Many of the national giving orgs send their money through organizations like GiveWell, meaning you would get double-counting if you listed both the national org and the evaluator.
This is probably not the case for all money moved by such organizations (or even all such organizations), but I think this should alleviate some of your concern.
Thank you for this writeup Luke, and in general for the tireless work you do to help improve these organizations.
I'm likely to make my end of year donations toward something in this space, and would be excited to chat through the decision with others, and possibly coordinate. If you're willing to spend some time on this, feel free to leave a comment or DM for setting up a call. :)
I am quite receptive to caveats about how easy it is so scale current orgs and interventions, but that seems more of a practical issue (than can partially be solved through more money?).
Other than that, I just think it's a crazy scale of very neglected suffering and the sooner we figure out how to make significant changes to the system the better.
I was super surprised by this, but then discovered that indeed GW top recommended charities are all listed on the top of the page, in some kind of main set of recommendations. E.g. Humane League is absent in the same way from animal welfare.
Maybe makes sense to list them in both groups (cause area, and top recs), @Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸 ?
That makes sense, and thank you for the suggestion :)
For what it's worth, I was also on a personal level quite excited about the smaller type of projects that could get funding through something like this and otherwise might not make the effort of going through a long application process.
Thank you for an interesting and useful post, the style of narration made it an enjoyable read.
I wanted to briefly address the below statement:
Rethink's requesting funding for specific projects says to me 'we basically think these are the least important things we'd spend money on, otherwise we'd spend it on them out of our primary budget
As I was part of the group at Rethink Priorities that chose what project to front on Manifund, I can honestly share that this is not how our thought process went. Rather, we focused mostly on ... I) relatively small asks, that would be a better fit for the crowdfunding format of people giving hundreds of dollars II) projects we thought were best suited for the "EA Community" framing of the funding round, i.e. meta efforts rather than broader .
Relative to our scale, we also don't have a large "primary budget" that we can use to fund projects we think are impactful. Some of our departments do not have grants for general team work, and have to fundraise for any specific next research project. Even the ones that do have department-level earmarking, are often somewhat restricted by funder(s) in what types of projects they can choose to work on by default. My experience is that it's more likely that a particular project that doesn't get funded gets put on hold in hope of another funder, than that we're able to use general unrestricted funds for it.
With more unrestricted funds available to RP, I think our reality would look at least a bit more like what you described in your comment. I think we have some very astute thinkers internally when it comes to cause prio, so I think that would be a good thing.
Welcome to the forum, Matthew!
Many of the national giving orgs send their money through organizations like GiveWell, meaning you would get double-counting if you listed both the national org and the evaluator.
This is probably not the case for all money moved by such organizations (or even all such organizations), but I think this should alleviate some of your concern.
Wanted to let you know that this post, reminding me about this possibility, just saved my org ~$1.5k. 🌟
Hi @RobertHarling – a few months later, is there a more narrow tentative date for the east coast EAG?
@Luke Moore 🔸 could probably be helpful with some overview for 2022-2023, while I expect 2024 numbers will take a few months before presenting.
Thank you for this writeup Luke, and in general for the tireless work you do to help improve these organizations.
I'm likely to make my end of year donations toward something in this space, and would be excited to chat through the decision with others, and possibly coordinate. If you're willing to spend some time on this, feel free to leave a comment or DM for setting up a call. :)
I am quite receptive to caveats about how easy it is so scale current orgs and interventions, but that seems more of a practical issue (than can partially be solved through more money?).
Other than that, I just think it's a crazy scale of very neglected suffering and the sooner we figure out how to make significant changes to the system the better.
I was super surprised by this, but then discovered that indeed GW top recommended charities are all listed on the top of the page, in some kind of main set of recommendations. E.g. Humane League is absent in the same way from animal welfare.
Maybe makes sense to list them in both groups (cause area, and top recs), @Sjir Hoeijmakers🔸 ?
That makes sense, and thank you for the suggestion :)
For what it's worth, I was also on a personal level quite excited about the smaller type of projects that could get funding through something like this and otherwise might not make the effort of going through a long application process.
Thank you for an interesting and useful post, the style of narration made it an enjoyable read.
I wanted to briefly address the below statement:
As I was part of the group at Rethink Priorities that chose what project to front on Manifund, I can honestly share that this is not how our thought process went. Rather, we focused mostly on ...
I) relatively small asks, that would be a better fit for the crowdfunding format of people giving hundreds of dollars
II) projects we thought were best suited for the "EA Community" framing of the funding round, i.e. meta efforts rather than broader .
Relative to our scale, we also don't have a large "primary budget" that we can use to fund projects we think are impactful. Some of our departments do not have grants for general team work, and have to fundraise for any specific next research project. Even the ones that do have department-level earmarking, are often somewhat restricted by funder(s) in what types of projects they can choose to work on by default. My experience is that it's more likely that a particular project that doesn't get funded gets put on hold in hope of another funder, than that we're able to use general unrestricted funds for it.
With more unrestricted funds available to RP, I think our reality would look at least a bit more like what you described in your comment. I think we have some very astute thinkers internally when it comes to cause prio, so I think that would be a good thing.
If I have done this some previous year, and got charged membership this year as well, do I need to do anything else? :) 🇩🇰 🤝 🇸🇪
Will try to spread the word!