Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders

Given leadership literature is rife with stories of rejected individuals going on to become great leaders, and your current problem from this post. Wouldn’t it make sense to just recalibrate your criteria and accept more you might have rejected before? Maybe you’ve been off. Always accept enough to hit your quota. To miss your quota and still have many rejected applicants sitting there seems way too high confidence in yourselves and your criteria. Disrupt yourself.

I call these the hidden gems, maybe you’re not good at identifying them.

Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones? This issue always seems so bassackward to me with AIM. Motivation arises within people’s own hearts and minds — not from an outside party who assigns them four choices. In a million years I couldn’t imagine rising with motivation to someone else’s idea rather than to my own. Certainly to modifying my idea, yes. (I’m a serial social entrepreneur and have mentored hundreds).

It’s not just AIM, all of EA has been shooting its own foot since inception with its criteria for accepting people. Don’t follow their example. Find more experienced veterans. Don’t consider so highly academic backgrounds. Develop new creative criteria and testing like Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS) screening to find highly socially gifted people, a major need in founders.

Many people don’t mature enough to pursue high status colleges when young, later they might have, but it just wasn’t in them to bother with that at age 18, yet they became leaders of various things in their lower status college. Holding choices they made when having barely emerged from childhood against them and rejecting them because of it is insanity if you sanely want to mentor world changing leaders. Smart on paper but socially awkward works sometimes, other times the opposite is better, gems can go either way, you have to get better at sussing them out. Pairing them is good. Disrupt your own thinking and EA culture.

Rather than just applications run a mentoring program and suss them out. The ones who aren’t founders might be operations champions or tech leads. Have two cofounders come out with an OPs/admin person, enlarge your budgets to accommodate.

We are mostly Western in EA which is 15% of humanity. Add in a few non Western hot spots and around 25% of the world does almost all science, research and innovation. That means 75% of human brains are sitting on the sideline and not in the game. With all our existential and long term challenges, humanity is only deploying 25% of its resources. If longterm future humans could look back at us today, they’d be aghast. Deploying MORE of us is the only winning path, not rejecting more.

Or don’t disrupt and carry on with the small EA we have which could and should be five times bigger. Einstein had something to say on this.

ps. If you want to imagine and start more charities, the 75% is there ready to get in the game. That’s my gig.

This comment is missing the fact that AIM is one of the organisations most seriously working on cause prioritisation with their research - it represents a massive part of their expected impact. For that reason I'd be way less excited about AIM's work if they allowed applicants to come in with their own ideas for charities (and other EA donors would be too).

BTW this only replies to one idea in your comment.

Yes that’s valuable, but I’d say it’s pretty easy to synthesize their cause priorities with founders own motivations. For example, keep the list going for every new round, so there’s 20-30 choices, all just as worthy as they were last year. Two orgs coming at one cause with different approaches is great. This same problem exists throughout EA when we imagine we can truly figure out what needs to be done based on the ITN framework. It’s a great framework, I love it, but the reality of making impact in the real world in a cause you’ve prioritized is that there are infinite angles to approach each one. Between two broad approaches are infinite degrees of adjustment to approach it. The world is too big to figure it out in advance, so allow founder interest to guide to which approach you will take. To imagine researchers in a room in the U.K., not in the field, having no personal knowledge of the cause overall and specific challenges on the ground, to be able to figure it out on paper is an intellectual arrogance. The world is too big, you can’t figure it out. So be practical and let talent guide you. We can only do what we have the talent to do. Don’t muzzle your one pragmatic chance to do something.

I think founder interest is important, but not that important.
For example, Andres from the Shrimp Welfare Project often talks about how he never saw himself running a shrimp charity until he engaged with the arguments as part of the program. What's unique about EA is its focus on the problems themselves, and not the existing interests of donors or founders.

I take this "The world is to big to figure it out in advance, so allow founder interest to guide to which approach you will take" as a good encapsulation of what you're arguing, and I disagree. Founder interest is a much less useful signal than the results of careful cost benefit research. Yes we'll always be uncertain, but that doesn't mean we can't do better when we think carefully.

Also, separately, I expect that being given a list of charity ideas you don't have existing interest in and still wanting to pursue the program is a good filter for the humility/ responsiveness to the actual world that you need to be a good charity founder.

Yes there’s always going to be an Andres where it works out well. And everyone knows AIM has done well…but I think they could have done ten times better. EA could be five to ten times bigger if they would cure the ailment you so love.

The difference between my view and AIM/EA broadly is the difference between on the ground real life experience in how humans are motivated and an attempt to figure out reality via spreadsheet & analysis in a room. Believe me I’m an EA and I love EA very much. I never digressed to hedging my love by being "EA adjacent" as some. I've maintained being fully public EA. I’m not rejecting EA’s core project to use science to be more effective in altruism, I’m saying to modify it with some common sense. EA funding all sorts of new charities from 25 year olds with a napkin plan and not seeking veterans is one example. I love the 25 year olds with a napkin, but don’t only do that. Go find some veterans too. Don’t only do six causes each new round at AIM, open it up and do “both and”, both the new one's and the ongoing list of past one's.

Some donors like EAs current narrow way, probably ten times more would like it to be far more pragmatic with deeply experienced field advisors and not only a few researchers in a room calling shots. Both and. EA is religious in its legalism.

By the way, you do a good job here, I appreciate you.

Interesting but I'm still not sure - there are clearly costs to a 'both and' approach. AIM would be vastly less impactful if most of the founders who joined ignored their list of recommended charities.

However, I am a 25 year-old with a napkin (lol, good phrase)

Appreciate the exchange though, thanks Jeffrey!

PS- draft amnesty week is coming up if you want to lay out your ideas for more people to discuss.

Ben Stewart

"Given leadership literature is rife with stories of rejected individuals going on to become great leaders"

The selection effect can be very misleading here — in that literature you usually don't hear from all the individuals who were selected and failed, nor those who were rejected correctly and would have failed, and so on. Lots of advice from the start-up/business sector is super sus for this exact reason.

Yes in publishing stories there’s plenty of suspect motives. But really I’m basing this on my own personal experience in seeing so many not obvious leaders blow everyone away and the obvious winners not at all so guaranteed to succeed. So many get into high level schools for reasons beyond their personal talent, and so many others blossom late. The pool of people enabled by society/parents to get into elite schools is much smaller than the huge pool of average grade, lower income people who didn’t give a shite about school when they’re were 18 and later blossom with their tough background giving them huge grit and ambition. EA tends to fail to see this to their diminishment. Spreadsheet criteria doesn’t capture grit and ambition. Mentoring pipelines do.

Laura Sofia

Have you engaged with AIM's selection process? It seems to me that you are talking about it as if it was based on just traditional markers of success / potential - what you call "obvious leaders". When in fact it is mostly task based (including social skills). Actually I don't remember them ever asking me where I went to college. If you have ideas on how to improve the selection process (other than make it less rigorous) so that they can catch more of these "hidden gems", I'm sure they'll love to see them.

MvK🔸

"Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones?"

This may have changed, but AIM did at least previously let candidates pitch their own ideas - I know of at least one person in my cohort that came in with their own project. Admittedly, this is rare, but that is probably what we should expect if as an applicant with an idea, you are up against a team of researchers with a cumulated expertise and experience of decades who have done several of these investigations, can compare ideas, have privileged access to data about how likely it is to find the right founders, obtain funding etc.

ThomNorman

"It’s not just AIM, all of EA has been shooting its own foot since inception with its criteria for accepting people. Don’t follow their example. Find more experienced veterans. Don’t consider so highly academic backgrounds."

In general, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the claim that EA in general can be too focused on young graduates from a few Universities, but I think its pretty hard to make that charge stick on AIM.

Some people who go through the program did indeed go to Ivy League/Oxbridge Unis, but many (including me) did not and the cohorts have a diverse range of people with different life experiences.

It is my understanding that AIM does try to attract people who have a lot of experience as well as young people, but, as I'm sure you can appreciate, when the 'job' includes almost no job security, low pay and potentially needing to relocate to the other side of the world, its often more attractive to younger folk with fewer commitments.

If you are considering not applying because you don't think you have the right 'CV' (for any reason) I would strongly recommend you DO apply. I almost counted myself out for this reason and I am very glad I put in my application.

And there may be a tradeoff between attracting more experienced candidates and moving to a model where more charities are founded but a greater percentage of them fail. For example, some career fields are less likely to look kindly on someone doing something in left field and then trying to return if the new career was unsuccessful. Some of that is unavoidable, but I expect that being selective with founders and not having more incubated charities than could plausibly get midrange funding would reduce the risks to mid-career folk.

This is a heartening reply. I’m also glad you put yours in and got in. Let me ask you from your observations, when you say diverse, could you expand on that. Is it really all mixed up or is it mostly 25 year olds and one 37 year old. Was there anyone post 45? Your point about it being more doable for younger people is a good one, but I think we mostly are known about by young people. There’s plenty of 35-55 year olds in career transitions that if they knew would apply, and often they have some security so the transition is affordable. I’d love to hear more about how actively AIM pursues them. I’d be glad to update.

MvK🔸

"The ones who aren’t founders might be operations champions or tech leads."

Ambitious Impacts graduates (including me) have in fact gone on to do a variety of things from operations to research and grantmaking.

But maybe I'm missing your point? I've generally found it a bit hard to understand that paragraph and other sections.

-9

Yes, my apologies on you not understanding some of my writing, I don't speak STEM, I'm an arts & humanities human. I'm committed to science, but I don't speak the language as many here, kind of like a long term charity worker overseas who fails to master the local language.

But this opens another interesting doorway; EA needs an infusion of maybe 20-30% arts & humanities people to make it more interesting, cool and understandable to the general public, which would increase it's donor base and overall size significantly. Lots of people love science though not great at it themselves, and science always prospers with more of them around. Smart scientific/tech organizations make sure they have a front room of arts & humanities communicators in order to make sense of and communicate to the world all the progress the science teams are making in the back room. In tech that's required for profit making. In philanthropy, unfortunately you can just not do it because you don't know how and don't feel like it, so effectiveness is undermined by donors propping you up without the accountability profit making brings, you can just have a back room, and no front room, to your diminishment and loss of effectiveness.

There's a reason everyone loves music. We are artistic and creative humans and are moved deeply by art and music. There's an old saying in social activist circles, "Every Revolution has its Music". And it is so very true. EA doesn't have its music. That's why it remains tiny, compared to what it could be. I've a sense the Moral Ambition movement will fix this and prosper. EA could too.

I suspect some of this comes down to funding constraints, which are quite significant in both global health & animal welfare. "[R]un[ning] a mentoring program and suss[ing] them out" is expensive. "[E]nlarg[ing] your budgets to accommodate" an extra person at launch is expensive. The harsh reality is that much of the money invested in AIM or early-stage charities would have counterfactually gone to GiveWell or ACE-recommended charities instead. That's a high bar.

If you think the AIM ecosystem's cost-effectiveness is about the same as the counterfactual use of donor resources under the current operating procedures, then reducing the founder selection bar to meet a quota, or accepting project proposals that are in expectancy not as strong as AIM's own proposals, could have a net negative effect on the world once the counterfactuals were considered.

(Not all of your ideas would raise this concern -- for example, if you are right that AIM puts too much weight on academic pedigree, then adjusting that weight downward should improve cost-effectiveness).

I appreciate what you're saying. If you want to be EA orthodox. I'm talking about evolving EA and changing some things.

It is most assuredly NOT expensive to run a mentoring program. It's a hugely significant pipeline of candidates coming in that you are getting a much deeper insight into than just a short application process, and it's value greatly exceeds its cost. All you have to do is spread it to all the members of AIM, rather than pay for a new department, ie. each member of AIM takes on mentoring a few people. That's great for the whole org and infuses it with exactly the culture a charity enabling org should have.

As for the quota, isn't that self set, so the budget is there to choose 25 people. If instead you choose only 20 because your criteria rejected the rest, now you have a budget excess. Don't do that, it's far better to take a risk on the five you weren't sure of, because the budget is already there, and if even one of them turned out to be a hidden gem, you got them instead of losing them.

In hits based thinking, which is an EA staple, that's what you do, you sign 25 bands and only a few make a hit record, but that's enough to support the whole process. The point is that the researcher's in AIMs back room choosing the cause priorities are most definitely not the arbiters able to pick the best hits. They can't do it alone, they never will, and it was a fools errand to think they could. Everyone knows there's no magic formula for picking a hit record, you just have to sign a bunch of bands and let them go crazy and see what happens. EA is effectively saying, "No. We think we can use science and spreadsheets to pick the hit songs". Nope. Doesn't work (world too big). But most definitely get some people in the back room working on that (Go researchers, we love you!), just don't let that be the only thing you do...you also have to go out to the clubs and see what the kids are dancing to. (ie. bring in more veteran field workers into the process, have a mentoring pipeline, change your criteria a lot to include more and reject less, rather than just researchers in the back room).

Both in science, in music, in movies, nobody knows where the next hit will come from, so get broader and accept more.

Thanks -- this is helpful in understanding different assumptions at play here.

At the outset, I'm inclined to defer to AIM -- not because I am inclined to defer to EA orgs in general, but because experience suggests that nonprofits (and other types of entities witout market discipline as well) are much more likely to err by expanding to fill available budget than by constricting their activities. So while it's certainly possible that AIM has misjudged the tradeoffs, I start at a place of some deference.

All you have to do is spread it to all the members of AIM, rather than pay for a new department, ie. each member of AIM takes on mentoring a few people.

If the AIM staff have available bandwidth, I'm guessing there are a number of different projects they could take on. We don't know what the counterfactual use of staff time would be.

As for the quota, isn't that self set, so the budget is there to choose 25 people. If instead you choose only 20 because your criteria rejected the rest, now you have a budget excess.

An organization does not have to spend its budget; it can spend less and then has to fundraise less for next year. If I recall correctly, AIM is very conscious of what the likely counterfactual use of funds donated to it would be.

I think this is a stronger point insofar as the relevant costs are fixed / sunk at the point of selection. I know some are, and some aren't, but don't know the relative proportions. (Note that I would include the broader ecosystem's costs, such as seed funding from non-AIM sources.)

Everyone knows there's no magic formula for picking a hit record, you just have to sign a bunch of bands and let them go crazy and see what happens.

This metaphor doesn't work for me very well. In GHD/AW work, we have the ability to get a great return off of the existing catalog of "artists" (non-profits). In contrast, assume it is hard to invest money at good returns in any musical artist who has already proven themselves. Also, the hypothetical music investor should be willing to make investments as long as the expected value of the investment is positive; there is no pre-determined hard cap on funding available (and the investor should be able to get as much funding as they can find good investment targets). In contrast, the charitable "investor" obtains impact (which isn't convertible into money) and so is limited by the size of their bankroll.

There's a limited amount of seed and mid-stage funding available, so I would have concerns about exceeding the ecosystem's carrying capacity. The practical effect of significantly increased cohort sizes may be moving more of the culling decisions from AIM to the early funders. That strikes me as having some upsides and downsides.

To the extent that one thinks there should be more seed/mid-stage funding (and is willing to accept the counterfactual reduction in funding for established charities), that isn't really in AIM's power to control.

In the end, my napkin model (low confidence) goes something like this:

Investing in AIM and its early-stage incubated charities, under current operating conditions, is slightly more cost-effective than the GiveWell or ACE alternatives.
AIM has moderate ability to identify founders that are more likely to be successful.
AIM has moderate ability to identify projects that are more likely to be successful.

That model doesn't rely on a belief that AIM is great at identifying good founders or projects. But it does suggest that being less selective could easily flip the decision to donate within the AIM ecosystem vs. the GiveWell or ACE ones.

nicolejohnson

I have to agree with most of what you have said here. I understand the idea behind focusing on where you can do the most good, but that is going to look different for everyone. You won't find the people that you are looking for by only giving them these four options to choose from.

I also have to agree with your comment regarding young individuals not pursuing prestigious colleges at a young age and will use myself as an example. I never finished my degree due to ADHD (although I'm actively working on changing that). I am, however, great with people. Leading is where I excel. I also know financial accounting since I spent 10 years working with them. I have spent a lifetime in animal advocacy. That work includes being a cofounder of a small animal organization that is still operating 10 years later and has had a huge impact on our community all without the use of grants. I've also been published advocating for captive wild animals and currently have a 27-page business plan drafted for a new nonprofit that will allow me to expand my reach while advocating for animals. However, due to not having a finished degree and having managerial titles vs. executive titles on my CV, the chances of me qualifying are quite slim.

With that being said, I haven't bothered to apply because, quite frankly, none of these ideas interest me. They are a bit ahead of current times in my opinion. I think there are some fights that still need to be finished before we attempt to tackle what millions of people around the globe are eating. Not that I agree with factory farming by any means, but it's difficult to find the motivation to advocate for a food source when we haven't even effectively stopped people from buying puppies from puppy mills, slowed down the abuse and neglect of animals in countries like Egypt, slowed down mass culling of animals in certain countries, or even managed to convince Americans to stop going to circuses that use wild animals. Why would I jump into a project, putting my heart and soul into it, when I can see that society clearly isn't ready for it yet because so many fights are still unresolved.

I also think there are much more pressing issues that should be addressed that better meet the idea of Effective Altruism. Wild animal welfare being one of those as it supports biodiversity which is what this planet needs to survive.

when we haven't even effectively stopped people from buying puppies from puppy mills

I'm curious about effectively stopped here (cf. also unresolved). It's often the case that the addressing the first (say) 50% of a problem is significantly easier than the last (say) 20%. And so it doesn't strike me as surprising that it would be more effective to move on to mitigate new issues rather than devote a large amount of resources in an attempt to fully resolve previously worked-on issues.

SiobhanBall

'To miss your quota and still have many rejected applicants sitting there seems way too high confidence in yourselves and your criteria' - bang on the money! And I agree this is an EA-wide phenomenon. I'm gonna go look up who you are now because I'm curious!

SiobhanBall

I'll do all four of them if you like! 💪🏽

... given how much more productive it's possible to be now, I'm only half-joking.

Fai

Thank you for the post! I have a question.

3. Cage-free farming in the Middle East

I wonder if this org, if incubated, might potentially expand to the issue of caged broiler farming?

Aidan Alexander

It’d be up to the founders, but I’d guess it would make sense to focus on layers in the Middle East until hitting diminishing returns there. After that, how to scale would likely depend on what the team’s comparative advantage is: Expertise and connections within the Middle East context (such that different asks in that context makes sense) or expertise at cage free campaigns specifically (such that the same ask in a different context makes sense)

Fai

Thanks for the reply!

it would make sense to focus on layers in the Middle East until hitting diminishing returns there.

I wonder why you hold this view. It seems to me that for the caged layer issue, it's a reversion problem because the vast majority of laying hens in the Middle East are already caged, while for the caged broiler issue, it can still be seen as a prevention problem because many broilers are still not yet in caged systems. And it seems to me that it's plausible that a prevention might be easier and more effective than a reversion?

Aidan Alexander

I have no idea about that. I’m not talking about whether cage free or broiler work is a better idea for a new organization — I’m answering your question about whether an org that started off doing caged free might expand to broiler :)

Fai

Thank you for the clarifcation! And thanks for engaging in the conversation!

Vasco Grilo🔸

-6

Thanks for the post, Ben and Amalie. I have argued for prioritising interventions targeting farmed animals over ones targeting humans many times in the past, including during AIM's research program. However, I now think it is better to direct marginal funding and people to global health and development interventions instead of ones targeting farmed animals.

Part 1: Why you should launch an animal welfare charity
Our existing animal charities have had a lot of impact—improving the lives of over 1 billion animals worldwide. - from Shrimp Welfare Project securing corporate commitments globally [...]

I estimate funding the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF) decreases 5.07 billion soil-animal-years per $, 5.07 times the 1 billion animals you mention above per $. HIPF funds global health interventions, this decreases human mortality, this increases food production, this increases agricultural land, and this decreases the number of soil animals. In addition, I estimate funding HIPF increases the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtail, mites, and nematodes 3.43 k (= 70.6*10^3/20.6) times as cost-effectively as the Shrimp Welfare Project's (SWP's) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) increases the welfare of shrimps. This is for my best guess that soil animals have negative lives. I supposed the welfare per soil-animal-year is -25 % of that per fully happy soil-animal-year. I am very uncertain about whether soil animals have positive or negative lives. However, AIM (in particular, Karolina Sarek, Joey Savoie, and David Moss) estimated -42 % for the “wild bug” in 2018, which is more negative than what I assumed.

SiobhanBall

Whilst I don't have a strong view on the points you're making, why is this getting downvoted? It's a valid discussion.

Aidan Alexander

It is valid but I think it’s being downvoted because (a) Vasco posts the same point so often and so widely that some people come to view it as spam, (b) this is on a public forum and is the kind of view that is perfect to be used by bad-faith EA critics and journalists to paint EA in a negative light in media.

Although, to Vasco’s credit, this comment is much improved on the optics front compared to previous ones

And related to (a), experience teaches us that there's a risk of derailing the discussion away from the topic of the original post. While posters are not entitled to control the discussion on their posts, I also don't think there's much value in hosting the soil-animal discussion on a bunch of different threads especially if it risks displacing other discussions.

I do not reflexively downvote Vasco's comments on this topic, but here I think the connection to the topic of the post is too tenuous.

Vasco Grilo🔸