Crossposted in r/EffectiveAltruism if anyone wants to look at more responses.
I've entirely donated to GiveWell's discretionary fund thus far, but now I'm looking to broaden my donation portfolio with criminal justice reform and x-risk.
Looking at Open Philanthrophy's process of grantmaking, it looks like they fund an ecosystem of organizations working on a cause and their capital enables them to accomplish that.
Are small donors able to take the same approach? Or is it better for us to donate to one organization indefinitely, given the small magnitude of our donations (e.g. $200 per month)?
I like the idea of an ecosystem approach since you're donating to where the ecosystem of a cause has the most need. Thus, your dollars will do the most good within that cause.
For example:
- Org A is tackling the most pressing need in the ecosystem right now, so let's donate there.
- After 2 months, the most pressing need changes and Org B is tackling that, so now let's donate there instead, because our dollars would do the most good there rather than Org A.
Whether a small donor takes an ecosystem or a single org approach, how do they determine which org to donate to? I know that 80k recommends people to 'top up' the funding that Open Phil grants. To highlight an example they give:
If you’re interested in giving to support pandemic preparedness, you can get a list of all their grants in that area, read through some recent ones, and donate to an organisation you find attractive and which still has room to absorb some more funding.
This is my interpretation of Open Phil's ecosystem approach and I only heard about them last week, so please correct me if this isn't correct.
It's pretty straightforward: donate to wherever your money can do the most good at the moment. If this month it's Org A then you donate to Org A, and if next month it's Org B then you should switch. Cost-effectiveness rankings can change. This is not about ecosystems in particular. Sometimes we gain new information about charity effectiveness, sometimes a charity fills its funding needs and no longer needs more money.
Glancing at that Open Phil page, it looks like they are saying that they don't only look at how much good an organization is directly doing, but they also look at how effective they are when considering the more general needs of their sector of the nonprofit industry.
I don't know if it's common that Open Phil or anyone correctly identifies an ecosystem consideration that substantially changes the cost-effectiveness of a particular charity, but if you have identified such a consideration, of course you shouldn't simply ignore it from your analysis. If it means the charity does more or less good, of course you should pay attention to it.
Hmm, I don't think you can read into the tea leaves of Open Phil's donations like that. They will donate to fill funding gaps, a large donation doesn't mean that ADDITIONAL money will be more or less valuable to that organization. And how recently they donated might be due to how recently they were discovered, or some other unimportant consideration. (But if an org hasn't received Open Phil money in many years, perhaps they are not effective or funding-constrained anymore.)
Out of all the Open Phil grantees, just try to pick the recent o... (read more)