Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Nov 27, 2023, 4:28 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: leillustrations🔸’s comment on: AMA: GWWC re­search team

  We explain more how we view funds vs charities more generally here.

  And for the GWWC cause area funds we answer your question for each individual fund on their page, e.g. here for the Global Health and Wellbeing Fund, under “How does donating to this fund compare to similar giving opportunities?”.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Nov 27, 2023, 4:01 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: leillustrations🔸’s comment on: AMA: GWWC re­search team

  Thanks for your question! We explain the general principles we used to choose which evaluator to investigate here, and go into our specific considerations for each evaluator in their evaluation reports.

  For FP’s GCR Fund compared to LTFF and LLF specifically, some of the main considerations were (1) our donors had so far been donating most to the LTFF, so the stakes were higher there, and (2) Longview was one of the most-named options by other effective giving organisations as an evaluator they weren’t relying on yet but were interested in learning more about.

  And yes there are other evaluators we’ve considered and are considering for future evaluations, some of which we mention throughout the reports. See here for an overview of the impact-focused evaluators making publicly available recommendations that we are currently aware of, and which we may consider in our next iterations of this project.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Nov 24, 2023, 10:11 AM

  58 points

  6 ∶ 0

  in reply to: mildlyanonymous’s comment on: GWWC’s eval­u­a­tions of evaluators

  First of all, thank you for the extensive comments!

  I can give more context during our AMA next week if helpful (I won’t have much time to engage in the coming few days unfortunately), but wanted to just quickly react to avoid a misunderstanding about our views here. I’ve copy-pasted from the relevant section from the report below:

  To be clear, there are strong limitations to this recommendation:

  • We didn’t ourselves evaluate THL’s work directly, nor did we compare it to other charities (e.g., ACE’s other recommendations).

  • The availability of evidence here may be high relative to other interventions in animal welfare, but is still low compared to interventions we recommend in global health and wellbeing. We haven’t directly evaluated Open Philanthropy, Rethink Priorities, or Founders Pledge as evaluators.

  • We have questions about the external validity of the evidence for corporate campaigns, i.e. whether they are as cost-effective when applied in new contexts (e.g. low- and middle-income countries in Africa) as they seem to have been where the initial evidence was collected (mainly in the US and Europe).

  • We also have questions about the extent to which the evidence for corporate campaigns is out of date, as the Founders Pledge and Rethink Priorities reports are from more than four years ago and we would expect there to be diminishing returns to corporate campaigns over time, as the “low-hanging fruits” in terms of cost-effectiveness are picked first.

  Taken together, all of this means we expect funding THL’s current global corporate campaigns to be (much) less cost-effective than the corporate campaigns in 2016-2017, which were evaluated in those reports.^1
  
  ^1 It is worth noting that Open Philanthropy confirmed to us that it thinks so as well: its referral is not a claim that funding THL’s corporate campaigns will be exactly as cost-effective as it probably was a couple of years ago, when THL achieved big wins on a small budget, but a claim that funding them is likely still among the most cost-effective options in the space, and that THL can productively use a lot of extra funding without strongly diminishing marginal returns to funding currently provided.

  So in short, we share your impression that THL’s work is (much) less cost-effective than it was a few years ago. We are aware of Open Phil’s views on this, and their referral of THL’s work to us took these diminished expected returns into account. The FP and RP reports weigh (much) less heavily in our recommendation of THL’s current work than ACE’s and OP’s recommendations, but we think those reports still provide a useful (and publicly accessible) reference on corporate campaigns as an intervention more generally.
  

  What links here?

  • Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸's comment on AMA: GWWC re­search team by Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸 (Nov 27, 2023, 4:38 PM; 6 points)

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Oct 18, 2023, 6:20 AM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Arvin’s comment on: The role of effec­tive giv­ing in effec­tive al­tru­ism (MCF memo)

  Yes that’s right, thanks Arvin!

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Aug 11, 2023, 9:47 AM

  15 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: GWWC’s Han­dling of Con­flict­ing Fund­ing Bars

  For anyone reading this at a later time, we have now updated the status of our deworming charities in line with the above discussion and new research by Founders Pledge.

  The changes are as follows:

  • Unlimit Health (formerly “SCI”), Sightsavers, DWI → Top-Rated

  • The END Fund to remain listed.

  This is based on Founders Pledge’s new research (which is — at least right now — not public) and the ~3x GD bar we’re currently using internally for global health and wellbeing charities (but may update before this Giving Season).

  We’re going with FP’s recommendations here because GiveWell (understandably) have indicated they prefer us not to make charity recommendations based on their direct referral which don’t meet their criteria for top charity status (we may continue to link to their research on the deworming charity pages to provide context though), and as this is consistent with our current inclusion criteria — which again, we may update later this year after completing the first iteration of evaluating the evaluators.

  We’d like to thank Jeff again for his helpful suggestion and engagement with this issue.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jun 29, 2023, 3:24 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Matt_Sharp’s comment on: Four claims about the role of effec­tive giv­ing in the EA community

  I don’t think one needs to be on a fulltime salary to be in a position to give, e.g. among the surveyed population I would expect many/​most of the people who are part-time employed (~12%), self-employed (~11%) and retired (~2%) to be able to do so. The majority of other respondents are students, for which the exceptions I refer to in the post can hold (but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them would be in a position to give >10% as well).

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jun 29, 2023, 3:07 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Ubuntu’s comment on: Four claims about the role of effec­tive giv­ing in the EA community

  For example, as there are many situations in which starting to give >10% effectively will only trade off with (various levels of) personal comfort and not (in any significant way) with how well you are able to optimise your career for impact.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jun 29, 2023, 3:02 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Michael_PJ’s comment on: Four claims about the role of effec­tive giv­ing in the EA community

  Yes I was making a weaker claim, along the lines of what Michael says. I don’t have a strong view on EAG’s admission policy in particular (I think this is a tricky topic with many considerations).

  I do however stand by what I say in the recommendations section: “There can be clearer places to go in the EA community for people who give effectively and significantly but aren’t currently in a position to change careers. For example, EA Global could feature more relevant content for them, or be more explicitly career-focused itself to make space for a separate conference/​event for this group.”

  I.e. I think EA Global could probably improve in communicating how it serves or doesn’t serve people for whom effective giving (currently) is their main pathway to impact.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jun 23, 2023, 11:47 AM

  11 points

  3 ∶ 1

  in reply to: jackva’s comment on: Four claims about the role of effec­tive giv­ing in the EA community

  Thanks Johannes.

  I’m also unsure about that and eager to find out, which is part of the reason for writing this post. And if it were to turn out hardly anyone disagrees /​ none of these claims are controversial, I hope we’ll find a way to make the actual role of effective giving in the EA community more aligned with what we think it should be (incl. through interventions like the ones suggested above), because I don’t think we’re currently there!

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Apr 19, 2023, 6:19 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Should effec­tive al­tru­ists ad­vise mid­dle-class (‘small’) donors in a rad­i­cally differ­ent way com­pared to how they ad­vise wealthy (‘large’) donors?

  Hi Maxim, thanks for your question. Just a very quick note that (1) Iason’s claim is unlikely to be true, at least in many cases (see e.g. GiveWell on the funding opportunities they expect to find in the coming few years and the extent to which they expect them to be filled here), (2) his claim seems to stem from 2016 (so I’m not sure whether he would still support it).

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Apr 6, 2023, 9:55 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: ClimateDoc’s comment on: In­vest­ing to donate vs get­ting tax re­lief (UK-fo­cussed)

  I think you got it quite well :). Depending on the system and your particular situation, you could indeed use tax relief on future income/​capital gains for donations you would make “from income in earlier years” (as money is fungible), and this could account for a large proportion of the relief you would get on it now.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Apr 6, 2023, 12:40 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: In­vest­ing to donate vs get­ting tax re­lief (UK-fo­cussed)

  Thanks for raising this question!

  One consideration I’d add that I don’t yet see reflected in your post or in the comments is that it could very well be that there will still be some sort of tax relief when you give later (and that it could even be larger at that point!), so tax relief may inform the giving now vs giving later question less than it may seem at first sight.

  It’s possible there is reasonable case to be made that tax relief on money donated later is going to be (much) lower in expectation than on money donated now (e.g. perhaps the current system priviliges small yearly donations over large single ones, or perhaps there are longer-term downward trends in policy around tax relief), but that case needs to be made in order to make the claim that current tax relief systems push (strongly) in the direction of giving now.

  (I don’t know much about this at all, but FWIW my best guess would be tax relief for an individual giving later will be slightly lower in expectation than for an individual giving now, which would push slightly—but only slightly! - in the direction of giving now)

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Apr 1, 2023, 11:46 AM

  7 points

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  in reply to: Stan van Wingerden’s comment on: GWWC’s 2020–2022 Im­pact eval­u­a­tion (ex­ec­u­tive sum­mary)

  Thanks for asking these in-depth questions, Stan!

  1. The donation distribution statistics do not exclude our top 10 donors (neither on the pledge nor on the non-pledge side), so our takeaways from those aren’t influenced. I should also clarify that we do not exclude all top 10 donors (on either the pledge or non-pledge side) from all of our donation estimates that influence the giving multiplier: we only exclude all top 10 pledge donors from our estimates of the value of the pledge (for more detail on how we treated large donors differently and why, see this appendix). Please also note that we haven’t (yet) made any decisions on which groups to target more or less on the basis of these results: our takeaways will inform our organisation-wide strategic discussions going forwards but we haven’t had any of those yet—as we have only just finished this evaluation—and—as we also emphasize in the report—the takeaways provide updates on our views but not our all-things-considered views.

  2. This is a great question and I think points at the importance of considering the difference between marginal and average cost-effectiveness when interpreting our findings: as you say, many people might have still donated “had GWWC existed from 2020 in a very minimal form”, i.e. the first few dollars spent on GWWC may be worth a lot more than the last few dollars spent on it. As we note in the plans for future evaluations section, we are interested in making further estimates like the one you suggest (i.e. considering only a part of our activities) and will consider doing so in the future; we just didn’t get to doing this in this evaluation and chose to make an estimate of our total impact (i.e. considering us not existing as the counterfactual) first.

  3. We explain how we deal with this in this appendix. In short, we use two approaches, one of which counts all the impact of a pledge in the year the pledge is taken and the other in the years donations are made against that pledge. We take a weighted average of these two approaches to avoid double-counting our impact across different years.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Mar 19, 2023, 10:59 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸’s comment on: Re­search­ing Pri­ori­ties in Lo­cal Contexts

  I like that one!

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Mar 18, 2023, 12:46 PM

  10 points

  3 ∶ 1

  on: Re­search­ing Pri­ori­ties in Lo­cal Contexts

  Hi Luis, thank you for writing this up! I think it’s a well-written forum post that clarifies important distinctions and makes valuable points, and on a topic that AFAIK is being considered and discussed by many people in the community currently.

  I agree with most of your points. In fact, I’ve come around on one that we previously disagreed on, namely on defining “local priorities research” more restrictively than how many people are currently using it: I now see more of the value of having “local” in LPR clearly refer to the altruistic scope rather than the resources being prioritised, consistent and contrasting with the “global” in GPR referring to the global altruistic scope.

  There are two further comments/​suggestions I’d like to make:

  Consider using a different name than “contextualization research”

  I think adding new terminology that isn’t immediately clear should be avoided whenever possible, and CR isn’t self-explanatory nor does defining this new term look unavoidable to me. I think using something like “resource-specific GPR” or “targeted GPR”—though a mouthful—is much clearer than CR, because (1) the terms themselves are more self-explanatory (including by using the word “priorities”) and (2) it’s immediately clear that they refer to a subset of GPR.

  There may be cases in which “pure” LPR is worth doing for local groups

  I expect there are cases in which it will be worth doing LPR (according to your new restricted definition) as a local group from the perspective of doing the most good impartially even when it doesn’t overlap with CR/​resource-specific GPR. In other words, I expect there to be cases where doing “pure” LPR would be a recommendation coming out of doing resource-specific GPR for a local group.

  Take your Latin American example: my guess is it will often be valuable to do the type of research you link to there even if you expect not to find anything close to competitive to GW top charities, and even if there isn’t a large pot of restricted funds that may be influenced by it.

  A few reasons for doing LPR in such a case could be:

  • showing one cares and is knowledgeable about local problems before making the claim one should focus on other geographies or cause areas

  • substantiating and better being able to communicate the claim that donations go further in those other countries or cause areas

  • using this as a training opportunity for charity researchers who could later move on to charity evaluation that would qualify as GPR

  As we’ve discussed elsewhere there are clear trade-offs and risks for engaging in LPR at a local group level (e.g. opportunity costs, risk of motivated reasoning or value drift) - so I share your caution in recommending this as an activity. However, I don’t think a blanket recommendation against doing (well-considered and careful) LPR at a local group level is justified either, for the above reasons.

  What links here?

  • Luis Mota Freitas's comment on Re­search­ing Pri­ori­ties in Lo­cal Contexts by Luis Mota Freitas (Jun 12, 2023, 6:04 PM; 7 points)

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jan 28, 2023, 5:17 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joel Tan🔸’s comment on: Overview of effec­tive giv­ing organisations

  Ok, sounds good, I’ve added you to the list; looking forward to what CEARCH will come up with!

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jan 27, 2023, 2:20 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joel Tan🔸’s comment on: Overview of effec­tive giv­ing organisations

  Thanks Joel, happy to add CEARCH; just a quick check: are you planning/​aiming to publish funding opportunity recommendations this year? (the aim for this list is to really be about publicly available funding opportunities; e.g. it doesn’t include Rethink Priorities even though they do related/​relevant research)

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jan 27, 2023, 2:17 PM

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: Overview of effec­tive giv­ing organisations

  Thanks David!

  • CN is currently omitted on purpose—doesn’t fit definition of (self-identified) EA-inspired research or fundraising - but I could see a case for them being included in the near term (had a really good chat with them this week about their plans and potential collaborations with GWWC, coincidentally). I’m happy to be challenged on this of course.

  • I’ll add Charity Elections as a separate project.

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jan 27, 2023, 2:11 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: mlc’s comment on: Overview of effec­tive giv­ing organisations

  Thanks for the suggestions Nicole!

  • I’ll add a country column

  • Would be happy for the sheet to be embedded on Forum but don’t immediately know how to do it and don’t think it’s a high priority, so if someone wants to do this please lmk :)

• Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸Jan 19, 2023, 9:28 AM

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: GWWC’s Han­dling of Con­flict­ing Fund­ing Bars

  Thanks for pointing at this! We’ll make sure to ask GW about this at our next point of contact -i.e. whether they think we should recommend SCI/​deworming charities given our different bar and their cost-effectiveness analysis—and this may lead us to change the status of these charities.