Yes, unless you were able to meet with people and create time to develop the neccessary trust. Also, like any grant-making foundation, I wouldn’t expect people in the registry to fund all or even most of the oppertunities that came along, though the registry would lose some of its value if it appears to be unlikely to give out donations to good projects.
Niel_Bowerman
Karma: 1,284
I would imagine Will donates to multiple charities because the impact of his donations come primarily through their ability to inspire others to donate. Because of Will’s profile as a columnist and public intellectual, he often meets with potential donors who favour one of his recommendations over the others, and Will is able to say that he also donates to them, which may increase the likelihood of donations via the “actions speak louder than words” heuristic.
This would apply to others if they believe {{the impact of donations they can inspire by donating to multiple charities} - {the impact of donations they can inspire by donating to their top recommended charity}} > {{the impact of the donation to their top recommended charity} - {the impact of instead donating to multiple charities}}. Presumably Will believes that this inequality is true for his case. The exact quantities of donations that you need to be able to inspire for this to be true depend on your assessment of the relative efficiencies of the different charities that you are considering donating to. Of course in reality these quantities are virtually impossible to calculate and so there is always going to be signficant uncertainty associated with this decision.
It is also possible that Will is using some variant of the argument used by Julia Wise: “I wouldn’t want the whole effective altruist community to donate to only one place. So I’m okay with dividing things up a bit.” /ea/5l/where_im_giving_and_why_julia_wise/
It is also interesting to note that many of the GiveWell staff have chosen to donate to only one of their recommendations, presumably because they agree that they can have more impact that way. http://blog.givewell.org/2013/12/12/staff-members-personal-donations/
“Yet from what I understand, GiveWell refuses to recommend any of these as top charities. My impression is that GiveWell finds it highly unlikely that any of these organizations are as effective as their recommended charities. Of course, many of these organizations exist on the assumption that they are. This area seems particularly awkward as all of these meta-charities promote GiveWell publicly, leading to several interviews. I imagine that it’s better off for everyone that Givewell and CEA appear as close friends, yet internally it seems like there’s a bit of tension over this stark disagreement on the need for CEA’s existence. This disagreement is somewhat showcased in the comments here.”
Regardless of whether GiveWell thought that CEA’s organisation were more effective than their own recommendations, I think it is rational for GiveWell not to recommend CEA’s organisations. Such a recommendation would quickly lead to the ‘infinte regression problem’ (one should donate to an organisation, that encourages people to donate to an organisation, that encourages people to donate to an organisation, that… etc. … that encourages people to donation to effective first order work. See Ben Todd’s Master’s thesis on career choice for more discussion). GiveWell would risk the accusation of contributing to some sort of charitable ponzi scheme, which is an accusation that I have heard made when a charity evaluator has discussed recommending another charity evaluator. Of course there are ways around this in practise (again see Ben Todd’s thesis), but it would still pose a reputational risk for GiveWell to recommend a CEA organisation given their status as meta-charities.
In addition to Carl’s comments on why the registery would be easier, it has the added benefit of people being able to control their own funds and thus being more willing to contribute to the ‘fund’.
“Do you really think people would just send money to 1st-world strangers (ii) on the promise that the recipient was training to earn to give?” They needn’t be strangers. This has already happened in the UK EA community amongst EAs who met through 80,000 Hours and supported each other financially in the early training and internship stages of their earning to give careers.
I’m not sure of the exact numbers but my impression is that FHI has perhaps half a dozen full-time staff members, and CSER has one part-time person who is based in FHI and has been working on grant applications but I am unclear about the long-term financial viability of having this person working on applying for grants.