Engineer by education, I discovered the EA world through the 80,000 Hours book in 2023 and went all in: Pledge, volunteering for EA France, where I manage the translation of the 80,000 Hours guide and organize an event with Peter Singer, and now by shifting my career from industrial engineer to founder of an effective giving initiative.
Romain Barbeđ¸
Karma: 206
StrateÂgies for proÂmotÂing givÂing pledges
ReflectÂing on One Year of Mieux DonÂner: LaunchÂing the French EffecÂtive GivÂing Initiative
Has this concept been attempted in the past, especially considering that it could be a for-profit venture (e.g., a company taking a 5% commission)? If it has been tried and failed, what were the reasons for its failure? If it hasnât been attempted, what are the barriers preventing it from being pursued?
I find this project promising and Iâm quite enthusiastic about it, but a part of me wonders why it hasnât been done already. We donât need to specifically promote effective charities for this project to succeed, what are the reasons this hasnât been done successfully in the past?
Youâre shifting your resources, but should you change your branding?
Focusing on new articles and research about AGI is one thing, but choosing to brand yourselves as an AI-focused career organisation is another.
Personal story (causal thinking): I first discovered the EA principles while researching how to do good in my career, where, aside from 80k, all the well-ranked websites were non-impact focused. If the website had been specifically about AI or existential risk careers, Iâm quite sure I wouldâve skipped it and spent years not discovering EA principles. But by discovering those principles and diving deeper into the content, I eventually saw existential risk as a top priority. Last year, the biggest chunk of my donations went to AI. I also managed the translation of your guide into French, and now, through Mieux Donner (the French effective giving initiative I co-founded), weâll likely raise donations to fund several AI positions.Trade-off (statistical thinking): How many people might be deterred from engaging with EA and this AGI topic because of AI branding? How many people are not working in AI because your homepage, About Us and menu bar mention other cause areas? (Especially considering your next career guide will still be multi-cause, and the information shouldnât have time to become outdated given the AGI timeline you mentioned.)
Your focus seems well thought out, but my guess regarding the branding is that you shouldnât change it.
By shifting to a narrow AI focus, you risk reducing by 13.5% the source of effective do-gooders (including donors!) is one negative consequence. However, I can also think of other potential downsides:
Damage to EAâs reputation: This could feed into TESCREAL critics and prevent presenting EA principles to many potential supporters.
Potential lost opportunities: Even for your own organisation, focusing solely on AGI could cause you to lose out on backlinks, partnerships, and references that bring a steady flow of people.
As I read through your post, Iâm still uncertain about what you plan with your branding. However, staying as a nonprofit that helps people use their careers to solve the worldâs most pressing problems, while focusing the majority of resources on AGI but maintaining low-hanging fruits in other areas, seems to me to have a more positive impact than shifting your branding entirely.
So please, donât mess up the communicationâit could have a net-negative effect on all the cause areas.
Hello Lorenzo!
The counterfactual impact of a pledge follows GWWCâs recommendations for pledge partners; we havenât evaluated it ourselves, but yes itâs closer to 0.2.
The â0.64â figure doesnât refer to pledges but to donations. Itâs much higher than GWWCâs, but lower than Ayuda Efectivaâs (in Spain), which can be explained by the larger number of actors in the English-speaking ecosystem compared to the French or Spanish ones.
For donations, you could say: