Great point, thanks Ariel. I wouldn’t say earning to give is necessarily suboptimal (for any cause), just that directionally more money will flow across and within major EA focus areas.
My best guess is that there will be an increase in funding to animal welfare, though likely not to the extent of the funding increase to AI safety. I’m less confident in the funding landscape for digital minds, but I would guess that this field will get a boost as well (e.g, because Longview may receive more donations).
Sam Anschell
Karma: 1,692
Predictable Updating About Funding In EA
Giving Based on Comparative Advantage
*Responding in a personal capacity*
Hi Adrian, thanks for asking! My understanding is that Europeans (who are not US citizens) cannot make 501c4 donations.There are 501c3 giving opportunities – for example, earmarking gifts to the Uproot Center within Earth Share – however I’ve heard that these c3 are less cost-effective than c4 opportunities (like the AMPA linked in this post) at causing the desired legislative change.
I’m not sure about the extent to which c3 opportunities differ from c4 opportunities in cost-effectiveness. However, I’ve heard that c4 donations are recommended for US citizens even though they are not tax-deductible, which suggests the difference in cost-effectiveness could be at least 30%.
I’ll also note that the EA Animal Welfare Fund (a 501c3) still represents a very strong donation option to help animals in my view. I’m not confident in which of the Uproot Center or EA AWF is more cost-effective at the current moment, but I am confident that the EA Animal Welfare Fund is incredibly cost-effective.
This is awesome! There are a number of factors that make sharing AI safety career opportunities feel particularly valuable to me right now:
AI safety roles are more abundant and lucrative now than ever before.
Salience of AI risks are higher now than ever before.
Concreteness of what people can be doing to help feels higher now than ever before (see the latest Holden Karnofsky 80k episode)
I think Jen’s approach is very impactful (and creative/cool!) For anyone reading this post: I think that reaching out directly to CS/ML people in your life (e.g, SWEs who have been laid off or are fearing layoffs) to make this case and share career infrastructure resources (80k, Bluedot, High Impact Professionals, ARENA, AI Safety Map etc) represents an enormously high-leverage opportunity for impact
Stewardship in EA’s Most Important Era
Sure thing, Sawyer:
This comment on a 2022 EA Forum post referenced that Anthropic’s job board listed “Optional equity donation matching at a 3:1 ratio, up to 50% of your equity grant” at the time.
This “Longterm Wiki” article suggests that the pledge rate was 3:1 for up to half an employee’s equity from 2021-2024, and reduced to 1:1 for up to 25% of an employee’s equity starting in 2025.
My understanding is that Anthropic has maintained this match rate for employees who joined and pledged equity at the time a 3:1 match was offered. I.e, a staff member who joined in 2022 and pledged 50% of their equity at a 3:1 match did not have their employer match reduced when Anthropic changed the match rate for staff who joined after the terms changed.
+1 that a great co-living space can be a huge quality of life improvement! My day-to-day sense of happiness and belonging in SF increased enormously once I moved into a place with friends.
One other meaningful benefit of coordinating a housing group (at least in California) is that you can freeze your starting rent rate. E.g., a four-bedroom unit in the building I lived in was listing at $6,500/month in 2022 when friends and I moved in. A group moved in, then vacated last year. The landlord then successfully re-listed the same unit at $9k/month (a 38% increase). Meanwhile the rent in our unit has only increased by ~2% over the last four years because CA rent protections only allow a landlord to increase rent by a modest, state-set annual cost-of-living/inflation rate.
Had that 4-bedroom been able to Theseus’ ship the move-out transition—changing the names on the lease to other friends/EAs gradually without fully vacating—they would be able to save $28,440 ($7,110 per resident) per year in perpetuity.
Huge props to the organizers of this retreat! Awesome to see this turnout, and the 1:1 scheduling app they created has the potential to add value across a number of future events.
I asked the authors why they were concerned about the failure mode of with participants commuting to and from the venue each day. They helpfully sent the following:
I think a lot of the value of these retreats comes from people spending a lot of time together and becoming friends. I’d worry that if participants commuted, they might not engage fully in the retreat (in particular, not hanging out at night, which is great for friendships, bonding, and a sense of belonging in the community).
I wanted to share this here (with the authors’ permission) in case others had the same question.
Echoing praise for JD Bauman: he gave a talk for our university EA club and is an exceptional speaker. Compelling, warm, energizing, and great at fielding all sorts of questions. If any EA groups are looking for guest presenters (including for joint events with faith groups), I cannot recommend JD highly enough!
Celebrating the Dogged Search to Do Good
I’m so happy you’re interested in effective climate giving! Here are a few of my favorite resource for learning about environmental/climate giving opportunities:
Giving Green’s top climate nonprofits and related research, such as Clean Air Task Force.Founders Pledge’s writing and recommendations around climate philanthropy.
Coefficient Giving’s Air Quality and Lead Exposure Action funds and related reports (Air Quality, Lead exposure reduction).
For a donor starting to explore small gifts to cost-effective climate work, I would recommend the Giving Green Fund.
Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!
What Questions Do Policymakers Ask About Foreign Aid?
Announcing Highly Engaged EAs!
Hi Jack, I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a hard time finding EAs to talk with. It’s wonderful that you’re working to reduce S-risks; I hope you feel proud to be someone who is motivated to dedicate your career to such an important cause.
In my experience, people working in technical roles or on catastrophic risks tend to work especially long hours, so I don’t think the lack of responses is a reflection on you whatsoever. If you’re looking for resources on refining your outreach messages, here are a few I like:
80,000 Hours’ advice on cold-emails
Severin’s Advice for interacting with busy people:
Neel and Jemima’s Advice for Sending Cold Messages to Busy People at EAG (conferences are a great way to have lots of conversations)!
I’m not very familiar with the career landscape for S-risks or CS-related earning to give roles, but if there’s anything you’d find helpful to speak with me about, feel free to grab a time on my calendly here: https://calendly.com/sam-anschell/30min
[Commenting in a personal capacity]
I really appreciate this post, and I agree that the community should be mindful of both risks.
I think the instinct to share giving opportunities with Anthropic employees or other value-aligned prospective donors usually comes from a good place. And I would be excited to see more people apply to roles supporting donors who reach out for giving advice at the worldview level.
But to add to Elliot’s point about the value of coordination, here are a few other considerations:
Before (and up to six months after) a company IPOs, there are limited opportunities for employees to convert stock options into equity or transfer equity into a DAF. If prospective donors have limited bandwidth for their giving, certain moments are uniquely valuable for them to engage. And for illiquid donors, there can be long lag times between the intent to give and the disbursement of funds; donations directed by institutional funds can sometimes help smooth this.
My understanding is that many prospective donors are excited to complement the work that institutional funders support. Hearing from these institutions about the promising opportunities they’re not able to fund can be an efficient way to learn about where more funding can be especially valuable. When a time-poor prospective donor receives an unsolicited proposal from one organization, it’s hard to know how this opportunity fits into the broader field.
As potential donations directed by institutional funders crystalize, orgs may have new opportunities to apply for funding from institutional funders. To Abaham’s point, bringing on regrantors or external consultants with fresh perspectives helps build capacity and catch blind spots. I expect that full-time grant investigators would have more context on a proposal than the donors themselves, and could more productively engage in object-level conversations with orgs applying for funding.
Yes that’s right! I’ll message them to see if they’re able to share more info on this thread
Preparing for a Flush Future: Work, Giving, and Conduct
Hi Seema, thanks for this thoughtful post! I work as a grantmaker at Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Phil) and I’ve had similar thoughts in the past. Last year, CG began offering a modest severance package for staff who leave voluntarily to mitigate the golden handcuffs effect. Anecdotally, a number of colleagues have left for lower-paying jobs at other impactful nonprofits over the past year. It’s hard to say whether staff would pursue other opportunities more often if CG paid less, but it’s been reassuring to see that some staff feel comfortable leaving and the decision is celebrated by the org.
CG’s HR team also regularly conducts benchmarking exercises to sense-check that staff compensation is in line with other foundations and roles with similar levels of responsibility. Overall, CG (and I strongly suspect GW) spends considerably less on opex than peer foundations. Staff fly economy, bureaucracy is low, and people have the tools they need to work efficiently so the ratio of money moved per FTE is high.
A number of CG and GW staff members choose to donate some of their pay, and CG/GW may have this in mind when setting compensation. Personally, I’ve passed up pay or donated a little over half my income this year. Some staff use part of their pay for childcare, which helps them achieve their professional ambitions while maintaining work-life balance.
I share the concern that the ecosystem effects of drawing talent through high salaries may be under-appreciated. But when I zoom out, I directionally think that increasing compensation in the social impact space is valuable. For example, there has been a push to increase salaries in the animal advocacy field in recent years and my understanding is that this has increased professionalism and decreased workplace harassment—employers have a larger talent pool to draw from, and have an easier time replacing problematic employees.
Of course, there are always tradeoffs, and I sometimes feel uncomfortable that orgs working to end poverty offer lavish compensation (even by US standards). But all things considered, I think there are fair reasons why an org like GiveWell would choose the compensation structure it does.On an unrelated note, I help organize Princeton’s Effective Altruism student group. We and the School for Moral Ambition club would love to host you at an event to discuss your work when you’re back from sabbatical—it’s wonderful to have a fellow randomista on campus!
Agree with the spirit of this, but I’d flag that I think it’s very important to be mindful of reputational/downside risks for the EA movement. In my view, with more money (realized and prospective), the value of community integrity becomes even higher.
An example of post-IPO retail philanthropy I’m excited about is giving a friend $5k to take time off and apply to high-impact jobs. As Aaron writes, individuals know about opportunities that large funders don’t!
An example of post-IPO retail philanthropy I worry about is paying for an antagonistic media campaign against [X factory farm owner or public figure], which institutional funders could have chosen to fund but decided against due to reputational risk. If the funding is traced back to you, the movement’s reputation could be damaged by association. Even if it isn’t, new large funders may be dissuaded from getting involved if they see antagonistic or risky actions being funded in areas related to EA.