This is a great initiative! I help run Impact CoLabs that hosts many organization and projects in need of different types of expertise, tech expertise being a very common one. If you ever have free time, please reach out at info@impactcolabs.com as we can connect you with high-impact projects in need. We welcome you (and anyone else) to also fill out a volunteer profile so organizations can find you directly as well. Thanks again for doing this with you free time!
Thank you for the feedback! You found a blindspot that most of us at Impact CoLabs and those we asked to review this post had, namely that we all had a concept in our mind for what a project platform was. I have adjusted the snapshot to hopefully aid in explaining the concept in general, but please let me know if this still doesn't address your issue.
Thank you for the kind words and the great feedback! You make a great point about 'volunteering', we will discuss that internally. I'm generally in agreement with your comments but would love to explore some of the nuance! Look forward to hearing form you, if you reach out and don't hear back, please message me here to make sure we are being responsive.
Hi Denis, thank you for your message and your offer to contribute, it is welcome. Since we are just starting out we still haven't built all the capabilities we have envisioned. For example, and as mentioned above, we were planning a list of tractable problems and project ideas to guide potential project leaders, as well as a list of past/failed projects or lessons learned from projects to ensure the community as a whole is not just spinning its wheels (e.g. this metaproject has had similar iterations in the past..). But your idea for a wiki that not only provides problem areas and project ideas but also provides thought-through analyses, roadmaps, required skills lists, available resources and community input is a huge improvement over our current plan. So I don't think the issue of not having project leaders identified upfront would be a critical problem, as long as you're OK with your wiki being separate from the project database. Ideally entrepreneurial EAs will find your project write-ups on Impact CoLabs and then create a project from it (or people that are screened from the platform due to low-impact ideas can be directed to those pre-vetted ideas).
We definitely want the ultimate version of Impact CoLabs to be the central node for project creation, and we want the resources we provide to reflect that. The goal is to be a more high-volume/low-touch, top-of-the-funnel solution than the incubators/accelerators like Charity Entrepreneurship or other upcoming startup factories. But even if we are not going to shepherd projects personally and diligently, it doesn't mean we can't try to provide as detailed and well-researched guidance as possible.
My only slight hesitation for your approach is the effort involved in development and upkeep, we would rather offer a lower-value solution (just a list of ideas) that we can guarantee can be maintained than a higher-value solution (detailed wiki with required fields for each project idea) that has a large chance of being abandoned after a while. So it all depends on volunteer interest in contributing and/or how we set it up. Would love to chat about this more. If you want to take this offline we would recommend filling out our new team member form so we can get you more background info on the project, or alternatively you can just email info@impactcolabs.com.
A group of us developed coviddash.org which was referenced in the NYTimes and had about ~30K visitors, directing between 10K-20K to vaccine trial screening websites or to the sites themselves. We had sites thank us for patients so we know we our counterfactual impact on trial enrollment was >0, but we are not sure of the total number we actually directed. If we accelerated just one vaccine for just one day though we probably helped save a few hundred lives. We were not funded by any EA org but some of us are EA-aligned.
I plan to write a more detailed recap/analysis on this and to discuss accelerating vaccine R&D during pandemics but haven't gotten to it yet because I already moved onto the next project...
Thanks Jan! Yes, we even reference your post in our detailed write-up and agree that vetting will be critical and a bottle-neck to maximum positive impact, particularly related to x-risk. Currently we have implemented a plan that we believe is manageable exclusively by a small group of volunteers, and have included a step in the process that involves CEA's Community Health team. Having said that, we don't think that is an ideal stopping point, we hope to expand into other forms of vetting pending general interest in the project, vetting volunteer interest and the building of other functionality or establishment of partnership with outside orgs. You can read more in sections IV.9 and VI.11 of the write-up about our thinking on these topics. Lastly, given your fantastic analysis in the past, if you would like to help out we would welcome any new team members that are interested in or familiar with this metaproject -- you can email info@impactcolabs.com anytime!
Fantastic analysis, wish I had this prior to making my decision. Back in the day both Fidelity and Schwab had a $5K minimum and Fidelity had a $50 minimum contribution whereas Schwab had a $500 minimum, which is why I went with Fidelity. Glad to see they made these improvements.
Going off of Dan's comment, if a Fidelity (or Schwab) account is at $25K or more, would you recommend switching over to Vanguard given the better fees and investment options?
Great initiative. Whoever ends up in this role, we at impactcolabs.com would love to connect as we could both help identify potential candidates as well as help identify needs within EA orgs. We find that many EA orgs have volunteer needs that might be best served by a PA-type FTE. We will hopefully share more about these findings and the status of our 2.0 platform soon.