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GIVING SEASON 2024
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by defun 🔸
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Building effective altruismCommunity infrastructureEarning to giveHigh Impact Professionals (organization)Organization strategyThreads
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I believe there should be a meta charity 100% focused on earning to give.

In December 2020, Charity Entrepreneurship proposed the following (post here):

EARNING TO GIVE + ​

Description: Earning to give (E2G) has been long considered by effective altruists. Earning to give + follows the same idea but includes more elements: in particular, bringing lessons from the E2G field into EA (e.g. management practices, communications strategies, and decision making methodologies) and bringing EA insights into the E2G workplace (e.g. fundraisers, donation matching, and EA movement building).

E2G has historically lacked an organization focused specifically on providing support, community, and advice to those going down this path. The additions encapsulated in E2G+ make the career path even more impactful and more connected to the EA movement. A new organization would also address two of the largest concerns with the EA movement: the small number of impactful opportunities available; and EA’s insularity, which often leads to  reinventing the wheel. E2G+ can be a highly impactful career path able to absorb a large number of impact-focused individuals and could strengthen the EA movement, both financially and through introducing best practices and ideas from outside.

I suspect this ended up being https://www.highimpactprofessionals.org/, which is not focused on EtG[1].

Do you think there should be a meta charity focused on EtG?

@Nina Friedrich🔸,  @Devon Fritz 🔸, @Federico Speziali, or @Joey 🔸, your input would be very helpful 💛.

  1. ^

    https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ttp7rru67cyH9RMpL/fall-2024-impact-accelerator-program-for-ea-professionals

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Joey 🔸

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Hey, short response, but indeed you're right; HIP came out of this report/idea. I agree that there is still room for another charity in this area, focusing on ETG/E2G+. Even though we have already done an Effective Giving program and Founding To Give, both of which are also in that direction.

Devon Fritz 🔸

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@Federico Speziali and I both originally looked into support for this cohort of folks, but I ultimately got more pessimistic on it for two reasons:

  • There were fewer people doing E2G than I thought.
  • Those who were doing E2G were giving less than I thought.

I came to the view that those E2Gers giving significant amounts (100K+ let's say) were an order of magnitude lower than I'd hoped (maybe 50 instead of 500) and also that they were already known to the community for the most part and already pretty much maximizing their impact.

There could be room for an org that tries to bring more folks like this into the fold, but I am a bit pessimistic that it would be successful, as many EAs purport to do E2G and give smallish sums, and if card-carrying EAs who are saying they do E2G aren't doing that much on average, I don't think those unfamiliar with EA would likely convert to high-giving E2Gers. They might learn about EA and then E2G and then take it up, and we already have a pipeline for that.

I should say I wouldn't want to dissuade others from working on this as despite what I said I think this is underexplored on the margin and could bear fruit with some cheap experiments, but I think it is important to relay my true take here as well, even if it is a bit negative.

Should also note that GWWC is looking into this a bit so they might have a take they want to add.

defun 🔸3
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Thank you so much for the context 💛

My raw thoughts (apologies for the low quality):

  • I think the target audience should be high earners who are already donating >=10% of their income. (Getting people from 0% to 10% would not be in the scope of the charity. I think GWWC is already doing a great job)
  • The two main goals:
    • Motivate people to increase their donations (from 10% to 20% is probably much easier than from 0% to 10%)
    • Help people significantly increase their earnings through networking, coaching, financial advice, tax optimization, etc.
  • One of the most v
... (read more)
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Henry Howard🔸

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Ambitious Impact, which runs Charity Entrepreneurship, also runs Founding To Give, which is very much focused on earning to give.

defun 🔸1
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Founding to Give is great but it's only for (potential) entrepreneurs.

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Sarah Cheng4
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Some additional context that might be helpful is this recent post by Sjir (GWWC's Interim CEO): Thoughts on earning to give (MCF 2024 memo) 

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