations, where they will ultimately have great influence on where funds are directed, has massive potential.