DavidNash
Bio
How others can help me
I'm happy talking to anyone, don't hesitate to reach out. Specific things we may want to chat about include;
- How fast/slow and where should EA grow as a movement?
- What lessons can we learn from other movements?
- How much should we focus on people in the core of EA vs on the fringe?
- Do you have a new idea for a cause or project related to EA?
Topics I have been thinking about for a while but still enjoy chatting about:-
- Movement building & strategy
- Meta EA
- Networks vs connections
- New cause areas/interventions
How I can help others
If you're thinking about being a community organiser or are currently organising an EA related group then I'd be happy to share ideas on strategy and community building. Especially for people working on cause specific work or in neglected regions of the world.
I've been an organiser with EA UK since 2015, working part time since 2017 and full time since 2019. I've also had conversations with people setting up groups around the world and also career, cause, interest and workplace related groups.
I have also had quite a few career conversations with people and could be a good sounding board if you had career/project questions.
Posts 73
Comments289
Topic contributions1
One category that you didn't include are people that agree with the ideas and take action, but don't want to or are too busy to attend lots of EA meetups.
For UK, data from CAF.
"The proportion of donations going to overseas aid and disaster relief (7% -£931m) halved from a high in 2022 (14%)"
It's also not a new thing - The Elitist Philanthropy of So-Called Effective Altruism - from 2013.
I'm not sure you have to do anything with it, generally groups that suggests money/influence should be shifted from A to B will get a negative response from the people it may affect or people who disagree with that direction of change. I tend to find energy spent on ideological EA critics is less valuable than good faith critics/people who are just looking for resources to help themselves to more good.
Depending on what you are aiming to achieve with that section of the website, you don't have to have notable figures, you could include people who are most relevant (or not include individuals at all).
For example Magnify Mentoring has people who have benefited from their mentoring programs. EA Philippines have photos of their local community. EA for Christians have stories from members on their community tab and no profiles of people on their intro page.
Could the main difference be that TBP is a simple process change with reduced costs, while EA-style giving would fundamentally alter grant evaluation requiring more overhead from the funder.
I also think EA would involve extra costs to existing grantees, they will have to provide more evidence of their effectiveness or lose out to orgs that have those systems in place.
Separately I think it will be very hard to get existing foundations to shift to use more EA frameworks unless their main donors become interested in it. There is probably more to be gained by finding and helping the UHNW people/orgs that are inclined towards EA already.
I think there is more value in separating out AI vs bio vs nuclear vs meta GCR than having posts/events marketed as GCR but be mainly on one topic. Both from the perspective of the minor causes and the main cause which would get more relevant attention.
Also the strategy/marketing of those causes will often be different and so it doesn't make as much sense to lump them together unless it is about GCR prioritisation or cross cause support.