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, donate to things today that others aren’t funding for whatever reason.

And in footnote 13:

 I generally expect there to be more and more clarity about what actions would be helpful, and more and more people willing to work on them if they can get funded. A bit more specifically and speculatively, I expect AI safety research to get more expensive as it requires access to increasingly large, expensive AI models.

I'm taking the quote out of context a little bit here. I don't know if Holden's guess that giving opportunities will increase is one of OpenPhil's reasons to spend at a low rate. There might be other reasons. Also, Holden is talking about individual donations here, not necessarily about OpenPhil spending.

I'm adding it here because it might help answer the question "Why is the spending rate so low relative to AI timelines?" even though it's only tangentially relevant.

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 :)

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 much more research from RCTs and other studies in global health and development, than in animal welfare. However, has been a lot of progress in corporate campagns in recent years, so I guess ACE can build upon a larger evidence base now than they could back in 2018.

There was also criticism about ACE's approach to social justice. See here and please also note the edits and responses linked on the top. As always, social justice is a sensitive topics.

I personally decided to trust ACE's assessment of charities.

See also this recent comment .

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?

Is this page of GWWC what you have in mind?

Edit: this page is even better.

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".