If animal welfare is a priority cause for you, the Animal Advocacy Careers' Bottlenecks survey is helpful.
...As another way of understanding this trade-off, we asked meta respondents the following question: “Imagine an individual who is skilled and motivated enough to be a good (but not outstanding) candidate for roles in effective animal advocacy nonprofits. I.e., after a few applications, they are likely to secure a role, but they are not likely to be substantially better than the next best candidate, at least in their first paid role. How much money woul
Someone knowledgeable about
Someone from Doneer Effectief, Effektiv Spenden, De Tien Procent Club or another local Effective giving org
I avoid flying and travel by train instead (most of the time)=> even if it costs me a substantial part of my limited vacation time. I could compensate my extra emissions many times if I donated (my hourly salary)*(time saving) to a giving green top charity - but I don't do it.
I don't think this is very inconsistent with EA values.
80k is not the only one who provides altruistic career advice. You can check out
There are probably a few more.
Welcome to the EA forum. Great to hear that you would like to donate :).
You can find information about charity selection and tax on the Doneer Effectief website. You can donate to GiveWell recommended charities via Doneer Effectief, but also to a few other charities. They also have a page with info about tax - but you may want read the website of the Belastingdienst to double check. (I can try to find the info in English for you upon request).
If you are looking for a community where you can talk about giving and charity selection, see De Tien Procent Club ...
How important is it for (small-ish) donors to be knowledgeable about effective giving? They can just defer to charity evaluators.
What is your view on frugality? Is it helpful is people are more frugal to donate (a bit) more?
To what extent can GWWC or similar communities help solve the problem that philanthropy is undemocratic (very wealthy people can have a lot of influence on society, but people have not elected them).
Thanks Imma, great question!
It's true that our donation distribution at Giving What We Can (GWWC) follows a 'heavy-tailed' pattern. According to our most recent impact evaluation, less than 1% of our donors contribute about 50% of our recorded donations.
Yet, I would stress that this doesn't paint the complete picture of our impact. Although this less-than-1% represents a small-to-medium group of larger donors, the other half of our donations, spread among tens of thousands of other donors, is no less crucial.
Here's some reasons why:
Should the idea of 'effective giving' be discoupled from 'effective altruism'? To what extent?
E.g. should I be able to be a highly engaged effective giver (let's say, further pledge) without having to touch 'effective altruism' at all?
What things can people in 'normal' jobs do for the world, besides donating? What things are well worth their time?
Do you see different attitudes to donating in different countries or cultures? How do you accommodate to as many of them as possible?
Related: Should initatives like the '10 procent club' exist in more countries?
Note: 10 procent club organizes quarterly events about effective giving in the Netherlands. They are a separate initiative from 'Doneer Effectief' which translates the charity recommendations and provides the giving platform.
I can't agree more. I've been to 5 in-person EAG(x) events in total and none of them without problems.
During the conference, I am usually fine. The emotional stuff hits me afterwards, on my way home or the day after.
What to do about it? My plan for the next EAGx is to take at least two days off afterwards, probably even three. Last time I went back to work too quickly, I was very distractable for more than a week. I don't want to repeat this mistake - I have responsibilities outside of EA.
In the early years of my EA journey, I tried to live on a small budget so I could donate more. I learned that I could be productive on a small budget.
There were times I worked on an old laptop. Some actions might have taken a few seconds longer, and I did not have much screen space. It was fine. What matters most about productivity is to do the right things, not to do the things slightly faster.
I exercise to keep my mind fresh. I don't go to the gym or take sports classes. I just do a ...
FWIW, I have a note from a Q&A with Leah Edgerton in 2021 mentioning that the funding gaps that Animal Charity Evaluators assigns to a charity typically does not get filled. The charities still don't receive enough money. One could verify that by comparing the funding gap with the actual money moved a year later. (I did not do that work so far, but could imagine myself doing that if I'm interested enough in the charity).
If true, I would not be very concerned about funging in ACE-recommended charities.
The Humane Slaughter Association (HSA) is another option that not many EAs seem interested in. HSA received two large grants from Open Philanthropy, in 2017 and 2019, but those were earmarked for specific projects, so general HSA funding may not be funged by them.
That is already a while ago. It might be worthwhile to check what they did after they received this grant and whether they have good follow-up work to do. Maybe they have room for more funding again, but Open Philanthropy downprioritized re-evaluating them? Or they aren't as promising as Open P...
I once made a related mistake:
At uni, I needed to to interact with my supervisor multiple times. They were very busy. I had to discuss a problem with them, that would take, say, 15 minutes of their time, but also their attention. But 15 minutes was way too much to ask! So I shortened to 1 minute, and this one 1 minute conversation did not solve the problem. I was still stuck and had to return with a very similar question later. In the end, I took more of their time, rather than less.
I would have wasted much less of their time if I had literally said to the...
How to prevent that projects with large downside risk get funded?
LTFF might be able to detect and turn down those projects. But some members of your funder network might not.
Good question! So, that's important, but I'm less worried about this because:
In most endeavors, you expect to receive many nos before receiving a yes (eg applyi...
A friend recently reminded me that it's possible (but not certain) that some humans have an impact on the world even after AI takeover. If true, careers can be long.
This comment might be relevant, by someone who donates based on collective decision making, I guess via voting.
Cool initiative. Looking forward to hearing the outcome.
The participants will be introduced to EA concepts (such as cause prioritisation and GiveWell) as part of the deliberation
Why do you want to do this? I wonder if that nudges the participants already towards EA-like thinking, and has the risk to impose values on them. Maybe something more value neutral like the Clearer Thinking Intrinsic Value Test is relevant? There might also be value neutral giving oriented guides available on the internet.
Giving circles are a different thing.
Giving circles like the Mental Health donor circle or the Farmed Animal Funders are a group of donors who give their own money, and often a significant amount. These kind of giving circles are inaccessible to most people.
Giving circles also exist in the broader philanthropic sector (see wikipedia) and outside of Anglosaxon countries.
Good to read this.
I am 32 and had a slow career start. I did a master's degree in a field I was not a fit for. It was was a struggle at times, but ok enough to continue, but it went painfully wrong near the end. I left university unprepared, unemployed, with no plan, almost zero work experience, and feeling worthless as sh*t. I knew about EA and 80k, but that did not help. In fact, EA made it worse.
And I was so happy to take on a temporary job at a printer manufacturer in a small town far away from my social circle. At uni, I sometimes felt that I learned ...
Elsewhere, Holden makes this remark about the optimal timing of donations:
...
Right now there aren’t a lot of obvious places to donate (though you can donate to the Long-Term Future Fund12 if you feel so moved).
- I’m guessing this will change in the future, for a number of reasons.13
- Something I’d consider doing is setting some pool of money aside, perhaps invested such that it’s particularly likely to grow a lot if and when AI systems become a lot more capable and impressive,14 in case giving opportunities come up in the future.
- You can also, of course, don
If you don't want to (fully) rely on ACE, you might want to look at the Animal Welfare Fund or Founder's Pledge. Also Open Philanthropy Project works on animal welfare.
In 2018, someone expressed concerns with ACE's research (link) and ACE responded to these concerns (link). I vaguely remember they were relying too heavily on the cost-effectiveness of things like leafletting and online ads, which later turned out to be not as cost-effective as initially thought. There was also the criticism that they did not independently check the charity's claims about how successful corporate campagins are. (e.g. if corporates follow through)
ACE has a more challenging task than GiveWell regarding evidence-based charity. There has been ...
It is really unfortunate that the existing evidence about work hours as mentioned in Lynette's post is so weak and we need to make decisions based on anecdotical evidence because there is nothing better. It seems to me quite an important topic to study and I wonder why it is not happening.
Maybe it's just really hard to study properly but even then it might be worth it.
I am impressed and wish I could do that!
This may not apply to highly intellectual or creative work (as in David__Althaus' comment), but I don't have that kind of job. Tunnel vision is still a potential downside, but that may be mitigated by devoting a part of your work time to maintaining your epistemics.
Something happens when you start working 60+ hours a week where (in my experience) you begin to have blinders to everything else outside of that work.
Maintaining strong mutually beneficially relationships is underrated. And eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is underrated.
Do you still do the latter when you are in a 60+ h/week period?
2 small donations through Effektiv Spenden.
I am Dutch and I am excited about doneer effectief. Would a separate post to raise funds for doneer effectief be worth a post on it's own? See also posts tagged "funding request".
I don't now. This is worth a question on its own. Nonlinear is providing emergency funding and mentions donation opportunities, and Open Philanthropy is looking for applications for funding.
I don't know if the EA Funds are donig anything to support organizations or individuals who lost funding due to the FTX collapes. IIRC they haven't pubished anything about whether they do, and I would not assume they do.
Good point. There are so many different tags that probably nobody would assign the optimal tags to a post. (At least, I won't)
This is a really great question. Strong upvoted.
I donated small amounts to early longtermist organizations 2014-2017, before Open Philanthropy Project entered the space. Some of these organizations were funding constrained at the time, but aren't anymore. And I regret not donating more.
Most notably, I donated to the "Global Priorities Project" at CEA in 2015, and they were funding constrained enought that they were willing to spend the time to have a fundraising call with me, even though my budget was small. This p...
I like this post.
Question to fundraisers: what do you think of this? To what extent does this match your experience?
I don't fully understand your point - can you elaborate on it more? Do you mean that - until the donor transfers the money or signs a binding contract - it remains uncertain whether the donee actually receives money. The donee will have to plan with this risk?
Counter question: if important, how can a donor redue this risk, in your opinion?
I am grateful to the organizers of EAGxVirtual that they are going to make this event happen.
I am excited about this event in particular, because it is accessible to people who live far away from EA hotspots, and to people who - for whatever reason - cannot travel easily (financially, work related, health, family, etc.).
I can't help smiling even though it s*cks. Donating is complicated.
A few years ago, I spent the last working day of the year rushing on a bicycle between 2 bank offices in order to get a donation through (successfully).
Always leave a few days of extra time before 31 December...