It seems to me like the primary benefit of typical EA donors (say, most GWWC members, or anyone giving less than $100,000/year, i.e. the vast majority of us) giving effectively comes from the signaling effects of this behavior on helping to promote a culture of effective giving and effective altruism.
It still seems very worthwhile for typical EA donors like me to donate, since the direct value of my donations is still substantial and there's potentially this even greater signaling benefit on top of that.
That said, as Ben Todd summarizes in his answer, most EAs (i.e. everyone not in the reference class of people who have a nontrivial potential to become very wealthy EA donors) can probably do even more good through various kinds of work that help deploy the large amount of EA funding that already exists better and faster than they can through their modest donations.
Given that, I wouldn't want to encourage a small donor to donate a modest amount at the expense of them putting less time/effort/attention into shifting into a very valuable direct work career that helps deploy existing EA funds faster/better. But, if donating some percentage of a person's typical income helps keep them engaged with EA and thinking about important questions related to how we can all do the most good, then it definitely seems worth doing to me.
If anyone thinks I'm wrong about this, please let me know!
Quick attempt to summarise:
3. If you're earning to give and not going to switch, you could consider trying to add extra value by doing more active grantmaking (e.g. exploring new causes) rather than just topping up large pots. However, you still need to be able to do this better than e.g. the EA Funds, and it might still be more efficient just to earn extra money and delegate your grantmaking. Entering a donor lottery is another good option. It might also be better to focus on community building or gaining career capital that might make you happy to switch to direct work in the future (e.g. saving money).
I was parsing your comment here as saying that the marginal impact of a GiveWell donation was pretty close to GiveDirectly. Here it seems like you don't endorse that interpretation?
I was wrong about that. The next step for GiveWell would be to drop the bar a little bit (e.g. to 3-7x GiveDirectly), rather than drop all the way to GiveDirectly.
https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1455210000855359490
I'm curious why you and many EA's who focus on longtermism don't suggest donating to longtermist cause areas (as examples often focuses on Givewell or ACE charities). It seems like if orgs I respect like Open Phil and long term future fund are giving to longtermist areas, then they think that's among the most important things to fund, which confuses me when I then hear longtermists acting like funding is useless on the margin or that we might as well give to GiveWell charities. It gives me a sense that perhaps there's either some contradiction going on, or I'm missing something, but either way it makes it very difficult for me to get others excited about longtermism if they won't enter it with their career and even the die-hard longtermists are saying marginal funding is useless or at least worse than GiveWell charities.
I don't mean to imply that, and I agree it probably doesn't make sense to think longtermist causes are top and then not donate to them. I was just using 10x GiveDirectly as an example of where the bar is within near termism. For longtermists, the equivalent is donating to the EA Long-term or Infrastructure Funds. Personally I'd donate to those over GiveWell-recommended charities. I've edited the post to clarify.
I am also curious to understand why you think that earning to give is more impactful than 98%+ of jobs. Also, did you mean 98% of EA-aligned jobs or all jobs?
It's super rough but I was thinking about jobs that college graduates take in general.
One line of thinking is based on a direct estimate:
Another line of thinking is that earning to give for GiveDirectly is a career path that has already been heavily selected for impact i.e. it contributes to global development, which is one of the most pressing global problems, it's supporting an intervention and org that's probably more effective than average within that cause, and it involves a strategy with some leverage (i.e. earning to give). So, we shouldn't expect it to be easy to find something a lot better.
Thanks for the answer.
Just to make sure I understand #1.
You're saying that if I donated 1000€ to GiveWell right now, my donation would be expected to have 10 times as much impact as a donation to GiveDirectly? However, in the coming years that might change to 5x or 2x?
I think that's roughly right - though some of the questions around timing donations get pretty complicated.