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I actually think it could be quite reasonable for an org to trust or place more weight on an internal evaluation more than an external one, but apart from that fully agree with all you say!

Impact Evaluation in EA

callum6mo1

Thanks a lot Robert!

On 1) great point, I agree.

On 2) I think this shouldn't be a barrier, since the first step in impact evaluation is establishing a theory of change, and any individual organisation of a given maturity should have a clear picture of this, and consensus on their goals. (I'm not advocating for a singular ToC across the whole EA movement, just for individual organisations)

On 3) I agree this is a factor for evaluations for funders. But I think organisations should carry out internal impact evaluation according to their theory of change, so I ... (read more)

Impact Evaluation in EA

callum6mo2

Thanks David!

I agree independence has advantages. OTOH I think there are also important advantages to internal impact evaluation: the results are more likely to be bought into internally, and important context or nuance is less likely to be missed. For making a theory of change specifically, I think it's quite important this is done internally, usually. Overall I think the ideal setup would quite often be for organisations to have their own internal impact evaluation function.

And that's interesting on funder interest. In a few cases, organisations I've spo... (read more)

David_Moss

6mo

Thanks for the reply! I agree there are some advantages to internal evaluation. But I think "the results are more likely to be bought into internally" is, in many cases, only an advantage insofar that orgs are erroneously more likely to trust their own work than external independent work. That said, I agree that the importance of orgs bringing important context and nuance (and just basic information) to the evaluation can hardly be over-stated. My general take here is that the ideal arrangement is for the org and external evaluators to work very closely on an evaluation, so they can combine the benefits of insider knowledge and external expertise. I would even say that in those kinds of cases, it's not extremely important whether the evaluation is primarily lead by the org or primarily lead by the external evaluator (so long as there's still scope for the external evaluator to offer an independent, and maybe even dissenting, take on the org's conclusions). I think people can reasonably disagree about how important it is that, in addition, the external evaluator is truly independent (i.e. ideally funded by an external funder, not selected and contracted by the org in question, which obviously potentially risks biasing the evaluator).

Effective Giving

callum1y10

Yes this is useful, thank you!

Brilliant, thanks!

Great, thank you!

This year I'm planning to meet with a friend to make a shared donation decision.

Before meeting up I want to create a longlist of potential places to donate to. I'm open to charities in any of the main EA cause areas, as well as evaluators / funds, and smaller projects that aren't yet established.

What are good places to crowdsource a list from?

Lorenzo Buonanno

I would also consider the option of using a donor lottery: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/donor-lottery And this List of donation opportunities

WilliamKiely

Here are two lists: * The EA GT 2021 Fundraisers (Public) (EA GT = EA Giving Tuesday) has 101 EA giving opportunities, some of which are different funds at the same nonprofit. * My Every.org "Donations" page (https://www.every.org/@william.kiely) has70+ EA-related nonprofits that EAs have donated to previously. Additionally you might look at which orgs/people the Survival and Flourishing Fund has granted money to (I'm not sure if the SFF itself accepts donations), and consider individuals without nonprofit status that need funding, as they may be especially neglected.

Imma

Is this page of GWWC what you have in mind? Edit: this page is even better.

Who's at fault for FTX's wrongdoing

callum1y1

Yeah I agree, I just mean that $1bn in funds lost to customers across the world is plausibly comparable in welfare terms to other wins on that list. E.g. dividing by 10 to account for differences in income of those affected, it would be around the amount attributed to GiveDirectly on the EA impact page.

(without wanting to make a very direct crude comparison, or getting into the details of that)

2[anonymous]1y

Okay yes, they may well be. I'm also pretty hesitant to attempt to make direct crude comparisons - and I'll say again that I think there are strong reasons FTX shouldn't have acted as it did in addition to the direct harm to customers - but I'll just say that I seem to remember 100x or 1000x multipliers being more common than 10x in similar scenarios.

Who's at fault for FTX's wrongdoing

callum1y26

The role of the EA movement in the case of FTX seems surely to meet the level of influence for some of the impact win's that EA has had so far here.

Perhaps most prominently, the movement:

Gave the idea of 'Earning to Give' to Sam
Provided a primary motivation to Sam and other FTX leadership to build the exchange

For example, when comparing to the case of Sendwave, the influence seems at least comparable and if not larger e.g. played a motivational role in founding a company, for the purpose of improving the world. (I'm not familiar with Wave's founders motiva... (read more)

[anonymous]1y20

I think that an honest impact evaluation of the EA movement would include the harm caused to customers through FTX's collapse.

Agreed. However:

In welfare terms alone, the impact of FTX's collapse on it's customers seems plausibly comparable to some of the impact win's of the movement to date. I.e. of the order of $1bn in lost funds.

Are you talking about welfare terms or financial terms? Because $1bn in lost savings of FTX customers seems very different in welfare terms to $1bn spent on bed-nets etc. I think there are strong reasons FTX shouldn't have acted ... (read more)

Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA): an overview of 2017 and our 2018 plans

callum6y2

Thanks for writing this.

On EA Grants: Will you allow individuals to fund EA Grants in the future? This could either be letting individuals add to CEA's pot of funding for grants, publishing the rejected grants so that individuals can fund them independently or putting the applications on EA funds.

On EA Funds:

"Potential expansion of EA Funds on offer and investigation of different models for running and >using funds"

What types of funds and models might this investigation include?

Kerry_Vaughan

We probably won't raise EA Grants money from more than a handful of donors. I think we can secure funding from CEA's existing donor base and the overhead of raising money from multiple funders probably isn't worth the cost. That said, there are two related things that we will probably do: 1. We'll probably refer some promising projects to other funders. We did this last round for projects that we couldn't fund for legal reasons and for projects where existing funders had more expertise in the project than we did. 2. We'll probably send applicants that were close to getting funding but didn't to other funders that might be interested in the project.

Julia_Wise

Just wanted to note that most of our staff are out of the office for the next few days, but will answer when they return!

Effective Altruism Forum
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