Thanks for writing about this, @gogreatergood🔹 In full disclosure, I work at TLYCS. We have consistently and continuosly improved our evaluation framework over the years and we publish the full evaluation for each organization we recommend. We consider ourselves very aligned with EA principles, but our mission is oriented to avoid deaths and suffering of people living in extreme poverty, and that's the positioning we lead with. When it comes to communicating in channels with broad reach (such as paid digital ads) to potential donors that might not be familiar with Peter's book or with EA, we find that simple messages that are "specific, cost-to-impact ("$64 = one catarat surgery") work best for click-through and conversion, according to performance of our ads last Giving Season campaign. Impact seems to be an effective hook here. On the other hand, in a recent 3-email campaign within our subscribers (made up of donors and/or people who downloaded the book), we tested different titles for the emails, and found that messages with more emotional apeal ("Empowering communities to care for their expecting mothers. An institutional donor is matching all gifts") led to better open rates than leading with cost effectiveness ("A highly cost-effective way to protect pregnancy. An institutional donor is matching all gifts.). This might be the relatability you talked about.
After a donation is made, one of the most frequent feedbacks left by our donors is "thanks for doing the work so I know where to give", (which is why we have been highlighting that message in our own channels). Note that this is unsolicited from our part, some donors just write a version of that on the optional "comments" section when making a donation. Cost-effectiveness or effective altruism hardly ever come up, yet donors value the work that has been done to inform the recommendation. At least in our context at TLYCS, informing that we have clear evaluation criteria and explaining the work that goes behind a recommendation (which we consider very aligned with EA principles) seems to be more important than labeling it. I wonder if this approach could work with other EA causes as well. Lastly, I'll take note to reach out to GWWC and ask about their evaluators' evaluation. Thanks!
Thanks for writing about this, @gogreatergood🔹 In full disclosure, I work at TLYCS. We have consistently and continuosly improved our evaluation framework over the years and we publish the full evaluation for each organization we recommend. We consider ourselves very aligned with EA principles, but our mission is oriented to avoid deaths and suffering of people living in extreme poverty, and that's the positioning we lead with.
When it comes to communicating in channels with broad reach (such as paid digital ads) to potential donors that might not be familiar with Peter's book or with EA, we find that simple messages that are "specific, cost-to-impact ("$64 = one catarat surgery") work best for click-through and conversion, according to performance of our ads last Giving Season campaign. Impact seems to be an effective hook here.
On the other hand, in a recent 3-email campaign within our subscribers (made up of donors and/or people who downloaded the book), we tested different titles for the emails, and found that messages with more emotional apeal ("Empowering communities to care for their expecting mothers. An institutional donor is matching all gifts") led to better open rates than leading with cost effectiveness ("A highly cost-effective way to protect pregnancy. An institutional donor is matching all gifts.). This might be the relatability you talked about.
After a donation is made, one of the most frequent feedbacks left by our donors is "thanks for doing the work so I know where to give", (which is why we have been highlighting that message in our own channels). Note that this is unsolicited from our part, some donors just write a version of that on the optional "comments" section when making a donation. Cost-effectiveness or effective altruism hardly ever come up, yet donors value the work that has been done to inform the recommendation.
At least in our context at TLYCS, informing that we have clear evaluation criteria and explaining the work that goes behind a recommendation (which we consider very aligned with EA principles) seems to be more important than labeling it. I wonder if this approach could work with other EA causes as well.
Lastly, I'll take note to reach out to GWWC and ask about their evaluators' evaluation. Thanks!