All of Imma's Comments + Replies

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...

Answer by ImmaNov 21, 202318
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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

... (read more)

Bay Area is one of GWWC's priority areas to start a local group.

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Luke Freeman
5mo
Thanks Imma! We’re still very much looking for people to put their hands up for this. If anyone thinks they’d be a good fit please to let us know!
Answer by ImmaSep 13, 202315
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Someone knowledgeable about

  • Wild Animal Welfare (Please help me suggest a name)
  • Animal Sentience (Rethink Priorities? - please help me suggest a name)
  • Intersection between Animal Welfare and AI Alignment/governance (Please help me suggest a name)
5
Ben Stewart
6mo
Ooh what about Bob Fischer? He's a philosophy professor who ran Rethink's moral weights project and is now on their new Worldview Investigations team! [edit: just saw him suggested in a different comment]

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.

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NickLaing
7mo
I respect people who avoid flying a huge amount. I think this can be justified from an EA perspective by the way it draws attention to climate issues as it is hard to ignore, with potential to influence other people's personal behavior, but also what they stand for and vote for.

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 ... (read more)

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Shalott
8mo
Thanks, that's very useful information! En Nederlands is prima, hoor :)

How important is it for (small-ish) donors to be knowledgeable about effective giving? They can just defer to charity evaluators.

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Luke Freeman
9mo
That's a tricky one! I think that at both extremes it's bad (so the answer lies somewhere between).  * If no small donors are informed and carefully checking then I think evaluators would generally do a much worse job. * If all small donors needed to be sufficiently knowledgeable about effective giving before donating I think that it'd be a big waste of time, fewer people would give, and evaluators wouldn't move enough money for their time to be worthwhile spent on it. Generally, I'd prefer donors not be completely deferential and have at least a basic understanding of why they defer to a specific evaluator (at the moment I think this is super opaque to donors and we're hoping to help change that). But I also worry about donors trying to reinvent the wheel, be overconfident that they can outperform evaluators, or get so lost in the details that they don't end up giving. My view is that it'll likely depend more on the temperament and context of the donor (including how much they're moving). On a side note I think the donor lottery is a pretty interesting way of solving this (but feel like we probably need a few donor lotteries for it to work in an ideal way, such as a worldview diverse one and ones for specific worldviews so that you can at least think about worldviews before donating to the lottery).

Related question: what other initiatives might help here?

What is your view on frugality? Is it helpful is people are more frugal to donate (a bit) more?

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Luke Freeman
9mo
My views on this a very nuanced and I think it's hard to make general recommendations. I think it's quite inspiring and motivating to have people in my life who are more frugal and generous than me. That inspires me to also give more. It also makes it easier to have social norms around less expensive group activities etc. However, I also worry about people being so frugal that it backfires and turns people from off following suit. I also worry if people don't spend on things that would improve their lives significantly (e.g. their health and wellbeing) and also their ability to have an impact (e.g. productivity, coaching, education etc). My all things considered guess is that for many people the ideal mix of impact over the long term (considering personal $ moved, money influenced, and second order effects like values spreading and their pursuit of high-impact careers) is to find a sustainable level of giving and spending that is comfortably on the edge of what those around them could imagine doing themselves and what helps them be most healthy and productive.

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).

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Imma
10mo
Related question: what other initiatives might help here?

Does most of GWWC's impact come from a very few wealthy or high-income members?

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:

  • Direct impact of these d
... (read more)

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?

What do regular donors need to stay committed to donating over the course of their lives?

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.

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Milena Canzler
10mo
Hi Imma,  so sad that you find yourself struggling after attending a conference, and at the same time very relatable. It reminds me a little with how people struggle in the days after attending a festival.  Not that you need this, but I think your plan to take some days off and decompress is great. Something that helped me was to have some other EAs around in the days after the conference to talk to. I find that it helps me evaluate and integrate what I've learned.

Frugality did not reduce my productivity but made my social life harder

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 ... (read more)

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Henry Howard
1y
It kills ~350,000 people a year. The fatality rate isn't as important as the total deaths.

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.

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Brian_Tomasik
1y
Thanks! That's encouraging to hear (although it would be better for animals if the charities did fill their funding gaps). There could still be some funging if a smaller remaining funding gap discourages other donors, such as the Animal Welfare Fund, from giving more, but at least the effect is probably less drastic than if the org hits its target RFMF fully.

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... (read more)

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Brian_Tomasik
1y
Good points! I'd be curious to hear what Lewis thought of those two HSA grants and why Open Phil hasn't done more since then.

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... (read more)

Imma
1y19
5
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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:

  1. All these donors were giving anyways. This just gives them more / better options to choose from.
  2. Donors are only one step in the chain for the unilaterlist curse. If people fund a bad idea, then it'll get ripped to shreds on the Forum :P 
  3. LTFF is also composed of fallible humans who might miss large downside risk projects. 
  4. I'm far more worried about the bureaucrat's curse in AI safety

In most endeavors, you expect to receive many nos before receiving a yes (eg applyi... (read more)

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.

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David Clarke
1y
Nice one, thanks!

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.

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David Clarke
1y
That's a really cool tool, thanks!  I'm thinking they'll be introduced to EA concepts among other approaches, which will hopefully reduce the risk of undue influence.

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.

0
Dawn Drescher
1y
Thank youuu!

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 ... (read more)

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Tilly P
1y
Thanks for your comment and sharing your story. I understand what you mean about EA making you feel worse - making your comparison group extremely smart people can further diminish confidence in one's abilities. I would say getting your self-worth back is definitely career capital, or can be viewed as something that will make you much more effective in the long term compared with if you'd stayed in the mental state you felt prior to this job. Your temporary job will have been a lot more 'useful' than mine was (trust me on this) and it doesn't mean it was devoid of developing your soft skills and confidence. I'm glad you've found a job you're now happy with. My new job will probably have minimal impact too for the first few years while I train and am a more junior member of staff. But try to retain some optimism - assuming you're not much older than I am, even if AI takes over there will be some way to have impact - I very much hope! Like with action to target climate change, feeling all is doom can equal inaction.

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
... (read more)
Imma
1y15
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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.

You can also publish this post as a question :)

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Frederik
1y
Is there a way to this post-hoc, while keeping the comments in tact? Otherwise, I'd just leave it as is now that it already received answers.
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Frederik
1y
Oops! I was under the impression that I had done that when clicking on "New question". But maybe something somewhere went wrong on my end when switching interfaces :D
Imma
1y12
5
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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 ... (read more)

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?

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Puggy Knudson
1y
Yea absolutely. It takes planning and discipline but you can go to the gym after a 10 or 12 hour work day. occasionally having dry snacks like nuts or Clif bars helps when working 50-60 hours. I like picking up fruits from the store every third day or so. I think the wheels come off at 70+, and the type of work that can be done for 70+ hours is probably work that isn’t cognitively demanding. 50-68 hours is my sweet spot where I don’t compromise my diet and I can workout 4 times a week
Answer by ImmaNov 28, 20226
❤️4

2 small donations through Effektiv Spenden.

  • Their climate change fund - according to their description, this adds money to the organizations recommended by Giving Green and Founders Pledge. I don't prioritize climate change as a cause area, but I give a fixed amount per year to climate charities and Effektiv Spenden supports this one. Why? I do believe climate change is a big problem. Many people feel helpless about climate change, and by donating to a climate charity I can signal that there is a way to actually help - beyond consumption choices. This is
... (read more)

Is this page of GWWC what you have in mind?

Edit: this page is even better.

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callum
1y
Yes this is useful, thank you!

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)

I have the tendency to decide to read an article based on the name of the person who posted it. If you have a good reputation, you are more likely to get read. See a previous comment of mine.

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Sharang Phadke
1y
Thanks, we've recorded this in our backlog!
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Habryka
1y
I don't think this is a good idea. I think it's quite hard for a new user to know what tags might apply to their post. Better for experienced users to add the tags for them.
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sawyer
1y
As in, you can't publish a post without at least one tag?
Answer by ImmaSep 24, 202219
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This is a really great question. Strong upvoted.

Regret 1: not donating more in 2014-2017

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... (read more)

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?

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Brock W.
2y
I think assuming a minimum donation amount presents as hubris. Donors always have the ability to give little or nothing, regardless of how much capacity they have to give is. Just because a donor can give $10 million does not mean that they are in any way obligated to give a minimum of $1 million.  In fundraising we have prospect researchers who are great at making informed estimates about a person or foundation's upper limit gift capacity. Other known gifts, company ownership, board positions, family history, real estate, etc. But, I don't know that I've ever seen a prospect profile that provides a minimum ask amount.  @vipulnaik points out at another point in this thread that a potential major donor fluent in EA theory is unlikely to give a trivial amount, like $100. That is certainly possible, and if you know for certain that a donor makes their giving decisions with an EA lens, then by all means go for it. But, if you find yourself in a situation with a generous and wealthy donor who isn't an EA'er that wants to give a substantial amount to your cause, just don't take for granted that they could walk away at any moment for any reason.  For your counter question, I'm not entirely sure what donor risk you're referring to. I think maybe you're referring to a risk that the money is lost in transit, embezzled, or misspent? In that case, donors should do due diligence into the organization's leadership (board and executive), review financials like the 501(c)3 or equivalents, insist on a gift agreement if we're talking large amounts tied to specific activities and timelines, etc.  
Imma
2y22
0
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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.).

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