Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

All of Mappy's Comments + Replies

AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Mappy3y3
0
0

Apart from funding, are there other leverage points you see to move the animal welfare movement as a whole towards higher impact? As an example scenario: early hits causing other organisations to alter their strategy?

Reply
1
LewisBollard
3y
Potential other leverage points: (1) go to work at an existing animal group and help it better focus on high impact approaches, (2) start a new group focused on a high impact approach and encourage imitators, (3) write pieces about higher impact approaches that could be taken, e.g. on the EA Forum.
AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Mappy3y16
0
0

How do you see Open. Phil's focus on farm animal welfare evolving in the coming years vs other focus areas?

Reply
8
LewisBollard
3y
I guess there are two pieces here. The first is the cause prioritization question of how we'll prioritize expanding farm animal welfare vs other focus areas. That's mostly above my pay grade -- it's a decision leadership will make informed by Open Phil's cause prioritization research. But I'm confident that Open Phil is committed to remaining a major funder in this space, and optimistic about our future trajectory. The  second piece is how our focus within farm animal welfare work will evolve. We're revisiting our strategy now, so I hope I'll have more to share in a few months. But I can tell you that two broad challenges are (1) weighing proven tractable interventions (e.g. corporate cage-free and broiler welfare campaigns) against more speculative and potentially larger scale work (e.g. fish welfare, expanding the movement in East Asia), and (2) weighing scaling up existing effective organizations against funding more new promising initiatives. We'll continue to do a mix of all the above -- the key Q is how we prioritize our time and funding between each of them. 
AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Mappy3y1
0
0

Can you please summarise/suggest top funding opportunities for individual donors by region?

Reply
1
LewisBollard
3y
This is a good idea for a future newsletter. In the meantime, I recommend ACE's standout charity list and our grants database.
AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Mappy3y3
0
0

Are there any specific cases / guidelines where you think it might be better for individual donors to donate to specific animal welfare organisations directly rather than the EA animal welfare fund? (apart from perhaps tax reasons)

Reply
1
LewisBollard
3y
I think the EA Animal Welfare Fund is a good default option, but here are a few reasons people might prefer to give elsewhere: * You have a strong view that one approach is much more promising or relatively neglected, e.g. research on effective interventions or wild animal welfare. * You have a relationship with an effective group and enjoy the greater connection and insight into their work of supporting it directly. * You're aware of or able to fund unique opportunities that the EA Fund isn't,  e.g. political contributions or your friend's project.
AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Mappy3y3
0
0

What are some meaningful ways in which local groups can contribute to the animal movement?

Reply
5
LewisBollard
3y
A few ideas: 1. Push for a policy that's political feasible at the local level, e.g. a foie gras ban or requirement that the city's public procurement buy less meat or only welfare certified meat. 2. Coordinate with national groups to support larger campaigns, e.g. corporate campaigns. 3. Focus on building talent and political power for the movement, e.g. lots of events etc.
Mappy4y3
0
0

Thanks for sharing this.

  1. One argument I come across is that apart from being symbolic, individual action does not help #1,2 and 3. Elaboration / links to articles that try to quantify the "real" individual effect could probably make the case more persuasive.

  2. If the "real" impact is small then one could argue that the slight inconvenience in following a vegan benifit is comparable to the small benifit that individual action results in.

Reply
Call for beta-testers for the EA Pen Pals Project!
Mappy4y1
0
0

Please ignore - see that the linked report has the test results.

Reply
2
Vaidehi Agarwalla
4y
No worries - I've added an update in case anyone else stumbles upon this. Thanks!
Call for beta-testers for the EA Pen Pals Project!
Mappy4y1
0
0

Hello,

Curious to know what the outcomes of the beta test were?

Reply
1
Mappy
4y
Please ignore - see that the linked report has the test results.
Young data scientist seeks project ideas
Answer by MappySep 19, 20193
0
0

The suggestions below aren't particularly EA-aligned but might interest you. Note that I am not a data scientist and haven't worked with any of them.

  1. https://www.ideas42.org/ seem to work in your area of interest. I don't know if they would offer projects to work on though.

  2. https://omdena.com/ has interesting data for good projects and can be a good place to build a data science portfolio (my partner volunteers for them and is quite satisfied with the experience).

  3. https://www.drivendata.org/ has data for good challenges that might interest you.

Hop

... (read more)
Reply
1
faunam
5y
Thanks very much! Have made accounts with Omdena and DrivenData.
Can my filmmaking/songwriting skills be used more effectively in EA?
Mappy5y3
0
0

Hello Simon,

I am speculating here, but I can imagine orgs such as Founders Pledge/Effective Giving/Orgs dealing with HNW, UHNW individuals having use for content that succinctly conveys key information. Could be something to explore.

All the best!

Reply
1
spanrucker
5y
Yeah great stuff! I'll investigate, thanks Mappy!
After one year of applying for EA jobs: It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation
Mappy5y6
0
0

Search for "teach for America" in this transcript: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nick-beckstead-giving-billions/

Reply
Hi, I'm Holden Karnofsky. AMA about jobs at Open Philanthropy
Mappy6y4
0
0

Is there any possibility for the research analyst (or some other) role to be taken up completely remotely? (i.e. while living in another country)

Reply
4
lukeprog
6y
Jumping in here for Holden (I'm an Open Phil RA)… We would like our Research Analysts to work in the SF office most of the time, with 'partly remote' in the job ad meaning that they can occasionally work from home/different locations. Despite our policy, we aren't totally closed to the idea of hiring someone who mostly works remotely, but they'd have to meet a higher bar.