Along with my co-founder, Marcus A. Davis, I run Rethink Priorities. Previously, I was a professional data scientist.
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This does seem like a good model to try.
I've thought about this before and I would also like to see this happen.
I notice that the listed grants seems substantially below $1000/hour; e.g. Rethink getting $250,000 for seven FTEs implies ~$35,000/FTE or roughly $18/hour. *
This is two misconceptions:
(1) we are hiring seven interns but they each will only be there for three months. I believe it is 1.8 FTE collectively.
(2) The grant is not being entirely allocated to intern compensation
Interns at Rethink Priorities currently earn $23-25/hr. Researchers hired on a permanent basis earn more than that, currently $63K-85K/yr (prorated for part-time work).
It definitely does strike me as there needing to be a lot of continued longtermist research and field-building to allow us to be in a good position to deploy a large amount of capital at a critical time. It's not easy to deploy capital overnight.
Sorry if this is a strawman of the "invest to give later" argument or something already addressed, but I think it's important to put out there if it hasn't been already.
I time track ~30hrs a week.
I get ~6hrs a week of "deep work", mainly because I am in management and a lot of management activities are not classically considered deep work.
My efficiency is ~70%.
Yeah, I think it certainly would be fine to donate to an organization that can make use of your money but not for a year or two. I think this would actually be very helpful to the org as a signal of support and for removing some uncertainty for them, to allow them to actually grow (steadily).
How is NIMBYism helpful?
Can you say more about what kind of wild animal welfare work you would want to see?
Can you say more about what you think a promising new initiative on PB alternatives might look like?
:D