not speaking for my employer but as someone who engages a lot with this donor segment both in my paid work and in my volunteer time: (a) I do not think such a thing exists for cause-agnostic lightweight advising (but if it does I would love to hear about it); (b) this is part of the gap Giving Green tries to fill on climate, and maybe there are parallel cause-specific advisories that have the flexibility to advise smaller donors?; (c) I think the most doable thing here for an individual small major donor is to join a community of donors giving at around the same level with the same interests—I'm excited about e.g. GWWC pledge communities, funding circles, etc for this reason. unfortunately for this segment I don't think there's a way around doing some legwork yourself, but at least you can share the load + sometimes pool money/time/connections to get advice or access to funding opportunities that are normally only available to larger donors (I've done this!).

this could be true, i don't have a good sense of who's most prestigious in EA aside from the obvious* - my claim is more that i've seen this happen in examples and that it would be bad if that was happening all the time, but i am not attuned enough to broad EA social dynamics to know if that is happening all the time

*the obvious ones are the ones who are prestigious because they Did Something a long time ago, which I think doesn't really count as a counterexample to the critical tendency as it manifests now

an observation I've had recently across a few examples* is that

• criticizers acquire more social capital than doers (or celebraters of the doers)
• criticizers tend to not pay attention to their social capital relative to the thing they are criticizing - criticizers with social status can easily shut down small or new doers, less so for established doers
• criticizers gain enough social capital that they themselves become above (meaningful) criticism*

I get the idea that all arguments should be taken on their merits in a place like this, but in practice, it's not that hard to imagine that a community that excessively rewards criticism becomes (ironically) prone to groupthink as a failure mode

*I've been sitting on this thought for a year or so but I don't want to further name the examples because the criticizers I would criticize have more social capital than me and it could easily be bad for me to do so lol

I suppose I'm skeptical that quant scores in an auto-sent email will actually give you a nuanced sense - but I do see how, e.g., if over time you realize it's always your interview or always your quant question that scores poorly, that is a good signal

I do think being kind is an underrated part of hiring!

Quantitative scoring doesn't really give you that, though!

(I run hiring rounds with ~100-1000 applicants) agree with Jamie here. However, if someone was close to a cutoff, I do specifically include "encourage you to apply to future roles" in my rejection email. I also always respond when somebody asks for feedback proactively.

Is revealing scores useful to candidates for some other reason not covered by that? It seems to me the primary reason (since it sounds like you aren't asking for qualitative feedback to also be provided) would be to inform candidates as to whether applying for future similar roles is worth the effort.

James this is great! I really like your framing of donations as in line with other personal actions; I've seen the FP graph but never actually interpreted it in the way you have. 

Semi-related ramble, I've been workshopping this idea of giving as a way of expressing agency—especially when it comes to climate, I think a lot of people turn to plastic bags etc. because they want to feel like they're directly responsible for a Good Thing. People want to see and feel the impact of their actions, and donations don't often provide that sense of "I did this, and it meant something". I think a framing of donations as one of many possible actions actually might break that hesitation down a bit (and specifically, is related to some lefty mutual aid thoughts about money as one of many resources we offer in community). Will experiment with this, thanks for the idea :)

(disclaimer: personal hat on! I do fundraising in my non-work organizing spaces)

strong upvoted, I think it's good to encourage non-EAs to give more effectively and I think it's good to broaden what we think of as "evidence" and consider its pros and cons.

I work with a community in my city that gives primarily locally (leaving aside my judgment on that), and I find that many people think that they're not giving based on any idea of effectiveness: e.g. they'll say they're giving based on community need, or trust in a relationship they have, or values-alignment. But usually there's an implicit sense of "what is effective" underneath that, and it's helpful to push people to make that explicit: if you're giving because you trust the relationship you have with this organization, how good of a signal is that about the organization's work? Is it a better signal than other evidence you have access to?

(Aside: Quite often with small grassroots organizations, I think a strong relationship with the right people honestly is one of the best available signals! In particular, I find that the organizations that community leaders consider important/tractable/neglected - though not using those words - are not always the ones that gain a lot of media attention, external funding, etc.)

Yeah, strong agree with this. [I used to work in VC and frequently diligenced ARPA-E grantees.] I don't think the cited study supports the claim that all externalities are priced in in the US, let alone globally. 

I would also guess that the valuation of the 26 exited companies is an underestimation of overall impact for other reasons - top of mind: impact of non-exited companies, learning benefit to the field of a company that "fails" and exits at a very low valuation.

@charrin thanks for writing this, as a below commenter said it's nice to see an EA-style investigation of a potentially impactful career path outside the community!