I think that Jack is overall making solid argument with the intent of the overall betterment of the EA community and ecosystem. Multiple things can be true:
Cold emailing, especially done well, can sometimes be successful for an individual org;
Cold emailing will build less trust with a potential funder than being recommended by an individual or organisation they already trust;
Most people will be annoyed by receiving 20 unsolicited email a week asking for money;
It may be unfair to dismiss cold emailing completely, but it's likely a good idea to discourage it in the current and future climate.
From everything I’ve seen it seems like a huge amount of money is going to come in the EA space. The last time that happened it didn’t go too well. And from what I’ve read whilst a bunch of people have suggestions on how to approach this, no one has the complete solution. For me personally I feel very excited by the possibility of what we can do with these funds, but simultaneously nervous about it not going well.
We have an absolutely incredible opportunity to do good here. With this opportunity must come a recognition that we should strive towards the highest standards possible. We as a community must try to do what is good for the community as a whole and the causes we are attempting to serve, rather than just what is individually good for ourselves or our organisations.
I believe that the 'existing gatekeepers' of EA, organisations such as CEA and Coefficient Giving – and yes, other funders like Ultra Philanthropy – have done so much to help build this community, and done it so well. Yes, it's in Jack’s incentive for him to say that it’s better for the incoming funds to go through a trusted funding organisation such as his own. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I think he’s likely right.
As a community we want money to be going towards projects that do the most amount of good per dollar spent. There are a number of organisations in the EA community – the 'middlemen' – who's whole purpose is to try and figure this often very difficult question out. I think fundamentally they are going to a lot better at answering this question than an Anthropic employee who has been sent a cold email.
If we want to have confidence that the money donated is going towards the most cost-effective interventions on the highest priority causes, we should initially trust the existing trusted organisations, as well as work to both expand their capacity and create new trusted funders with additional capacity.
Thank you for this post Lee, I really do appreciate it.
This is definitely a disappointing result and not what I wanted out of this consultation. However for me this does not reduce the potential of this path to impact; of influencing policy outcomes by coordinating submissions to consultations.
The first reason for this belief is the successes in Australia. The second reason is the ICAI consultation I worked on last October, where I coordinated around ~60 submissions, and successfully influenced the consultation’s results. For each of the four questions ICAI asked, they listed the top recommendations given. The top answer that they list for each question directly corresponds to our top recommendation that we gave to attendees to push forward (e.g. use of best buys, cash-benchmarking). A number of our secondary arguments are also prominently included.
However, even with this success they state that ‘we estimate that around 40 responses showed a degree of coordination, but we are confident that this has not changed the substance of the results.’ Meaning either they noticed our coordination but it didn’t affect our influence, or our coordination wasn’t noticed.
I think that this IDC consultation was also different in that we only pushed forward a single argument and provided a single version of that argument. Whereas the usual method is providing multiple arguments to push forward and different variations of them. The benefit of a single argument is the significantly less work required, however as one likely could have guessed, it also results in significantly less success.
For me this only enhances the need to have someone working on this full-time, which we are actually hiring for at the Global Policy Research Group. The contractor position will involve coordinating submissions from the UK/European effective altruism and adjacent communities to significant governmental consultations (on the core EA cause areas) to create policy change.
If you or someone you know would be interested, here is the Application Form.
If anyone has any positive or critical thoughts on this work or this role I am very open to hearing them!
Hi Chris, I don't believe that it will be recorded but I will be running an online event next Monday which will be in the exact same format. Here is the info:
Looking forward to that workshop happening Shepard!
Glad to hear you agree with Sam, its something I will be looking more into over the next few days. The draft of asks is very much a draft, so thank you to Sam Hilton for all of his thoughts and I want others to feel free to comment directly on the document as well.
I think that Jack is overall making solid argument with the intent of the overall betterment of the EA community and ecosystem. Multiple things can be true:
From everything I’ve seen it seems like a huge amount of money is going to come in the EA space. The last time that happened it didn’t go too well. And from what I’ve read whilst a bunch of people have suggestions on how to approach this, no one has the complete solution. For me personally I feel very excited by the possibility of what we can do with these funds, but simultaneously nervous about it not going well.
We have an absolutely incredible opportunity to do good here. With this opportunity must come a recognition that we should strive towards the highest standards possible. We as a community must try to do what is good for the community as a whole and the causes we are attempting to serve, rather than just what is individually good for ourselves or our organisations.
I believe that the 'existing gatekeepers' of EA, organisations such as CEA and Coefficient Giving – and yes, other funders like Ultra Philanthropy – have done so much to help build this community, and done it so well. Yes, it's in Jack’s incentive for him to say that it’s better for the incoming funds to go through a trusted funding organisation such as his own. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I think he’s likely right.
As a community we want money to be going towards projects that do the most amount of good per dollar spent. There are a number of organisations in the EA community – the 'middlemen' – who's whole purpose is to try and figure this often very difficult question out. I think fundamentally they are going to a lot better at answering this question than an Anthropic employee who has been sent a cold email.
If we want to have confidence that the money donated is going towards the most cost-effective interventions on the highest priority causes, we should initially trust the existing trusted organisations, as well as work to both expand their capacity and create new trusted funders with additional capacity.
this is excellent chat
This is a truly great post, thank you.
Thank you for this post Lee, I really do appreciate it.
This is definitely a disappointing result and not what I wanted out of this consultation. However for me this does not reduce the potential of this path to impact; of influencing policy outcomes by coordinating submissions to consultations.
The first reason for this belief is the successes in Australia. The second reason is the ICAI consultation I worked on last October, where I coordinated around ~60 submissions, and successfully influenced the consultation’s results. For each of the four questions ICAI asked, they listed the top recommendations given. The top answer that they list for each question directly corresponds to our top recommendation that we gave to attendees to push forward (e.g. use of best buys, cash-benchmarking). A number of our secondary arguments are also prominently included.
However, even with this success they state that ‘we estimate that around 40 responses showed a degree of coordination, but we are confident that this has not changed the substance of the results.’ Meaning either they noticed our coordination but it didn’t affect our influence, or our coordination wasn’t noticed.
I think that this IDC consultation was also different in that we only pushed forward a single argument and provided a single version of that argument. Whereas the usual method is providing multiple arguments to push forward and different variations of them. The benefit of a single argument is the significantly less work required, however as one likely could have guessed, it also results in significantly less success.
For me this only enhances the need to have someone working on this full-time, which we are actually hiring for at the Global Policy Research Group. The contractor position will involve coordinating submissions from the UK/European effective altruism and adjacent communities to significant governmental consultations (on the core EA cause areas) to create policy change.
If you or someone you know would be interested, here is the Application Form.
If anyone has any positive or critical thoughts on this work or this role I am very open to hearing them!
Highly recommend this!
Thanks David!
Thank you and good catch!
Hi Chris, I don't believe that it will be recorded but I will be running an online event next Monday which will be in the exact same format. Here is the info:
Online Workshop
Mon Oct 14, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82480438660
Register your interest HERE
Looking forward to that workshop happening Shepard!
Glad to hear you agree with Sam, its something I will be looking more into over the next few days. The draft of asks is very much a draft, so thank you to Sam Hilton for all of his thoughts and I want others to feel free to comment directly on the document as well.