I'm the Finance Director at Animal Charity Evaluators. I co-founded and co-led EA Madison (Wis.) and have been involved in effective altruism since 2013.
It's incredible how much the world has changed since our parents were young—I've thought about that a fair amount in recent years. I think when I was ~15, I thought that in several years I'd have learned most of what I needed to know about being an adult in the world. But the world continued to change. A lot.
Your post & Eleanor's recent GWWC video reminded me that I am helping animals each month through my donations, even when I don't feel optimal at work. I'm one more person in the world doing what I can.
I asked Chase (our org's bank) about the money market sweep option, and they said theirs is not a money market sweep, but an investment sweep, going through funds with JP Morgan, and it's NOT FDIC-insured. The funds could increase or decrease in value; it's a risk just like investing is. Other than those differences, it sounded similar to what you were writing about.
Were you actually writing about a couple different things, or is there a way to find an FDIC-insured option like this?
I agree we should try using accessible language (when it doesn't compromise our message). It makes our ideas more easily spread to people from various backgrounds (e.g. not just tech people), non-native English speakers, younger people, etc.
I think it'd be great if more EA orgs made this an official part of their style guides/voice guidelines/similar. Was just thinking about this again when I was reading an 80k piece (https://80000hours.org/2023/05/moderation-in-doing-good/) that used the term "sandboxes", when "test environment" is probably clearer to a wider audience.
Re: others organizing special events on the forum--
I think if CEA came up with a process for that, which included CEA promoting the event organized by a non-CEA person, that might help this happen.
There could be a "forum special event" form, where someone can suggest a theme, write up a description, and get feedback from CEA on it. Maybe the feedback would be to clarify the description, or to suggest a specific time for the event to be synchronized (or not) with related other events. E.g. if there's an insect welfare conference happening at time X, it might work well to have an insect welfare forum fortnight soon after that.
And then the promotion could be to include the event announcement in the EA Newsletter or pin the announcement post to the home page of the forum for a bit.
From my basic understanding of Open Phil, it does seem like Dustin & Cari have given up the reins to a large extent? Open Phil has hired lots of staff who are making the granting decisions, although maybe Dustin & Cari have a large influence over the cause areas.
I'm curious to know the main differences in purpose between this and the Impactful Animal Advocacy newsletter. One obvious one is that the latter is monthly and via email and this is more frequent and on the forum. Other differences?
I really appreciated your post.
It's incredible how much the world has changed since our parents were young—I've thought about that a fair amount in recent years. I think when I was ~15, I thought that in several years I'd have learned most of what I needed to know about being an adult in the world. But the world continued to change. A lot.
Your post & Eleanor's recent GWWC video reminded me that I am helping animals each month through my donations, even when I don't feel optimal at work. I'm one more person in the world doing what I can.
Thanks for writing this! It convinced me to do the investment sweep option for my org, and it's definitely been worth it so far.
How many chicks per year will Egg Innovations' change save? (The announcement link is blocked for me.)
Thanks for writing this up!
I asked Chase (our org's bank) about the money market sweep option, and they said theirs is not a money market sweep, but an investment sweep, going through funds with JP Morgan, and it's NOT FDIC-insured. The funds could increase or decrease in value; it's a risk just like investing is. Other than those differences, it sounded similar to what you were writing about.
Were you actually writing about a couple different things, or is there a way to find an FDIC-insured option like this?
I agree we should try using accessible language (when it doesn't compromise our message). It makes our ideas more easily spread to people from various backgrounds (e.g. not just tech people), non-native English speakers, younger people, etc.
I think it'd be great if more EA orgs made this an official part of their style guides/voice guidelines/similar. Was just thinking about this again when I was reading an 80k piece (https://80000hours.org/2023/05/moderation-in-doing-good/) that used the term "sandboxes", when "test environment" is probably clearer to a wider audience.
"Avoid “sex sells” tactics"—the link there doesn't work.
Re: others organizing special events on the forum--
I think if CEA came up with a process for that, which included CEA promoting the event organized by a non-CEA person, that might help this happen.
There could be a "forum special event" form, where someone can suggest a theme, write up a description, and get feedback from CEA on it. Maybe the feedback would be to clarify the description, or to suggest a specific time for the event to be synchronized (or not) with related other events. E.g. if there's an insect welfare conference happening at time X, it might work well to have an insect welfare forum fortnight soon after that.
And then the promotion could be to include the event announcement in the EA Newsletter or pin the announcement post to the home page of the forum for a bit.
Formatting thing: you may have meant to indent some bullets under "Work on any single area can gain from our working on multiple areas:"
I think this b/c it ends with a ":"
From my basic understanding of Open Phil, it does seem like Dustin & Cari have given up the reins to a large extent? Open Phil has hired lots of staff who are making the granting decisions, although maybe Dustin & Cari have a large influence over the cause areas.
Cool, thanks for doing this!
I'm curious to know the main differences in purpose between this and the Impactful Animal Advocacy newsletter. One obvious one is that the latter is monthly and via email and this is more frequent and on the forum. Other differences?