Cash transfers are not targeted (i.e. lots of households receive transfers that don't have young children) and are very expensive relative to other ways to avert child deaths ($1000 vs a few dollars for a bednet). The latter varies over more orders of magnitude than child mortality effects, so it dominates the calculation.

I redirected my giving from GiveWell to EA Animal Welfare Fund. I had been meaning to for a while (since the donation election), so wouldn't necessarily call it marginal, but it was the trigger.

Interestingly, metaculus forecast on this was off by an order of magnitude (15% vs 300-400%). Only three people forecasted, so I wouldn't read too much into it, but it is a wide gap.

I've had a substantive/technical conversation with Emmanuel over Zoom, can confirm he is not a scammer.

I'm curious how many people actually split their individual giving across cause areas. It seems like a strange decision, for all the reasons you outline.

Sorry for demanding the spoon-feeding, but where do I find a list of such organizations?

I might do this. What organizations would you be most interested in seeing this for?

The CE of redirecting money is simply (dollars raised per dollar spent) * (difference in CE between your use of the money vs counterfactual use). So if GD raises $10 from climate mitigation for every $1 it spent, and that money would have otherwise been neutral, then that's a cost-effectiveness of 10x in GiveWell units.

There's nothing complicated about estimating the value of leverage. The problem is actually doing leverage. Everyone is trying to leverage everyone else. When there is money to be had, there are a bunch of organizations trying to influence how it is spent. Melinda French Gates is likely deluged with organizations trying to pitch her for money. The CEAP shutdown post you mentioned puts it perfectly:

The core thesis of our charity fell prey to the 1% fallacy. Within any country, much of the development budget is fixed and difficult to move. For example, most countries will have made binding commitments spanning several years to fund various projects and institutions. Another large chunk is going to be spent on political priorities (funding Ukraine, taking in refugees, etc.) which is also difficult for an outsider to influence.

What is left is fought over by hundreds, if not thousands of NGOs all looking for funding. I can’t think of any other government budget with as many entities fighting over as small a budget. The NGOs which survive in this space, are those which were best at getting grants. Like other industries dependent on government subsidies, they fight tooth and nail to ensure those subsidies stay put.

This doesn't mean that leverage is impossible. It just means that leverage opportunities tend to be specific and limited. We have to take them on opportunistically, rather than making leverage a theory of impact.

During the animal welfare vs global health debate week, I was very reluctant to make a post or argument in favor of global health, the cause I work in and that animates me. Here are some reflections on why, that may or may not apply to other people:

1. Moral weights are tiresome to debate. If you (like me) do not have a good grasp of philosophy, it's an uphill struggle to grasp what RP's moral weights project means exactly, and where I would or would not buy into its assumptions.
2. I don't choose my donations/actions based on impartial cause prioritization. I think impartially within GHD (e.g. I don't prioritize interventions in India just because I'm from there, I treat health vs income moral weights much more analytically than species moral weights) but not for cross-cause comparison. I am okay with this. But it doesn't make for a persuasive case to other people.
3. It doesn't feel good to post something that you know will provoke a large volume of (friendly!) disagreement. I think of myself as a pretty disagreeable person, but I am still very averse to posting things that go against what almost everyone around me is saying, at least when I don't feel 100% confident in my thesis. I have found previous arguments about global health vs animal welfare to be especially exhausting and they did not lead to any convergence, so I don't see the upside that justifies the downside.
4. I don't fundamentally disagree with the narrow thesis that marginal money can do more good in animal welfare. I just feel disillusioned with the larger implications that global health is overfunded and not really worth the money we spend on it.

I'm deliberately focusing on emotional/psychological inhibitions as opposed to analytical doubts I have about animal welfare. I do have some analytical doubts, but I think of them as secondary to the personal relationship I have with GHD.

This looks like an exceptionally promising list of charities. Good luck to all the founders!