Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 69 posts

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#31

Post by Analemma_ »

matthewmarkus wrote: post #16

Oh boy! I'm going to say some unpopular things here, so please remember you asked for feedback. I immediately click on Funds->Animal Welfare since my company, Pembient, deals in wildlife and I've had a lot of (negative) interactions with the conservation industry. I see that the fund targets "farmed animals" and even then carries a warning: "Risk-averse donors might choose not to focus on animal welfare because the e…

> Let me add that this issue, to me, is the biggest problem with Effective Altruism (EA). It says, "You're 'smart,' go out and become a wealthy hedge fund manager. That's the best use of your time, and then donate the proceeds to things that matter."

I think there's kind of a spectrum in EA, where you can choose your preferred intensity level. There's "soft EA", which is the basic "I'm going to evaluate these different charities and donate to the most effective ones, so I'm doing the most good with my money". The things like "I'm going to choose my career such that I make the most money with which to donate" are more "hard EA", which is an option but certainly not a requirement. I'm more on the soft side myself and never really found it lacking, nor have I ever felt criticized for that position.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#32

Post by tmacaulay »

matthewmarkus wrote: post #26
tempestn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that rather than considering smartness as a linear scale, it might make more sense to consider different people as having aptitudes in different areas? I could see one person being an excellent and effective animal welfare activist and another being a top performing hedge fund manager; it's unlikely the two could switch roles and perform equally well. Regarding HSUS, I'm not sufficiently well versed to h…

I'm not going to deny the existence of comparative advantage. At the same time, I'm not going to claim we live in a passionless universe either. If a hedge fund manager desires to beat the market, she is going to study the financials, etc. If she is also passionate about boiler chickens, why would she outsource that to someone else? Unless, of course, her passion for the market is greater than her love for boiler chi…

FWIW, about 11% of people at our last conference identified themselves as following an earn-to-give path, and we think that's about the right proportion. We don't think everyone should earn-to-give, but we do think it's a path that some people should consider.

I spent about a year earning-to-give as a pharmacist myself before I realised that I could probably do much more good by joining CEA and doing direct work. I gained lots of valuable, real-world experience working in hospitals, and also at big organizations like the Red Cross, this experience not only helped me donate to charity in the short-term, but also to use that experience in my direct work now. I hope that many people will follow a similar path.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#33

Post by EduardHL »

Congrats on your venture!

Will you give more detail on how you address the following four steps mentioned in your website:

1. Which problem areas are most important?

Metrics used for each fund (DALYs, etc.)? Sources used? etc.

2. Which interventions are likely to make progress in solving the problem?

Sources used? How do you evaluate interventions with less predictable outcomes (such as clean energy research)? etc.

3. Which charities executing those interventions are most effective?

Indicators used? Type of due diligence? Do you rely only on reports or do you also regularly check on-the-ground reality? etc.

4. Which charities have a funding gap that is unlikely to be filled elsewhere?

Methodology (funding inflow/outflow models and/or constant dialogue with organisations ...)?

Again, really great initiative; would be interested to understand more in detail.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#34

Post by tmacaulay »

bradleyjg wrote: post #24
Analemma_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charities themselves rarely do that directly (unfortunately, as the OP said, the incentives are really messed-up so they would never do so), but GiveWell does it "by proxy" every year, so if you donate to GiveWell's "general fund" you can be sure that they're iterating and correcting for failures. In terms of other feedback, I have to say I really like the clean separation of "ends" and how you can pick which one…

I agree with you about X-risk, but I'm not sure the separation is so clean. For example looking at the EA Community fund page it isn't at all clear to me whether or not some of the money will end up in the hands of the AI Safety people. To be fair this is openly disclosed as a risk, which is great transparency. Second, donors may choose not to support the Movement Building Fund if they do not wish to indirectly suppo…

It's really great to hear this view. While lots of donors split their donation between our funds, many people choose to allocate 100% of their donation to a single fund. At a later date, we want to allow people to share their fund allocations, so donors can compare allocations and discuss differences in cause prioritization.

Right now, our Global Health and Development Fund has 61% of all donations by value, with the Long-Term future fund coming in at 22%. It will be exciting to see how this changes over time, and whether there are differences in fund allocation by geographic area or demographics.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#35

Post by ArneBab »

tmacaulay wrote: post #5
andy_ppp wrote: post #3

This is really interesting and a great idea; however, I'd almost trust charities more if they listed how they had failed each year and where delivery and services went wrong and what mitigation has been put in place. It would be good to have a system where charities were allowed to fail like bad companies as well, but it's difficult to be this honest.

Thanks, we completely agree! Right now, the incentives in the charity sector are totally screwed. The charities which get the biggest are the ones with the best marketing, not the ones which have the most impact. That means that big charities often hide their mistakes and focus on maintaining a wholesome image. In contrast, many of the organizations we work with regularly publish their mistakes and lessons. By sharin…

So New Incentives changed what they wanted to do because they would get paid more that way?

I know this sounds harsh. This is the incentive you create: Pushing people who initially wanted to help where they see need to instead focus on helping where they get more money for do so.

And a sufficient amount of free money is mostly available to a very small group of people.

This does not mean it’s necessarily bad. It just means that its incentives are skewed, too: The charities are pushed to become interest groups of the rich (to some degree this is also the case today, but stronger quality assurance also means more control to follow the largest donors' wishes).

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#36

Post by colophonemes »

deontologizt wrote: post #27
DodgyEggplant wrote: post #11

+ 1000 For the animals welfare. The animals that can't blog, tweet, or complain. Wildlife preservation and care for animals is as important as other common non-profit and foundations goals, but often neglected

Actually, most "effective altruists" support habitat destruction because it reduces the number of animals, and therefore also the amount of suffering. I find this very disturbing. If you want details, see my other comment on this item: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886954 Of course, EAs won't tell you this up front, as they know it would be bad PR. (cf. https://medium.com/@jacobfunnell/a-year-in-effective-al…

While there are people who identify as effective altruist who hold views that are controversial, I think it's important to not paint with such a broad brush. As your linked article notes, there is wide disagreement on a range of thorny philosophical issues across a range of cause areas, but the scare quotes/selective quoting makes it seem like these views are unquestioningly accepted by a plurality of people in the community.

Effective altruism is a broad church. The unifying themes are trying to make the world a better place, using reason and evidence as tools for making decision, expanding our circle of compassion, and having epistemic humility (i.e. knowing that we could be wrong about things and being open to changing our minds in proportion to the strength of new evidence). The conclusions people draw can hinge on deep and ultimately irreducible value judgements — a strength of the community is that we can (in general) have these disagreements respectfully and work together productively where there is common ground.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#37

Post by willmacaskill »

EduardHL wrote: post #33

Congrats on your venture! Will you give more detail on how you address the following four steps mentioned in your website: 1. Which problem areas are most important? Metrics used for each fund (DALYs, etc.)? Sources used? etc. 2. Which interventions are likely to make progress in solving the problem? Sources used? How do you evaluate interventions with less predictable outcomes (such as clean energy research)? etc. 3…

Thanks for the enthusiasm!

I think a lot of your questions can be answered here (including the other pages that these pages link to): http://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our-process and http://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/process

Because our fund managers are all GiveWell and Open Philanthropy staff, we inherit their methodology. If in the future we move beyond GiveWell and Open Philanthropy fund managers, we'll need to have pages on their process too (and how it potentially differs from GW / OP).

A more accessible introduction to how to assess which problem area is most important is here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#38

Post by willmacaskill »

ArneBab wrote: post #35
tmacaulay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, we completely agree! Right now, the incentives in the charity sector are totally screwed. The charities which get the biggest are the ones with the best marketing, not the ones which have the most impact. That means that big charities often hide their mistakes and focus on maintaining a wholesome image. In contrast, many of the organizations we work with regularly publish their mistakes and lessons. By sharin…

So New Incentives changed what they wanted to do because they would get paid more that way? I know this sounds harsh. This is the incentive you create: Pushing people who initially wanted to help where they see need to instead focus on helping where they get more money for do so. And a sufficient amount of free money is mostly available to a very small group of people. This does not mean it’s necessarily bad. It just…

I think that's exactly wrong, I'm afraid.

In traditional charity, the incentives that charities have are to do whatever is going to fundraise the most. So the charities that get biggest are those that are best at looking good, rather than doing good.

The solution is to have a set of donors who really care about funding whatever does the most good. That means that a charity's fundraising incentives line up with what's actually best for the world. And that set of impact-motivated donors is exactly what we're trying to create with the effective altruism movement.

New Incentives is a great example of that working. In just the same way that a startup will pivot if it thinks it could be working on something else that's more profitable, because of the existence of the EA community New Incentives is able to pivot to a different approach that it thinks will do more good per dollar and knows that, if it succeeds at doing that, it will be able to grow more.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#39

Post by jefftk »

colophonemes wrote: post #25
tempestn wrote: post #20

Since Givewell has come up a number of times here, the obvious question to me, as someone completely unversed in how these things work, is how does contributing to your fund compare to contributing to Givewell? It seems like your goals are similar. Is your claim that dollars contributed to your fund will ultimately be more effective? Or are you differentiating yourselves in a different way (different priorities, impr…

Our baseline for effectiveness (specifically with regard to the Global Health and Development Fund, which is managed by GiveWell founder Elie Hassenfeld) is Givewell's top charities. So, it's entirely possible that Elie will choose to grant to these, in which case your donation will be exactly as effective as donating to Givewell, but you'll get the advantage of using the EA Funds platform — e.g. single tax receipt (…

    single tax receipt (donating to one org instead of 3-4)
GiveWell offers this as well: https://secure.givewell.org/

You can donate to GiveWell for distribution to their to charities, and you can either choose the breakdown or ask them to allocate it as they think best.

Re: Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)

#40

Post by colophonemes »

willmacaskill wrote: post #37
EduardHL wrote: post #33

Congrats on your venture! Will you give more detail on how you address the following four steps mentioned in your website: 1. Which problem areas are most important? Metrics used for each fund (DALYs, etc.)? Sources used? etc. 2. Which interventions are likely to make progress in solving the problem? Sources used? How do you evaluate interventions with less predictable outcomes (such as clean energy research)? etc. 3…

Thanks for the enthusiasm! I think a lot of your questions can be answered here (including the other pages that these pages link to): http://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our-process and http://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/process Because our fund managers are all GiveWell and Open Philanthropy staff, we inherit their methodology. If in the future we move beyond GiveWell and Open Philanthropy fund managers, we'll…

I'd add that these things will differ between cause areas, so it's hard to give a neat, roll-up answer. DALY's and NPV income estimates are fairly good in the global health space, but other cause areas may need to make more speculative comparisons because they deal with things that are harder to measure.

In all cases, when a Fund makes a grant, the fund manager will provide a write-up outlining their rationale. For now, each fund manager has a list of previous grants they've made, so you can get a sense of the organisations they are likely to grant to (though by no means does that imply that they necessarily /will/ grant to these specific orgs in future).

One of the key advantages of the Funds model is not locking you in to a particular charity up front, which means that as more information about funding gaps, intervention effectiveness etc comes to light, fund managers can respond accordingly.

Post reply on HN