GiveDirectly has provided more information about their response. It looks like they’ll expand beyond the US. If it does, how would that change your categorization? It’d probably depend on the country (e.g. sub-saharan Africa vs. Italy vs. China).
We also plan to respond internationally, and are finalizing those details. Will share shortly.
It sounds like you might have a comparative advantage in health tech though that would enable you to do a lot of good working for a health tech organization that produces technology that benefits the global poor
Yeah, that’s another option I can build career capital for. Most of the health tech jobs in the market is towards US healthcare problems, which is what my experience is in. A goal, one day, would be to work for or start a global health non-profit leveraging technology to scale a validated health intervention (e.g tech-enabled AMF).
But to build that career capital, I don’t think I need to work in healthcare my entire career. It’d probably be better to build that capital across a breadth of industries. That’s an assumption though and need to network with others to confirm that.
I’m new to EA and this was a great reminder. I’ve had this on-and-off internal conflict of donating to EA vs non-EA cause areas. From a personal finance framing, I have EA donations as one line item and “Random Acts of Kindness” as another line item in my monthly budget (e.g. ranging from paying for a friend’s meal to donating to non-EA cause area such as criminal justice reform).
Side note: What was your decision-making process for choosing to donate to Campaign Zero? I’m trying assess where my donations would have the most impact. I’m hesitant to donate to them compared to other organizations that Open Phil has vetted through their criminal justice reform grants, as well as their recent letter to interested donors as a result of the protests.
I agree with you everything you said regarding EAs focusing on the cause areas that are going to do the most good, and for those organizations to carry the burden of evidence / proof so that we are enabled to reduce the most suffering per dollar.
That being said, I’m unconvinced that EAs should be donating any money to charities focussing on systemic racial injustice right now.
I’m not trying to convince others that this is a top priority cause area. It’s definitely not and wouldn’t encourage people to donate if their singular goal is to do the most good in the world.
I have more than one goal here, however. My goal is to find out how I can do the most good in this cause area. I don’t want people to stop donating to x-risk, global health, or farm animal welfare. I’m still donating to GiveWell charities and those take up a majority of my donations still.
I feel that to start with the cause area and work backwards is akin to doing an experiment to prove a result, rather than to find one.
As GiveWell points out, that’s difficult to accomplish, even with their own top charities. I agree that we should continue donating to places that have shown the evidence. Yet, we can’t expect the same GiveWell-like evidence in other cause areas, whether it’s an EA cause or not. That’s why they started Open Philanthropy.
I don’t think that you or anyone else should donate any money to a charity based on felt compassion or intuition
I’m not the type of person to be a perfect utilitarian robot, nor do I want to be. If I were, then I wouldn’t have donated money to my best friend’s father’s funeral which they couldn’t afford.
Peter Singer says in his famous TED talk that EA combines both the head and the heart.
My heart is in global health and poverty, as a someone whose parents and family grew up poor in a third-world country and suffer from chronic disease because of it. My head tells me to donate to GiveWell charities.
My heart is also in criminal justice reform, as a POC whose had family members and friends incarcerated and faced similar injustices. My head wants to find the most effective donation I can make.
Thank you for the clarification.
Confused about this one as I have not donated directly to GiveDirectly—I thought that if I were to donate $100 for standard cash transfer, some % of that goes directly to recipients. They state 89% for specific African countries. I would hope there would be some comparable % for standard cash transfers to US recipients.
What questions come to mind for you? Some that I think of...
What is the criteria for someone to receive this benefit? What does that vetting process look like?
What would coverage look like?
How do they ensure that the funds will actually benefit the recipients and where do they draw those margins?