The “all other money moved” bars on the first GiveWell graph (which I think represent donations from individual donors) do look a lot like exponential growth. Except 2015 was way above the trend line (and 2014 & 2016 a bit above too).
If you take the first and last data points (4.1 in 2011 & 83.3 in 2019), it’s a 46% annual growth rate.
If you break it down into four two-year periods (which conveniently matches the various little sub-trends), it’s:
2011-13: 46% annual growth (4.1 to 8.7) 2013-15: 123% annual growth (8.7 to 43.4) 2015-17: 3% annual growth (43.4 to 45.7) 2017-19: 35% annual growth (45.7 to 83.3)
2019 “all other money moved” is exactly where you’d project if you extrapolated the 2011-13 trend, although it does look like the trend has slowed a bit (even aside from the 2015 outlier) since 35% < 46%.
If GiveWell shares the “number of donors” count for each year that trend might be smoother (less influenced by a few very large donations), and more relevant for this question of how much EA has been growing.
Funding from Open Phil / Good Ventures looks more like a step function, with massive ramping up in 2013-16 and then a plateau (with year-to-year noise). Which is what you might expect from a big foundation—they can ramp up spending much faster than what you’d see with organic growth, but that doesn’t represent a sustainable exponential trend (if Good Ventures had kept ramping up at the same rate then they would have run out of money by now).
The GWWC pledge data look like linear growth since 2014, rather than exponential growth or a plateau.
On the whole it looks like there has been growth over the past few years, though the growth rate is lower than it was in 2012-16 and the amount & shape of the growth differs between metrics.
The “all other money moved” bars on the first GiveWell graph (which I think represent donations from individual donors) do look a lot like exponential growth. Except 2015 was way above the trend line (and 2014 & 2016 a bit above too).
If you take the first and last data points (4.1 in 2011 & 83.3 in 2019), it’s a 46% annual growth rate.
If you break it down into four two-year periods (which conveniently matches the various little sub-trends), it’s:
2011-13: 46% annual growth (4.1 to 8.7)
2013-15: 123% annual growth (8.7 to 43.4)
2015-17: 3% annual growth (43.4 to 45.7)
2017-19: 35% annual growth (45.7 to 83.3)
2019 “all other money moved” is exactly where you’d project if you extrapolated the 2011-13 trend, although it does look like the trend has slowed a bit (even aside from the 2015 outlier) since 35% < 46%.
If GiveWell shares the “number of donors” count for each year that trend might be smoother (less influenced by a few very large donations), and more relevant for this question of how much EA has been growing.
Funding from Open Phil / Good Ventures looks more like a step function, with massive ramping up in 2013-16 and then a plateau (with year-to-year noise). Which is what you might expect from a big foundation—they can ramp up spending much faster than what you’d see with organic growth, but that doesn’t represent a sustainable exponential trend (if Good Ventures had kept ramping up at the same rate then they would have run out of money by now).
The GWWC pledge data look like linear growth since 2014, rather than exponential growth or a plateau.
On the whole it looks like there has been growth over the past few years, though the growth rate is lower than it was in 2012-16 and the amount & shape of the growth differs between metrics.