I work as a Senior Communications Manager at Rethink Priorities, and I'm based in London. Other than RP, I worked as a Fund Manager at EA Animal Welfare Fund (2 years), and as a Senior Recruitment & Digital Media Manager at Ambitious Impact (6 years). I have a PhD in Philosophy and specialize in animal ethics (published a book on the topic in Polish). My professional experience includes working as a Project Manager and PR & Marketing Manager for startup projects affiliated with Michał Kiciński, a Polish investor and co-founder of CD Projekt (creators of The Witcher games). I've also worked as a Communications Manager for ProVeg. For over 26 years, I've been a dedicated animal advocate :)
I fixed the number in the comment above, yes, 3.6 to 29.
Updating on one comment from Siobhan or me does not seem like a good idea :) Give it a go; I think a lot of EAs are just already on the side of your argument here; that's why I thought maybe it's not so much needed for us, as we're already convinced. But publishing your thoughts is always good, and if someone isn't interested, then they'll just skip it.
The framing might be new, but the problem is old, and you've talked about it for years just in various different framings. At least that's how it sounds to me. But you should not update about posting because 2 people don't find the thoughts original. I think your thoughts on this are needed, and I expressed this above.
Thanks for this it’s a really useful point and one we’ve been thinking about too. You’re right that the value of cross-cause prioritization research depends a lot on who’s actually listening and what they’re open to. The way we see it, there are at least three types of donors this work is relevant to.
The first are donors who are genuinely cause-neutral and are actively looking for guidance on how to split their resources. Some have asked us for exactly this kind of analysis, both in the past and in the current wave of new philanthropy, so this work is directly for them.
The second are donors who are broadly cause-neutral but, in practice, hedge by putting some money into one cause as a kind of safety net (GHD is a common choice), or who defer to advice that isn’t explicitly modeled. We think an explicit model can help these donors do what they already want to do: diversify their portfolio but in a more principled way. We’re hoping to address their concerns more directly in future posts in the series.
The third group is donors who mostly default to giving later, or to giving within a single cause. Even here, we think the work has something to offer. Many donors with a clear worldview still aren’t completely certain of it, and it’s worth asking what they should do as a hedge against being wrong. Relatedly, some donors who appear to hold a particular worldview may actually be people who think the arguments come down squarely in favor of giving, as though that worldview were true. For them, it can be useful to see an alternative way of allocating resources and what it would recommend. We probably won’t change many minds in this group, but we plan to engage with some of the assumptions behind these positions in later posts.
We’re already in contact with some donors in each of these groups, and we’d love more opportunities to engage with others. Part of our hope for this series is simply that it helps the work get noticed by the people who might find it useful. Thanks again for raising this.
Oh, so you think this is just not adding new perspective to some recent articles? I might have not being following the discussion so closely. So maybe you're right in this context.
Thanks for this post. I don't want to be annoying, so feel free to ignore this if it would take too much of your time to answer, but I'm curious whether anyone has modeled the end-to-end cost of testing this theory of change end-to-end.
For example:
a) Accelerating the remaining R&D needed for scalable solutions
b) Developing a product that's genuinely competitive on taste
c) Securing a mass-market deal in one country, e.g., getting the product into a major supermarket chain at price parity with meat (with funders subsidizing the difference to test the hypothesis), plus the marketing to support it
Put differently: if a funder asked you or someone in the space, "What would it take to test this ToC, and how would you design the test?", what would we tell them?
Part of why I ask is that from the outside, this space can be hard to navigate. Many companies are raising money, and each makes a plausible case for what it could do with more funding. I understand GFI's model is to support the ecosystem broadly rather than back specific companies, but I wonder whether there's a role for identifying the 1–3 most promising bets closest to a real market test, mapping out their pathways and costs, and helping match them with funding. Or perhaps that's already part of what you do?
It has been made and yet some activists are not even inclusive of fellow advocates, who work on animal welfare :) I think EA Forum obviously has a different community, and maybe there's no need to repost here, given the topic :) But I like that Tobias is using his platforms to make this point 100-time-again, because it ties into the recent conversations that were happening on Substack.
Singer keeps on repeating his argument about a child in a pond for 40+ years :)
Hi Toby, the CCF is not eligible for UK gift aid, I'm afraid, as it's a US-held fund, so donations are tax-deductible in the US only.
We're actively looking into workarounds. Theoretically, one can give to a giving vehicle eligible for UK gift aid, and that entity could then re-grant to this fund. Anyone interested can contact us at [email protected] to discuss options.
Thank you, Sarah!
Thanks so much, Marcus, on behalf of the Team :)
I don't know, as I'm not very familiar with EA's AI side. I guess, for AI, the pathway is very specialized and only for extremely skilled individuals who can get into these highly competitive programs and become the very best in them. There is a huge chunk of EAs interested in working in other cause areas, and for that, I am unsure whether we have anything good. I'd love AIM to create this kind of program, but it's not its role in the ecosystem. We have EA courses run by CEA, but I've heard many complaints about the recent ones, so I am not optimistic they'll add much value, especially for experienced professionals who want to switch careers, rather than very EA-ingrained students, for whom they will be easier.