GiveWell, I think, could be understood as an organization that seeks to narrow the gap for a charity between “seem more impressive to donors” and “show more convincing empirical evidence of effectiveness.” That is, they want other donors to be more impressed by better (i.e. more accurate) signals of effectiveness and less by worse (i.e. less accurate) signals.
If GiveWell succeeds in this there are two effects:
1) More donor dollars go to charities that demonstrate themselves to be effective.
2) Charities themselves become more effective, for two major reasons.
A) Not all charities rigorously self-evaluate at the moment; the incentive provided by a quorum of empirically-minded donors would help change that.
B) Moreover, good donor criticism of charity effectiveness reports can alert a charity to methodological blind-spots in its own work. A negative review from GiveWell can help a charity not merely change its communications for the better (more effective in donor dollars obtained), but also change its actual activities for the better (more effective in goals achieved).
As I understand it, SIAI insiders agree only with Holden’s critiques of SIAI’s attempts to demonstrate its effectiveness to outside donors, and not with his estimates of SIAI’s actual effectiveness (if they concurred in the latter, they’d quit SIAI now!). That said, I think SIAI should be open to the possibility that a donor-critic may have the potential to improve SIAI’s actual effectiveness as well. SIAI’s being forced to demonstrate its effectiveness to outsiders may lead to more constructive criticism and thus to more effective work. This constructive criticism could happen internally, if SIAI members preparing a report for knowledgeable outsiders like Holden are thereby forced to think like an outsider and thus see problems to which they had previously been blinded. It could also happen externally, if the knowledgeable outsider responds critically to the work presented.
GiveWell, I think, could be understood as an organization that seeks to narrow the gap for a charity between “seem more impressive to donors” and “show more convincing empirical evidence of effectiveness.” That is, they want other donors to be more impressed by better (i.e. more accurate) signals of effectiveness and less by worse (i.e. less accurate) signals.
If GiveWell succeeds in this there are two effects:
1) More donor dollars go to charities that demonstrate themselves to be effective.
2) Charities themselves become more effective, for two major reasons. A) Not all charities rigorously self-evaluate at the moment; the incentive provided by a quorum of empirically-minded donors would help change that. B) Moreover, good donor criticism of charity effectiveness reports can alert a charity to methodological blind-spots in its own work. A negative review from GiveWell can help a charity not merely change its communications for the better (more effective in donor dollars obtained), but also change its actual activities for the better (more effective in goals achieved).
As I understand it, SIAI insiders agree only with Holden’s critiques of SIAI’s attempts to demonstrate its effectiveness to outside donors, and not with his estimates of SIAI’s actual effectiveness (if they concurred in the latter, they’d quit SIAI now!). That said, I think SIAI should be open to the possibility that a donor-critic may have the potential to improve SIAI’s actual effectiveness as well. SIAI’s being forced to demonstrate its effectiveness to outsiders may lead to more constructive criticism and thus to more effective work. This constructive criticism could happen internally, if SIAI members preparing a report for knowledgeable outsiders like Holden are thereby forced to think like an outsider and thus see problems to which they had previously been blinded. It could also happen externally, if the knowledgeable outsider responds critically to the work presented.