I really like how you've laid this out 😀 

Personally, I think that there's a spectrum with many more points between #8 and #9. Even many employer matching programs aren't entirely counterfactual, they likely have a budget of how much they're willing to spend on charity matching which would be adjusted down on a per employee basis if they all used it, and the counterfactual portion is the difference in impact between different charities it might be donated to.

Per my comment I think there are different uses of counterfactual that are getting tied up, particularly when it comes to donor matching: impact and actions:

• Counterfactual impact: Is the total impact triggered by donor A whose donation is being matched by donor B counterfactual once you take into account what donor B would have done otherwise?
• Counterfactual action: Were the actions of donor B counterfactually impacted by donor A (i.e. they would have given somewhere else but that might have been similarly impactful, or less impactful)?

In the case of #2 it is not misleading to donor A to say that their donation was matched IMHO. But it isn't the full story for impact, that is only as counterfactual as the difference between the impact of the actions that are taken or not.

Ah, yes. In the case of something like "should I be earning to give" that is a very different situation. 

There's two uses of counterfactual here:

1. Is the total impact triggered by donor A whose donation is being matched by donor B counterfactual once you take into account what donor B would have done otherwise?
2. Were the actions of donor B counterfactually impacted by donor A (i.e. they would have given somewhere else but that might have been similarly impactful, or less impactful).

In the case of #2 it is not misleading to donor A to say that their donation was matched IMHO. But it isn't the full story for impact.

Yeah, very good point!

My reading is that they are seeing the marketing value in matching but philosophically want to have a true match because of the reasons outlined in earlier posts (they don't consider those campaigns even as "matches"). The 'true match' attempt however might seem to be the worst of both worlds...

That being said, I imagine that the average donor towards their "true match" matching funds is actually quite like me: a donor that is seeking to spend specifically on outreach donations. In this case the decision might be between donating to the GiveWell matching pool or something else such as sponsoring a Giving Game, or covering credit card fees, or paying for pizza at an introduction event for students, or an advertising experiment, or a study on psychology of effective giving. In this case it's definitely counterfactual (it wouldn't have gone to a GiveWell charity) but it's not "worse" than they would have otherwise given (they could believe for good reason that incentivising the first donation is sufficiently leveraged that it is better than another outreach focused donation). I can actually understand the psychology of the "true match" donor quite well: I would actually prefer that my donation be held for matching, used for marketing, or returned for me to use in a similar fashion than just go to one of their top charities. This isn't a typical donor, but it is one that I understand (intimately).

Thanks for your thoughts Jeff!

I am of two minds about this:

• I think that donation matching in general is an illusion (just like 0% overheads is an illusion) – illusions are sometimes bad (especially if they are perceived as dishonest or to be in bad faith)
• I think that donation matching (and 0% overheads) is often effective at increasing donations – increased donations are often good

I think that on balance we are trading off against acting to change the world with humans as they are vs acting to try and change humans to change the world.

Changing humans and working against our biases is really difficult so I think that we need to pick our battles.

There are also other "illusions" that we are okay with. For example, we are at a point in the community where there is a lot of crowding out so that someone donating to AMF, is in a sense, increasing how much another donor (like Open Philanthropy) is donating to an entirely different cause area such as animal welfare.

Another example of an illusion that we generally accept: most EA regranting organisations get separate operational funding so that they can say that they pass on 100% of the donation to the partner charity, this comes at the cost of another donor who may have given to one of the other charities they regrant to. We're in a position where true counterfactuals are really hard to determine.

In my opinion a "true match" is more intellectually honest (though still not perfect) but probably a worse outcome (for the reasons you laid out).

But I think that GiveWell might be choosing this "true match" because they know matching works for fundraising (and attribution), but they are trying to pre-emptively deal with criticism from people who are aware of the illusion.

Personally, I have spent most of my donations on operational costs (to allow the low overheads) and donor matching (and other undirected donations such as sponsoring giving games). I do this because I think that getting someone to make their first donation to an effective charity is particularly high leverage – more leveraged than the difference between me deciding between two effective charities.

I lean towards accepting that matches are to varying extents an illusion (like 100% goes to the charity) but that the benefits of using them might often outweigh the costs, and attempts to make them more counterfactual might on net be worse (like you laid out here).

Wayback machine to the rescue: http://web.archive.org/web/20210422032939/https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8G3p8rLb3cYP4fSSk/why-do-so-few-eas-and-rationalists-have-children 

Yep 😀 

My favourite version is that it is a question in which we ask ourselves how we can use our resources to do more good (than we otherwise would if we didn't ask the question). Or as Helen Toner put it: 

“How can I do the most good, with the resources available to me?”

Hi Ben, great to hear you want to make such an impact and are taking it so seriously!

There are some really fantastic answers here already! Once you've read through them I'm also happy to chat with you about this over a call if that'd help. GWWC also regularly hosts Open Forum events for people who want to discuss their giving decisions, the next one is in mid-September.

Also, if you are so inclined, it can help others if you write up what you end up deciding and why 😀 

This was great work by the PISE team! We are hoping to help groups to organise lots of pledge parties this coming January to welcome in new members from 2021 (and January 1 is our most popular pledge date). Please get in touch with me if you'd like to organise one for your group and want some help!

Thanks for the feedback! This is the new "event" style and I filled in data for the date, registration link, and Facebook links but it doesn't all seem to show up (the date does though, it's below the tags and above the "linkpost".

Personally, I have some small confidence that removing tax deductibility for all charities in all countries would be better than the system we currently have – charity could more easily be more international and people worry less about chasing deductions and more about impact. In countries where tax-deductibility is a small factor I think it's hard to justify work on expanding it (if most people don't care). In countries where it's a big deal then it's worth setting up charities in those countries or trying to expand the purpose (e.g. animal welfare charities in Australia excludes most things that would help farmed animals).

I prefer matching systems like Gift Aid in the UK over tax-deductibility, but still think that charity might be better off being just treated as any other purchase (probably without goods/services taxes though).

Thanks Nathan! This is great to hear! I actually completely agree with that approach and it's the approach that I always encourage people to take 😀  Sharing that you care about something (and explaining why, how it makes you feel etc) is one of the best ways of advocating. It's human, it's authentic, and people in your life like to know what you're interested in and what you care about. I've found that people are really supportive and interested when I take this approach 😀 

We're publishing a new guide to talking about EA/effective giving soon which includes tips like this. Will share it on the Forum when we do 😀 

Hi Laurin, glad to see you're working to help change this norm around giving! 

I'm the executive director at Giving What We Can and per @peterslattery's comment I'd be more than happy to chat if you'd like. Feel free to book a time using calend.ly/luke-gwwc

Thanks for letting me know! I'd really appreciate learning more about the feelings/reasoning behind rarely wanting to share it unless someone specifically asked. Understanding this feeling/reasoning is vital in helping to create more spreadable ideas. Feel free to DM me also 😀 

Hi Linda! Great to hear that you're working on this! I work at Giving What We Can and am thinking a lot about outreach at the moment (including things like training writers) and am connected to various organisations in EA.

I'd be more than happy to have a chat about how you can best use your skills and multiply them by training others etc (I think there could be huge value in things like communications masterclasses/fellowships). 

Feel free to email me at luke.freeman@givingwhatwecan.org or book at time to chat using calend.ly/luke-gwwc.

Thanks!

Loved this. Was really insightful. Thanks so much for recording the audio too! 

Generally I find it helps to separate cost from value (see The Value Of A Life) and also to point out that our decisions carry implicit value regardless of whether we articulate that value. By choosing to donate $5,000 to an art gallery rather than $5,000 to AMF to save a life (in expectation) then I am implicitly valuing the former over the latter. It helps to articulate what it is that we value to understand whether these decisions are consistent with our beliefs.

I do believe that I probably value more things than just the expected utility of sentient beings. However, I budget a significant portion of my time and money to optimising the expected utility of sentient beings  while also carving out time and money to be spent on other things (including my own hedonism, aesthetic preferences, and special obligations to people in my life etc).

Also relevant is Julia's post You Have More Than One Goal And That's Fine.

I'm thrilled to hear about this!

Nice work Ivan! We've been considering doing this at Giving What We Can. Quick one: how did you get the cost of the book + delivery down to $15?

I'd also love this – it's been on my todo list for about 5 years 😅

Yeah, lowercase (other than in titles) is what helps ensure that "effective altruism" isn't seen as a single organisation.

Yeah, title case or proper case is common for page titles, article titles and headings (generally H1, H2, and often even H3).

Thanks Neel! Yep, this is what Toby Ord does (and others also do so) and was the original conception of GWWC, however the minimum % seemed to be more popular and easier for many people to understand and calculate.

I only capitalise it when referring to organisations that have effective altruism in the name (e.g. "Effective Altruism Australia") – i.e. as a proper noun. I don't capitalise it when referring to the philosophy and social movement (similar to feminism, environmentalism etc).

This is also our brand guidelines at GWWC and EAA.

Would the AWF be interested/able to indicate if the grantees have room for more funding from individual donors?

A grant from the AWF is a strong indication of a good potential donation opportunity, however the grant may have already filled the funding gap. If a donor (for whatever reason, e.g. tax deductibility, running a fundraiser etc) wants to donate directly to an animal welfare charity (instead of a fund), would you recommend they donate to any recent grantees or only follow the advice of a charity evaluator (e.g. ACE)?

Thanks for the very detailed feedback! I've shared this with the team and we'll be addressing it and incorporating into an updated version 😀 

Love this. I'm quickly penning a new GWWC strategy so we can try and incorporate the proposals of CWWG in their entirety.

Giving What We Can for 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020:

• Users: 377,470
• Sessions: 470,721
• Pageviews: 662,988

Effective Altruism Australia for 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020:

• Users: 12,896
• Sessions: 16,600
• Pageviews: 32,734

Similarly, Effective Altruism Australia has been moving about 30% more money each year.

https://effectivealtruism.org.au/reports/

I hear similar numbers from most regranting organisations.

Strong upvote for something like this unless there's some context I'm missing? I.e. what is the sentence that this would belong in?

Yeah – things like the Long Now Foundation have been around for decades and aren't necessarily approaching longtermism from the same angle as EA.

For GWWC I'm very interested in speaking to people with UX experience and capacity who have a deep understanding of what we're trying to do. At this stage it isn't in our budget for a full time role but likely something we could find for a contract role (and would love any input from UX people who don't have capacity for contract role or full time work).

If anyone fits the bill please get in touch 🙇‍♂️

Because they are the future, literally.

I'm motivated to build a better future, I believe that more happy lives are better.

Our lives are significantly influenced by our parents (nature and nurture) and I think raising good children in an environment where there's an emphasis on caring about others is a good thing for the world.

It's hard for an anti-natal social movement to last the test of time.

Because I want to.

I've always wanted kids, biological or adopted. I see EA as a question of "how can we use our resources effectively to do good... for the resources we choose to allocate to doing good".

Most people draw the line somewhere between what they want for themselves and what they want for the world. I believe kids will enrich my life and can be done in a way which still enables me to do a lot of good.

As @Benjamin_Todd mentioned, GWWC also does report on pledged donations and donations made.

However, Giving What We Can’s core metric on a day-to-day basis is the number of active members who are keeping their pledge. This is in part because the organisation aim is “to create a culture where people are inspired to give more, and give more effectively” (a community building project) and we see pledges as a more correlated and stable reflection of that than the noisy donation data (which a single billionaire can massively skew in any given year). This aim is in service of the organisations’ mission to “Inspire donations to the world’s most effective organisations”. We believe this mission is important in making progress on the world's most pressing problems (whatever they might be throughout the lifetime of the members).

Because GWWC is cause-diverse and not the authority on impact evaluations of the charities its members donate to is hard to translate this into exact impact numbers across our membership. We do however regularly look at where our members are donating and in our impact analysis try to benchmark this to equivalent money donated to top charities. We do plan to improve our reporting of impact where it is possible (e.g. donations to GiveWell’s top charities) – however, this will never be a complete picture.

Note: I did not choose the mission of GWWC and do not speak on behalf of the board nor the founders. However, this is my best understanding of the mission and the core metrics as required for my day-to-day operations. It is also a mission I believe to be impactful not just through direct donation moved but through indirect factors (such as moral circle expansion, movement building, and changing the incentives for charities to be more impact focused because they see more donors seeking impact).

Yeah, we're going to separate these into categories that help separate that and try to clarify in the response to the questions that not all charities are doing direct aid. We had a conversation about this in a discussion the other day that something like the overhead myth is more understandable if you're thinking about giving people stuff (e.g. donating food).

Thanks!  We've got some of this as part of the "Charity begins at home" myth that we're working on. Just tagged you on the Google Doc 😀  

Yep! That's how I selected some of my initial list (things like answerthepublic.com, google trends, search estimator, SEMrush and Quora helped in the initial research). Will check the new ones that are suggested too.

This is in part why we're giving more attention and resources to Giving What We Can. Donating is something that is very accessible to many people and can be very impactful. Creating a culture where people give more and give more effectively is a way of fostering the values of compassion and critical thinking.

We're working on developing more information on how people can use their time to be an advocate or a volunteer. There's been some great work done on this in the effective animal advocacy movement also.

I look forward to seeing more work in the space of making more of EA more accessible to more people, helping us create more positive change in the world.

I really liked this post. I especially like the similarities with the LGBT+ movement and that being large and weird is also fine 😀 

This is missing the Giving What We Can one:

Hi RandomEA,

That section of the website discusses why a fund can be a good option and then lists the funds that are available on EA Funds (the four EA Funds plus the Regranting organisations listed on EA Funds, minus CEA's Community Building Grants as we felt that was less targeted towards a general public audience that would typically visit that page).

Hope that helps to clarify.

Best,

Luke

For what it's worth – Giving What We Can also noticed a bump in pledges that came from The  Life You Can Save book relaunch (and people specifying that is how they found out). There's often spill over like this that isn't directly tracked by the organisation doing the multiplying.

Oh, so many things! I'm really grateful for all the support I've received from the team at CEA, GWWC members, the broader EA community, and a number of close friends in this community who've been a rock to me (in particular those in Sydney: James Harrison, Peter Slattery, Neil Ferro and Sophia Cyna).

I'm grateful for the qualities I value being embodied by so many people: thoughtfulness, compassion, passion, intentionality, open-mindedness, and humility.

I'm grateful for the open door policy that so many people have. The number of times the right connection or conversation has been a single email away is amazing.

I'm grateful for the hope for the future that I get knowing how many people care deeply about working towards ensuring it's prosperous.

Great question - thanks Michael for asking this!

This year I'm again making mostly infrastructure donations, plus some smaller donations when there's leverage (e.g. sponsoring giving games).

So far that has meant donations to Effective Altruism Australia and the Centre for Effective Altruism (some of which was donor-matched by my wife's employer Adobe, some of which is salary sacrificed as I'm now at CEA), and some donations to individual charities (e.g. GFI, Animals Australia and AMF).

We've also recently signed our wills (after sitting unsigned in a draw for far too long) where some specific gifts and most of the residue of our estate will be split between a few EA infrastructure organisations. If you haven't checked out Effective Legacies for a free will kit or looked into making a bequest, I highly encourage this.

Another highlight of 2020 was making some investments via a trust so that they can be donated tax-efficiently upon liquidation (even if they don't have deductible gift recipient status in Australia, because they are a beneficiary of the trust).

Giving to a DAF is definitely within the spirit of the pledge and many members do this. We'll be updating the big long FAQ page soon but in the meantime this is one of the FAQs on the Pledge page.

This is great. Did you write this?

Indeed! Thanks for all these great contributions! It was a great start to my morning 😍