Agree on this 100%. I originally wanted to bake in that line of reasoning in this article but I felt it was already controversial enough as it is hahaha. This is another example of everybody claiming marginal impact adding up to 10x of the imapct we actually had. 

Happy to write a post about this together at some point!

The main point I'm trying to make is not that we should pay all people market-rate salaries, but that, at least, we should make this assumption in cost effectiveness calculations. Then actually paying those salaries would be the logical next step but maybe a step too far for marketing / market dynamics reasons.

Let me answer to two points you made:

In my view, there are several reasons for this. One important aspect is probably that many employees attribute the impact, at least partly, to themselves personally. 

This is the core of what I'm trying to get at. I am trying to argue that the imaginary pay cut vs a comparable for-profit job the employees are taking is the relative impact they are having. Therefore when we do cost effectiveness calculations, we should factor that in, so we don't overpromise cost-effectivness to donors. Because employees are also donors, just with their time instead of their money.

Another aspect is certainly that working at a charity is often simply more enjoyable because you are surrounded by inspiring people, typically have more autonomy, and so on.

This I fully agree with. So when comparing wiht for-profit salaries we should probably compare not with cut-throat banks but with companies that have a similar vibe/culture. I know that's hard but some kind of estimate is better than nothing I think.

hahaha yes totally missed this, thank you!!

Hahaha yes I love that compensating paradox. I think the issue with that one is that it's very narrow-minded and short-term focused. Sure in the short term for this specific intervention compensation might work, but as a movement we lose if we think like this.

Also agree that building movement and activating volunteers is value that probably isn't always accounted for.

Curious: Are you aware of these been used in the field / cost-effectiveness estimations etc.? I'm aware of the concept but have never seen it actually being used. But that I'm also not that deep in that space.

Great opt-in vs opt-out framing, that snarky comment of mine about tricking people was written too fast!

About that example: I think you meant to write "at charity B" instead of "at charity A"?
* Charity A: 1 employees at market rate, one unit of impact > 1 impact for donor
* Charity B: 1 employees at market rate, one unit of impact  + 1 volunteers with 1 impact > 2 impact for donor

I think that the donor should not have "2 counterfactual impact" in this case. But maybe I am misunderstanding things.

Let's play with some more examples
* Charity C: 1 employee and 10000 volunteers, 10001 impact total. Should the donor really get 10001 impact? To me that feels really off

* Charity D: The employee also becomes a volunteer but does the same job. In a way the employee is "donating" their salary and becomes the donor. Should the employee now get "2 impacts"? That again feels off? Are they somehow better than the other volunteer?

* Charity E: 100 donors, all donating $1. It's a blind kickstarter campaign and the charity can only do the intervention if they raise 100, otherwise money back, but the donors don't know how many others already donated, so order doesn't matter. In a way each donor should get the full "counterfactual" impact because without each individual donor the fundraise would've failed. But again attributing the same full impact 100 times feels wrong.

Yes, I agree about the inspiring vs non-inspiring feelings and how this has impact.

I still feel there must be a way to flip this somehow and find a way to assign and recognise impact and contributions that feels motivating and uplifiting to everybody, but maybe that's for another post haha

Thanks for taking the time to write these comments, really appreciate it!

A disadvantage of starting with market rate is that the person who would've accepted the NGO rate might on average pay themselves more because they would more consciously have to give up money. 

This is implying we are right now tricking people into giving up more than they consciously would. I'm not sure that's what we would want as a movement.

Most salaries at EA orgs are in the top couple percent of the world, so I don't think this is a big issue.

I think this might vary heavily depending on the focus area. In AI for sure, not sure about the others.

There are many EAs would would like to get a job at an EA org, and lower salaries means that more jobs can be offered. So I think EA "unemployment" is a bigger problem for the movement than the people who do have EAs jobs not making enough money.

I'm aware of the EA unemployment but I'm not sure if we should optimize for EAs working in EA orgs. Shouldn't the best talent or fit win? Especially for hard-to-fill roles like biorisk researchers, AI alignment people, a GiveDirectly country operation manager role, etc. Of course, value alignment shoudl play a part in assessing job match, but I'm not sure willingness to take a low salary is the right selector.

Either way, all these points are downstream of the main point I'm trying to make: We should take market rate equivalents in cost effectivness calculations so we don't overpromise impact to donors. We can do this and then still decide to only accept candidates that take a 50% pay cut.

Yes 100%. Sorry I might have written a bit convoluted but this is one of the points I wanted to make.

I agree that from a personal perspecive, donations and volunteering are very different. I also love volunteering for the community, the energy I'm getting from it, and, let's be honest, I'm getting zero in-the-moment good vibes from my donations, that's a different category for me.

However as a donor, when evaluating charities, I do care how they use volunteers. Because in this framing the volunteers should get "part of the saved fish". That leaves less "saved fish" for me.

In the thought experiment I gave I meant to assume that both orgs are identical except for that volunteering efficiency. Both are great to volunteer at, feel the same, everything the same, just that, for some reason, one is less efficient at using volunteer time.