AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
Precommitting based on Survey Outcomes for Proposed "Giving Effectively Israel.
(Epistemic Status: Public Statement for Future Reference)
We're planning to field a survey about current giving, and potentially funding a Israeli-tax-deductible organization. The first question is whether there is sufficient demand to make funding the program worthwhile.
Setting this up involves a fair amount of upfront costs for lawyers to ensure that this is entirely above board. It seems worthwhile to try to engage a relatively prestigious / respected firm, to ensure that this is done correctly. There is a risk that we find out that they don't think it's possible to do (subjective estimate: 25%), in which case we would stop the project, hopefully having spent less than the expected full cost.
My upfront claim is that this would be worthwhile to seek funding for if the cost of a lawyer and setting up the nonprofit is less than 25% of the expected tax-saving to EAs over the next 3 years, as inferred from the survey.
Update: The total raised by Israeli EAs from the survey is on the order of 100,000 NIS, or about $30,000 now, which I think could plausibly double or even triple once started, at least in the next couple years. Given that tax rebates in Israel are a flat 35%, the planned organization would save Israeli EAs 35,000 NIS / $10,000 annually now, and 2-3 times as much in the coming few years. If there are very low administrative costs, this is plausibly enough that it is worth having on a utilitarian calculus basis, as outlined in my above pre-commitment, IF there were someone suitable to run it that had enough time and / or was willing to work cheaply enough.
However, given the value of my time working on other things, however, it is not enough for me to think that I should run the organization.
To get this started, I do have ideas I'm happy to share about what needs to be done, and the growth potential makes a strong case for this to be investigated further. AT the same time, I think it's worse for someone ineffective / not aligned to start this than to simply wait until the need is larger, so I am deferring on this.