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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 😍
Interesting – please keep me in the loop with this research 😀
I often ask these questions and get 95%+ agreement when teaching a class.
Hi Larks,
Thanks for the input. I'm sorry I'm not entirely following what you are suggesting here.
I'd be very happy to take input on what you would suggest.
The essence of the pledge is to be a useful commitment device that helps people to stick to a commitment knowing that they've promised it to themselves and also to others (e.g. by taking a public pledge where your name is alongside others).
However, we don't want the commitment to be seen as so high that no one would take it on a slight chance that the best thing for themselves and the world would be that they resign.
I completely agree that broken commitments are bad (as laid out in the document), but shying away from commitments because there's a chance they might be broken is also bad.
I'm very open to any suggestions you have for how to communicate that.
In regards to the "scrupulous to a point of detriment" I'm referring to cases where scrupulousness is detrimental (i.e. Scrupulosity, OCD). If someone has that propensity it is probably better to not make a more ambitious and narrow commitment that there's a chance they might need to resign from (and instead make a softer commitment or one with very very clear caveats).
Thanks again 😀
Thanks Ofer. What do you think about changing this wording on the guide:
"Some people might be less inclined to do direct work if they take a pledge." -> "Some people might be less inclined to do direct work (due to "lock-in" or not having enough runway/financial stability) if they take a pledge."
"It’s important for people to consider this seriously. Only they can know how they will feel." -> "It’s important for people to consider this seriously, understand their financial situation, and under what conditions it is best to resign."
In terms of the wording of the pledge itself, I lean towards keeping it as is while including the FAQ which includes information about resigning from the pledge (we make promises all the time that have implied conditionality, such as the example about picking up your niece from school, and marriages which most people agree should end if that is best, but that's rarely in the vows).
In cases where someone is particularly scrupulous to a point of detriment I would recommend either not pledging or if they did, to take a Try Giving pledge and renewing it on a regular basis.
I'm very open to further discussion on these points.
Covid-19 has reversed years of gains in the war on poverty
This coronavirus affects everyone, but not equally. The young often shrug off the virus; the old often die of it. The rich shrug off the economic shock; the poor cannot. Because of covid-19, the number of extremely poor people (ie, those making less than $1.90 a day) will rise by 70m-100m this year, the World Bank predicts. Using a broader measure, including those who lack basic shelter or clean water and children who go hungry, the ranks of the poor will swell by 240m-490m this year, says the un. That could reverse almost a decade of progress (see article). If a vaccine is found, economies will no doubt bounce back. But widespread vaccination will take years and the very poor cannot wait that long. By then, malnutrition will have stunted a tragic number of children’s bodies and minds.
Looks like CEA is on there, but no ability to segment by specific funds. Probably due to it being a single charity. Each of the EA Funds (along with GWWC and other programs) are programs within CEA (a registered charity in the USA and UK).
Similarly other charities with single programs (like GiveDirectly which has Basic Income, USA etc), it looks like you can't specify what program you want it to go to.
Had no idea this existed... joining!
Great work team!
The experience has been really fantastic. Very rewarding, plus it's helped with training my 'socratic questioning' style with adults 😀
Personally, I find this an argument for being more emotionally motivated by near term outcomes (even while being more philosophically motivated by long term outcomes).
Three ways I've seen this done well (often in tandem):
1. Diversity of attention: Working on a longtermist project while paying attention to to how other parts of their lives (e.g. allocating some donations for addressing more immediate problems, changing diet for moral circle expansion, building relationships, hobbies, creative works) bring them joy and motivation. It could be very demotivating if one is purely "all-in" (devoting huge amounts of time/thought/identity) on something that feels incredibly far away.
2. Focus on near-term outcomes of longtermist projects. For example, you're focused on long term political stability and working on changing the voting system of a local government area and the immediate benefit that provides people.
3. Focus on immediate progress towards longtermist projects. Every project has goals that you reach such as getting funding, publishing a paper, hiring a new colleague, running an event. Take the time to celebrate these wins.
The GWWWC Try Giving pledge (any percent above 1%, any period of time)
There's Primary Ethics in Australia that is starting to take off in schools. Some of us in the EA Sydney group volunteered to be teachers (mostly telling stories from a script and facilitating discussion to help kids discuss ethical questions).
There's also this https://www.eawork.club/
I think a local opportunity is a nice way for people to meet people around them (e.g. be on welcoming duty at a local meetup) and then remote can be valuable if done well.
We're currently taking volunteers at Giving What We Can also 😀
Here's the expression of interest form: http://bit.ly/gwwc-volunteer
Have subscribed and downloaded the episodes you mentioned. Looking forward to hearing them 😀
Another against:
I also find it very helpful to be very close to people who share a lot of core values but are not entirely aligned/identities aren't too similar. You end up with diversity of thought in your own life. Plus, it's a lot better to bounce off and model the general population when you have people near and dear to you who think differently.
I'm pleasantly impressed you perpetuated a good social norm by thanking someone for perpetuating a good social norm. Well done and thank you.
Alas another year goes by and Sydney doesn't make the cut despite hosting another EAGx 😜
Nice work, again!
In future years I'd be very interested in seeing a citizenship question and a question about what city someone was in when they first became involved in EA. In Australia it's a running joke that we have an EA brain drain to USA/UK, especially for direct work opportunities (noting also that Australia has many fewer direct work opportunities as is also a way to read the data).
Finding opportunities for people to do good without needing to relocate (sometimes leaving a vacuum in community building in the city they are from) is something we're very interested in exploring further.
I really love this concept guys and the prototype is fantastic!
I can't get a handle on the full functionality as I'm in Australia so I strongly encourage the US folk here on the forum to download it and have a go as you guys will get the proper experience.
Feedback and user testing makes a big difference for the success of these apps – also bearing in mind when getting feedback from EAs that most people aren't like a lot of EAs so will prefer simplicity over detail.
Keep up the awesome work!!
Neat! Where can we sign up to be notified of the iOS and Android versions?
Do you have much data on the ~900 (2/7 of responses) that were invalid and what those reasons are?
Nice work! Very interesting!
33 people said Sydney which ranks us at #11 (between Cambridge and Los Angeles)... do we get a radio button next time ;)
Sorry I seemed to miss this comment earlier 😅
Thanks for pointing it out – fixed now 😀
Thanks Peter – I've written an article that explains the differences generally speaking between different approaches to recruitment: https://www.positly.com/blogs/post/comparing-positly-with-alternative-recruitment-methods
The core difference is our approach: We think a researcher’s job isn’t to figure out complex systems to find quality participants, so we provide best practice research methods directly into our tools. We allow researchers to customise their studies in many ways, but a researcher isn’t required to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on details such as preventing duplication, calculating incentives, performing quality checks or other measures. Positly does all of this (and more) right out of the box. When we design a feature, we think about the many different contexts in which the feature could be used. Then we try to get to the root of the problem that the researcher has and abstract the solution to the most universally useful feature. Finally, we ensure that the feature behaves in a way that the researcher would expect. Our development process means that all researchers on Positly benefit from a versatile tool that is customisable to their needs. As we develop and release new features, Positly can be applied in different research contexts, all while maintaining a familiar and intuitive interface – freeing time for researchers to do what they do best.
I've currently got some draft comparisons with specific other platforms which I can share with anyone who get's in touch (not posting publicly as I want to make sure they're bulletproof first when making specific comparisons to other companies).
Thanks for sharing!
The consistent item on my budget that I find we struggle to keep low is eating out, largely because that's the only way we see a lot of people (close friends and family). I wrote about this in my blog post when I limited my food to <$2 a day for a month, food is social and that's a tough thing.
Also, I read your other post about setting your salary based on world's average GDP and was shocked to see rent that low – rent is at minimum 5x that much in Sydney 😳
I'm really interested in what concrete suggestions there are for things that could be direct, effective and engaging for members.
I love this idea with so many 😍emojis