Coefficient Giving doesn’t tell you what we do, but neither did Open Philanthropy. And fwiw, neither does Good Ventures, IMO—or many nonprofits, e.g. Lightcone Infrastructure, Redwood Research, the Red Cross. Agreed that GiveWell is a very descriptive and good name though.
Setting aside whether “coefficient” is a weird word, I don’t think having an unusual word in your name “burns weirdness points” in a costly way. Take some of the world’s biggest companies—Nvidia (“invidious,”) Google (“googol”), Meta—these aren’t especially common words, but it seems to have worked out for them.
The emphasis of “coefficient” is on the “fish.” So it’s not an “awkward four-two,” it’s three sets of two, which seems melodic enough (cf. 80,000 Hours, Lightcone Infrastructure, European Union, Make-A-Wish Foundation, etc).
On the no possible shortening, again, time will tell, but my money is on “CG,” which seems fine.
Other commenters have said most of what I was going to say, but a few other points in defense:
On it sounding bad, I think time will tell. We are biased towards liking familiar stimuli.
Coefficient Giving doesn’t tell you what we do, but neither did Open Philanthropy. And fwiw, neither does Good Ventures, IMO—or many nonprofits, e.g. Lightcone Infrastructure, Redwood Research, the Red Cross. Agreed that GiveWell is a very descriptive and good name though.
Setting aside whether “coefficient” is a weird word, I don’t think having an unusual word in your name “burns weirdness points” in a costly way. Take some of the world’s biggest companies—Nvidia (“invidious,”) Google (“googol”), Meta—these aren’t especially common words, but it seems to have worked out for them.
The emphasis of “coefficient” is on the “fish.” So it’s not an “awkward four-two,” it’s three sets of two, which seems melodic enough (cf. 80,000 Hours, Lightcone Infrastructure, European Union, Make-A-Wish Foundation, etc).
On the no possible shortening, again, time will tell, but my money is on “CG,” which seems fine.