Finally, I think you acknowledge but probably underweight the importance of giving more weight to recent performance. For many organisations, the 'revenue curve' of donations will start out low but then grow rapidly. So the relevant thing for me is the direction of travel of Ayuda Efectiva, not its performance as an average of its first three years. You can see the value of looking at the direction of travel if you look at the performance of Effektiv Spenden and, to some extent, Giving What We Can (although GWWC had significant 'unfair advantages' in its early years). In each case, their performance has improved substantially over time.
So the relevant thing for me is the direction of travel of Ayuda Efectiva, not its performance as an average of its first three years.
Note the factual non-marginal multipliers I present for the whole period (e.g. 2019 to 2021 for Ayuda Efectiva) are not the mean across the factual non-marginal multipliers for the years of that period. I calculate the factual non-marginal multiplier for a given period from the ratio between donations received to be directed towards effective organisations and costs, so the years with greater volume of donations and costs will have a larger weight. This explains why Ayuda Efectiva's multiplier for 2019 to 2021 (1.34) is not too different from that for 2021 (1.72).
It would be nice if effective giving organisations forecasted their future costs, donations received, and multipliers, thus doing a prospective cost-effectiveness analysis.
Thanks for this Vasco - always a useful exercise to look at cost-effectiveness, especially in an area like effective giving, where the money-moved is quite easily measured.
Some thoughts on this, which I'll split into different comments for ease of discussion:
"Nevertheless, the counterfactual marginal multipliers adjusted for cost-effectiveness and indirect impacts should ideally be equal. In other words, donating to any effective giving organisation should be similarly effective taking into account all effects."
This seems very unlikely to be true in practice, but also I'm not sure it should be true in an ideal world either. Effective giving organisations should vary according to many factors - target market, costs of operating in various jurisdictions, competition being higher in some jurisdictions than others, the effectiveness of the team and strategy etc..
For example, it would be naive to assume that an effective giving org targeting Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (e.g. LongView, Effective Giving, Founder's Pledge) would have the same ROI as one targeting grassroots givers (e.g. One for the World). Some types of outreach/donor will have much higher ROI than others.
The reason I think it isn't even 'ideal' for all organisations to have the same ROI is that there is value to having a variety of approaches, because:
Certain types of outreach are crowded (e.g. it seems silly repeatedly to set up a 'new Founder's Pledge', or a new '10% pledge' organisation)
Certain types are too specialist or need special expertise that isn't available to every organisation (e.g. it's very hard to gain access to Ultra High Net Worth givers)
If we all did one type of fundraising, it would decrease the diversity of our funding base and increase our risk
I'd also submit that the relative impact of effective-giving organizations nearer the "grassroots" level will likely be underestimated by looking solely at money moved. For example, grassroots effective-giving campaigns provide people with accessible ways to take action, which itself can spur greater commitment and downstream positive actions that aren't captured well by a money-moved analysis alone. In contrast, money moved likely does a better job capturing the bulk of the impact from UHNW outreach.
Agreed, Jason! On the other hand, I would expect effective giving organisation to be tracking such indirect impacts if they represented an important part of their theory of change and overall impact. My impression is that the 4 organisations I analysed are not assessing much such indirect impacts. They were also not covered in GWWC's last impact analysis (see here).
They seem rather difficult to capture and evaluate at a high level of specificity. It's unclear if attempting to better measure and quantify that portion of ROI was the best use of these org's resources a year ago, or even now in a tighter funding picture.
Per the first linked source: "In the 2020 EA Survey, 21% of respondents reported that Giving What We Can was important for them getting involved in EA." Doubtless the percentage would be higher for all effective-givingish organizations (especially if GiveWell were included, my own entry point). Even concluding that 2.5 percent of 21 percent of EA activity should be "credited" to grassroots effective giving would be pretty significant additional impact for the fairly low spend involved.
They seem rather difficult to capture and evaluate at a high level of specificity. It's unclear if attempting to better measure and quantify that portion of ROI was the best use of these org's resources a year ago, or even now in a tighter funding picture.
I think there is a tension between:
People getting involved with EA is a major driver of our impact.
We do not measure how much we are responsible for people getting involved with EA.
These imply a major driver of impact is not being measured, which seems strange (specially for the larger effective giving organisations). Note that I am not suggesting investing tons of resources into quantifying indirect impact. Just asking a few questions once a year (e.g. did you apply to any job thanks to becoming aware of EA via our effective giving organisation?) would take little time, and provide useful information.
Per the first linked source: "In the 2020 EA Survey, 21% of respondents reported that Giving What We Can was important for them getting involved in EA."
I agree GWWC's indirect impact has been quite important:
I believe it would be important to study (by descending order of importance):
On the other hand, I would say "getting involved in EA" is a little too vague. I think effective giving can be considered being involved in EA, so, from what you quoted alone, it is unclear whether there have been indirect impacts besides donations.
Doubtless the percentage would be higher for all effective-givingish organizations (especially if GiveWell were included, my own entry point).
This is not obvious to me, because I think GWWC and GiveWell have much stronger ties to EA than the mean effective giving organisation. I also expect effective giving to disproportionally select for people who will end up engaged with neartermist interventions, which I think have very unclear impact.
Donor time/attention is a precious commodity to fundraisers, so I wouldn't expect organizations to have expended much of it on this topic without a specific business justification. It's plausible to me that the funders thought (and may still think) that each org's easily-quantifiable output was sufficient to fill room for more funding, and that the orgs didn't (and don't) think more precise measurement of indirect impact would materially change org strategy (e.g., because those impacts are attainable by the org only as a byproduct of doing the org's standard work).
Thanks, Jack! It is always good to receive feedback on such exercises too!
I agree with all the points you make. As I said:
However, the results [for the factual non-marginal multipliers] might differ accounting for future donations (received after 2021, but caused until then), counterfactuals, diminishing marginal returns, cost-effectiveness of caused donations, and indirect impacts of effective giving. Furthermore, the organisations were at different levels of maturity. Consequently, my estimates for the factual non-marginal multipliers [ROIs] are not directly comparable, and I do not know which of the 4 organisations are more effective at the margin.
However, although it is fine for the (all things considered) factual non-marginal multipliers to be different, the (all things considered) counterfactual marginal multipliers should be the same. If the marginal cost-effectiveness of donating to X is higher than that of donating to Y, one should donate more to X at the margin (which does not mean one should donate 0 to Y).
In contrast, 11 % and 15 % of GWWC’s pledge and non-pledge donations went towards the area of creating a better future, which I think is much more effective. I do not think this corresponds to an extreme position.
I don't think this position is "extreme" but it is certainly highly debatable. Longtermist giving has fewer donation opportunities; can absorb less extra funding and deploy it effectively; and has very long feedback loops, which are hard to measure and have untested theories of change. In the case of AI safety, it also seems to have become subject to the forces of mainstream capitalism in a way that makes it less funding constrained and considerably less tractable (e.g. can even Open Philanthropy, with >$10bn to spend, really slow the pace of capabilities research?).
I think a better way to think about this is to look at Open Philanthropy, a specialist giving org which maintains worldview diversity because there is really genuine debate about how to allocate funding between different cause areas. I find them a lot more authoritative than comments from individuals in EA who don't do grantmaking, even highly respected ones like Ben.
(You also note 80k's list of the most pressing problems, but you should note here that 80k has one of the most maximalist longtermist positions in EA.)
Longtermist giving has fewer donation opportunities
Could you clarify what do you mean by donation opportunities? The way I think about it, it makes sense for small donors to donate to whatever organisation/fund they think is more cost-effective at the margin (for large donors, diminishing marginal returns are important, so it makes sense to follow a portfolio approach).
can absorb less extra funding and deploy it effectively
Personally, I would say interventions around biosecurity and pandemic preparedness and civilisation resilience can aborb and deploy funding much more cost-effectively that GiveWell's top charities, whose sign of impact is unclear to me.
has very long feedback loops
There is a sense in which feedback loops are short. Some examples:
Outcome: decreasing extinction risk from climate change. Goal: decreasing emissions. Nearterm proxy: adoption of a policy to decrease emissions.
Outcome: decreasing extinction risk from nuclear war. Goal: decrease number of nuclear weapons. Nearterm proxy: agreements to limit nuclear arsenals.
Outcome: decreasing extinction risk from engineered pandemics. Goal: increase pandemic preparedness. Nearterm proxy: ability to rapidly scale up the production of vaccines.
In the case of AI safety, it also seems to have become subject to the forces of mainstream capitalism in a way that makes it less funding constrained and considerably less tractable (e.g. can even Open Philanthropy, with >$10bn to spend, really slow the pace of capabilities research?).
You can think about it in another way. Can projects funded by Open Philanthropy (or other) meaningfully increase the tiny amount of people working on AI Safety (90 % confidence interval, 200 to 1 k), or improve their ability to do so?
I think a better way to think about this is to look at Open Philanthropy, a specialist giving org which maintains worldview diversity because there is really genuine debate about how to allocate funding between different cause areas.
I agree there is lots of uncertainty, but I do not think one should assume Open Philanthropy has figured out the best way to handle it. I believe individuals could use Open Phil's views as a starting point, but then should (to a certain extent) try to look into the arguments, and update their views (and donations) accordingly. Personally, I used to distribute all my donations evenly across the 4 EA Funds (25 % each), but am now directing 100 % of my donations to the Long-Term Future Fund. This does not mean I think neartermist interventions should receive 0 donations. Even if I thought the optimal fraction of longtermist donations in the portfolio was only 1 pp higher, since my donations are much smaller than 1 % of the overall donations, it makes sense for me to direct all my donations to the longtermist projects.
There is an important distinction between what small donors and Open Philanthropy should do:
Small donations have a negligible impact on the marginal cost-effectiveness of the organisations/funds receiving them. So it makes sense for me to donate to the organisation/fund which I view as most cost-effective at the margin.
Large donations can shift the marginal cost-effectiveness quite a lot. So it makes much more sense for Open Philanthropy to follow a portfolio approach.
I find them a lot more authoritative than comments from individuals in EA who don't do grantmaking, even highly respected ones like Ben.
I do not know to which extent the fraction of Open Phil's donations going to each of their worldviews was defined by lots of people, or only a few. As far as I know, Open Phil has not clarified that. I believe it would be good if Open Phil could describe more of their process (besides what they outlined 6 or 7 years ago in the worldview diversification post).
You also note 80k's list of the most pressing problems, but you should note here that 80k has one of the most maximalist longtermist positions in EA.
I think 80,000 Hours is not at the very end of the longtermist spectrum. For example, the 80,000 Hours Podcast has had many episodes related to neartermist causes, and the 80,000 Hours Job Board has many positions on these too.
much more cost-effectively that GiveWell's top charities, whose sign of impact is unclear to me
This is a very bold claim, made quite casually! Especially in light of:
There is a sense in which feedback loops are short.
I would evaluate these options through the GiveWell criteria - evidence of effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and room for more funding.
For the GiveWell charities, they score very highly on each metric. For example, they are each supported by multiple randomised control trials. By contrast, the indicators you mention are weak proxy indicators (I think you should also have added 'counterfactual' to each one - a new arms control treaty isn't an achievement for a donor unless it would likely not have happened without extra funding).
If I could challenge you, I think this looks like motivated reasoning, in that I think these are probably 'decent proxy indicators if you've already decided to donate solely within longtermism'. But I think it's very tough to maintain that longtermist giving opportunities stack up next to neartermist ones, if compared on the same metrics.
To summarise: global health giving opportunities - exceptionally strong evidence of effectiveness; rigorous cost-effectiveness analyses; room for more funding updated annually with high levels of transparency.
Longtermist giving opportunities (as mentioned here) - some (weak) proxy indicators show progress, some don't (e.g. I'm not aware of any counterfactual nuclear arms control treaties in the past 10 years); therefore speculative cost-effectiveness, because little evidence of effectiveness; individual projects likely to have room for more funding, but as a sector much less room for more funding (e.g. you could deploy billions via GiveDirectly, but Open Phil only managed to deploy <$1bn to longtermist causes last year).
As effective giving organisations should (at least in theory) be agnostic about cause area and focussed on 'effectiveness', I would be surprised if any raised the majority of their donations for longtermist causes, which have significant challenges around evidence of effectiveness/tractability.
This [it is unclear whether GiveWell's top charities are good/bad] is a very bold claim, made quite casually!
Sorry. I had givensomecontext in the post (not sure you noticed it). You can find more in section 4 of Mogensen 2019 (discussed here):
In this section, I argue that an agent whose utility function is a positive linear transform of impartial good will not prefer donating to Against Malaria Foundation over Make-A-Wish Foundation if she responds to cluelessness with imprecision and satisfies the maximality rule, provided that she shares our evidence. Section 4.1 emphasizes the depth of our uncertainty concerning the indirect effects of donating to Against Malaria Foundation. Section 4.2 reflects on the lessons to be drawn in applying the maximality rule to a choice between these organizations.
You say that:
I would evaluate these options through the GiveWell criteria - evidence of effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and room for more funding.
I believe those criteria are great, and wish effective giving organisations applied them to their own operations. For example, doing retrospective and prospective cost-effectiveneness analyses.
For the GiveWell charities, they score very highly on each metric.
My concern is that GiveWell's metrics (roughly, lives saved per dollar[1]) may well not capture most of the expected effects of GiveWell's interventions. For example:
I think GiveWell’s top charities may be anything from very harmful to very beneficial accounting for the effects on terrestrial arthropods (e.g. insects[1]).
In comparing Make-A-Wish Foundation unfavourably to Against Malaria Foundation, Singer (2015) observes that “saving a life is better than making a wish come true.” (6) Arguably, there is a qualifier missing from this statement: ‘all else being equal.’ Saving a child’s life need not be better than fulfilling a child’s wish if the indirect effects of saving the child’s life [e.g. on animals] are worse than those of fulfilling the wish.
Feel free to check section 4.1 for many positive and negative consequences of increasing and decreasing population size.
By contrast, the indicators you mention are weak proxy indicators
Note I am not saying the relationships are simple or linear, just that they very much matter. Without nuclear weapons, there would be no risk of nuclear war. In any case, I agree the correlation between longtermist outcomes (e.g. lower extinction risk) and the measurable outputs of longtermist interventions (e.g. less nuclear weapons) will tend to be lower than the correlation between neartermist outcomes (e.g. deaths averted) and the measurable outputs of neartermist interventions (e.g. distributed bednets). However, my concern is that the correlation between neartermist outcomes (e.g. deaths averted) and ultimately relevant outcomes (welfare across all space and time, not just very nearterm welfare of humans) is quite poor.
If I could challenge you, I think this looks like motivated reasoning, in that I think these are probably 'decent proxy indicators if you've already decided to donate solely within longtermism'.
Fair! For what is worth, I was not commited to donating solely to longtermist interventions from the onset. I used to split my donations evenly across all 4 EA Funds, and wrotearticles about donating to GiveWell's top charities on the online newspaper of my former university.
Longtermist giving opportunities (as mentioned here) - some (weak) proxy indicators show progress, some don't (e.g. I'm not aware of any counterfactual nuclear arms control treaties in the past 10 years); therefore speculative cost-effectiveness, because little evidence of effectiveness; individual projects likely to have room for more funding, but as a sector much less room for more funding (e.g. you could deploy billions via GiveDirectly, but Open Phil only managed to deploy <$1bn to longtermist causes last year).
I agree longtermist organisations should do more to assess their cost-effectiveness and room for more funding. One factor is that longtermist organisations tend to be smaller (not Nuclear Threat Initiative), so they have less resources to do such analyses (although arguably still enough).
In reality, according to GiveWell's moral weights, the value of saving lives increases until an age of around 10 (if I recall correctly), and then starts decreasing. Economic benefits are also taken into account.
I did not find any proper cost-effectiveness analyses of Ayuda Efectiva, Doebem or Effektiv Spenden.
It has now been 23 months since I published the post. I have just looked into the websites, and EA Forum posts of the above organisations, and there is still no proper cost-effectiveness analyses. The closest I found was Sebastian mentioning "our [Effektiv Spenden's] multiplier—the sum of all donations we have collected for the aid organizations we recommend divided by our costs—for 2023 amounts to approximately 20 or 23 (if we also take indirect donations into account)".
A counterfactual marginal multiplier of z means the effective giving organisation would have caused z $ of donations for each additional dollar it had spent...
The effective giving organisations is underfunded if z < 1, as long as the counterfactual marginal multiplier includes all relevant effects.
This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
The goals of this post are to:
1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
“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...
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...
I estimated the factual non-marginal multipliers until 2021 of Ayuda Efectiva (Spain), Doebem (Brazil), Effektiv Spenden (Germany), and Giving What We Can (GWWC), i.e. how much donations they moved per dollar spent. Those of Ayuda Efectiva (1.34) and Doebem (5.53) are much lower than those of Effektiv Spenden (61.2) and GWWC (135).
However, the results might differ accounting for future donations (received after 2021, but caused until then), counterfactuals, diminishing marginal returns, cost-effectiveness of caused donations, and indirect impacts of effective giving. Furthermore, the organisations were at different levels of maturity. Consequently, my estimates for the factual non-marginal multipliers are not directly comparable, and I do not know which of the 4 organisations are more effective at the margin.
Supporting with 0.399 $/year the corporate campaigns for chicken welfare of The Humane League might be enough to neutralise the suffering of factory-farmed animals caused by a random person[1]. This estimate can easily be off by a factor of 10, but illustrates that the (financial and non-financial) costs/savings of switching to a fully plant-based diet may well be much higher[2].
Helen Keller International’s vitamin A supplementation program has a cost-effectiveness of 3.5 k$ per life saved, i.e. one can save 13.8 lives (= 48.3/3.5) for the average transaction price of new cars in the United States in April 2023 of 48.3 k$.
So there are good reasons for giving effectively and significantly to become a cultural norm. This is a primary goal of effective giving organisations, and I have estimated the factual non-marginal multiplier of a few of them to get a sense of whether they are accomplishing it effectively. To clarify:
A factual non-marginal multiplier of x means the effective giving organisation moved x $ of donations (hopefully to effective organisations) for each dollar it spent.
A counterfactual non-marginal multiplier of y means the effective giving organisation caused y $ of donations for each dollar it spent.
A counterfactual marginal multiplier of z means the effective giving organisation would have caused z $ of donations for each additional dollar it had spent.
y < x because effective giving organisations do not cause all the donations they move[3], and z < y owing to diminishing marginal returns. The effective giving organisations is underfunded if z > 1, as long as the counterfactual marginal multiplier includes all relevant effects.
I was curious about Ayuda Efectiva and Doebem because their results could be more generalisable to Portugal (where I am from). I looked into Effektiv Spenden owing to it being regarded as a successful example of effective giving, and included GWWC as a major reference in this space.
Methods
I calculated the factual non-marginal multipliers from the ratio between donations received to be directed towards effective organisations and costs[4]. I neglected future donations, and did not account for the opportunity cost of workers and volunteers. The greater the future donations, the greater my underestimation of the factual multipliers. The greater the opportunity cost, the greater my overestimation of the factual non-marginal multipliers[5]. I converted all values to 2021-USD, using exchange rates from OECD, and inflation data from The World Bank[6].
I did not study the counterfactual donations, i.e. how much donations would have been made in the absence of the effective giving organisation. As an example of why this matters, it might be the case that the early donations of new effective giving organisations are mostly caused by GWWC or effective altruism, with only a small fraction being due to new donors or increased donations (as a consequence of tax benefits) from people who were already effective givers.
The factual non-marginal multiplier until 2021 of Ayuda Efectiva (1.34) and Doebem (5.53) are much lower than those of Effektiv Spenden (61.2) and GWWC (135). However, the results might differ accounting for future donations (received after 2021, but caused until then), counterfactuals, diminishing marginal returns, cost-effectiveness of caused donations, and indirect impacts of effective giving. Furthermore, the organisations were at different levels of maturity in 2021:
Ayuda Efectiva spent 273 k$ until then, and professionalised in 2020.
Doebem spent 6.32 k$ until then, and professionalised in 2023.
Effektiv Spenden spent 429 k$ until then, and professionalised in 2019.
GWWC spent 1.50 M$ until then, and professionalised in 2012.
Consequently, my estimates for the factual non-marginal multipliers are not directly comparable, and I do not know which of the 4 organisations are more effective at the margin. Nevertheless, the counterfactual marginal multipliers adjusted for cost-effectiveness and indirect impacts should ideally be equal. In other words, donating to any effective giving organisation should be similarly effective taking into account all effects.
Cost-effectiveness
The donations until now of Ayuda Efectiva, Doebem and Effektiv Spenden went almost exclusively to organisations working on global health and development, animal welfare and climate change[15]. The cost-effectiveness of these areas isquiteuncleartome[16] (see also section 4.2 of Mogensen 2019). Additionally, 81.0 % (= 207107.47/255640.20) of Doebem’s donations have gone to Brazilian organisations, which are arguably closer to neutral than GiveWell’s top charities (for better or worse[17]). Focussing on donations to local organisations could make sense if Brazilian donors would hardly be persuaded to do otherwise.
In contrast, 11 % and 15 % of GWWC’s pledge and non-pledge donations went towards the area of creating a better future, which I think is much more effective. I do not think this corresponds to an extreme position. For example, Benjamin Todd “would donate [in November 2021] to the Long Term Future Fund over the global health fund, and would expect it to be perhaps 10-100x more cost-effective (and donating to global health is already very good)”. 80,000 Hours thinks global health is “important and underinvested in”, but it is not one of the 18 areas which are part of its list of the most pressing problems.
Evidence of effectiveness and transparency
I did not find any proper cost-effectiveness analyses of Ayuda Efectiva, Doebem or Effektiv Spenden. Ayuda Efectiva has an impact page, but it does not include any information about giving multipliers. Sebastian Schwiecker and Anne Schulze suggest Effektiv Spenden's non-marginal counterfactual multiplier is “between 11 and 91” based on othermodels, but these do not study the counterfactuality of Effektiv Spenden's donations. GWWC saysFounders Pledge “has conducted an extensive evaluation highlighting its [Effektiv Spenden's] cost-effectiveness as part of its work on Giving Multipliers”, but I only found one unrelated occurrence of “Effektiv Spenden” in its report[18]. Sjir Hoeijmakers commented Founders Pledge has an interval evaluation on Effektiv Spenden.
The funders of effective giving organisations have published little/no information about their cost-effectiveness. Here is Open Philanthropy’s write-up recommending a grant of 2.18 M$ to Effektiv Spenden in November 2022:
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of €2,180,000 (approximately $2,120,000 at the time of conversion) to Effektiv Spenden for general support. Effektiv Spenden works to communicate ideas related to effective altruism and effective giving to German-speaking audiences.
Open Philanthropy has similar write-ups recommending grants of 225 k$ to Ayuda Efectiva in February 2023, and 2.36 M$ to GWWC in the same month. Founders Pledge does not have a write-up for the grant of 179 k$ they made to Effektiv Spenden in January 2023.
One could argue cost-effectiveness analyses of past work are not informative for effective giving organisations which only recently professionalised. Nonetheless, forecasting future costs and donations (and thus cost-effectiveness) could still be valuable in those cases.
Questions for reflection
Some questions to think about:
Does the factual non-marginal multiplier correlate well with the counterfactual marginal multiplier?
Is the direct impact of effective giving organisation a good proxy of their overall impact?
If yes is a reasonable answer to the questions above, how high does the factual non-marginal multiplier have to be for the counterfactual marginal multiplier to exceed 1?
Should effective giving organisations do and publish cost-effectiveness analysis? How early and often?
Is GWWC well positioned to assess the cost-effectiveness of other effective giving organisations (even if the onus is arguably on their funders), given its experience running theirown, and plans to evaluate evaluators?
Should funders provide more information about their grants, at least for large ones?
Acknowledgements
I had the initial idea for this post chatting with José Oliveira. Thanks to Sebastian Schwiecker (Effektiv Spenden), José, Luan Paciencia (Doebem), Joan Montoya (Ayuda Efectiva), and Francisco Martins for feedback on the draft[19]. Thanks to Michael Townsend and Luke Freeman for feedback on GWWC’s costs. Thanks to Sjir Hoeijmakers (GWWC) for clarifying that Founders Pledge conducted an internal evaluation of Effektiv Spenden. Thanks also to Luan for meeting with me to present Doebem’s history and future plans[20].
Search for “0.399” here. I like to present numbers with 3 significant digits in order not to propagate rounding errors, not because they have low uncertainty.
In high-income and upper-middle-income countries, flexitarian, vegetarian, and vegan diets were less expensive than the typical diet (the reduction ranged from 12 to 34%). In these countries, the pescatarian diet was about as expensive. In contrast, in lower-middle-income and low-income countries, all alternative diets were more expensive than the typical diet (the increase ranged from 18 to 45%).
Note the donations received to be directed towards effective organisations are classified as costs in the financial reports of effective giving organisations. The costs I present in this post, and use to compute the factual marginal multiplier exclude such donations.
To illustrate, if 2 effective giving organisations A and B moved the same amount of donations, and had the same costs, they would have the same factual non-marginal multiplier. Nonetheless, if the workers and volunteers of A could do something almost as impactful in the absence of A, whereas the workers and volunteers of B would not do something nearly as impactful in the absence of B, A would be less effective than B. In other words, although A and B moved the same amount of donations, the existence of B would be more important than that of A. In its last impact evaluation, GWWC accounted for the opportunity cost of workers, but not volunteers. “While the time of our volunteers is valuable, we suspect the opportunity cost here is cancelled out by the fact that there are significant positive externalities to volunteering. For example, several volunteers have since gone on to do other valuable work that they may only have been able to do due to their earlier volunteering”.
If 2 effective giving organisations A and B had the same counterfactual marginal multiplier, but those caused by A went to organisations 2 times as effective as those caused by B, donating to organisation A would be 2 times as effective as to B.
From GWWC’s previous impact report, “Giving What We Can’s total monetary costs up to the end of 2014 were £208,000. Up to the middle of 2012, Giving What We Can was run entirely by volunteers”. So I set the costs from 2009 to 2011 to 0, considered the cost from 2012 to 2014 to be 208 k 2013-£, and allocated 20 % to 2012, 40 % to 2013, and 40 % to 2014. “[Michael Townsend would] guess it's best to assume something like 2015's budget was 67% of 2014's, and 2016's was 33% of 2014's, but really that's a pure guess [which nevertheless “closely matches” Luke Freeman’s “best guesses”] and even a bit of desk research to estimate the FTE in those times would lead to better informed guesses”. I supposed the costs in 2015 and 2016 to be 2/3 and 1/3 that of 2014. In addition, “[according to Michael, GWWC’s] best-guess is that the costs from 2017-2019 were ~$250,000 USD if you include the EA Funds donation platform as part of GWWC (if you don't, I think the costs might be closer to ~$50,000 USD per year)”. I assumed a cost of 83.3 k 2018-USD/year (= 250/3) from 2017 to 2019. I took the costs for 2020 and 2021 from GWWC’s last impact report.
I believe there are cost-effective interventions in these areas, namely ones which emphasise learning more, and keeping options open. Nevertheless, I think these are mostly not being targeted.
Finally, I think you acknowledge but probably underweight the importance of giving more weight to recent performance. For many organisations, the 'revenue curve' of donations will start out low but then grow rapidly. So the relevant thing for me is the direction of travel of Ayuda Efectiva, not its performance as an average of its first three years. You can see the value of looking at the direction of travel if you look at the performance of Effektiv Spenden and, to some extent, Giving What We Can (although GWWC had significant 'unfair advantages' in its early years). In each case, their performance has improved substantially over time.
Thanks for noting that, Jack!
Note the factual non-marginal multipliers I present for the whole period (e.g. 2019 to 2021 for Ayuda Efectiva) are not the mean across the factual non-marginal multipliers for the years of that period. I calculate the factual non-marginal multiplier for a given period from the ratio between donations received to be directed towards effective organisations and costs, so the years with greater volume of donations and costs will have a larger weight. This explains why Ayuda Efectiva's multiplier for 2019 to 2021 (1.34) is not too different from that for 2021 (1.72).
It would be nice if effective giving organisations forecasted their future costs, donations received, and multipliers, thus doing a prospective cost-effectiveness analysis.