I was planning on donating this money, my yearly ‘charity donation’ budget (it’s meager—I’m an undergraduate), to a typical EA charity such as the Against Malaria Foundation; a cash transaction for the utlilons, warm fuzzies and general EA cred. However the above has forced me to reconsider this course of action in light of the following:
The possibility CFAR may not receive sufficient future funding. CFAR expenditure last year was $510k (ignoring non-staff workshop costs that are offset by workshop revenue) and their current balance is something around $130k. Without knowing the details, a similarly sized operation this year might therefore require something like $380k in donations (a ballpark guesstimate, don’t quote me on that). The winter matching fundraiser has the potential to fund $240k of that, so a significant undershoot would put the organization in precarious position.
A world that has access to a well written rationality curriculum over the next decade has significant advantage over one that doesn’t. I already accept that 80,000 hours is a high impact organization and they also work by acting as an impact multiplier for individuals. Given that rationality is an exceptionally good impact multiplier I must accept that CFAR existing is much better than it not existing.
While donations to a sufficiently-funded CFAR are most likely much lower utility than donations to AMF, donations to ensure CFAR’s continued existence are exceptionally high utility. For comparison (as great as AMF is) diverting all donations from Wikipedia to AMF would be a terrible idea, as would over funding Wikipedia itself. The world gets a large amount of utility out of the existence of at least one Wikipedia, but not a great deal of marginal utility by an over funded Wikipedia. By my judgement the same applies to CFAR.
CFAR isn’t a typical EA cause. This means that while if I don’t donate to keep AMF going, another EA will. However if I don’t donate to keep CFAR going there’s a reasonable chance that someone else won’t. In other words my donations to CFAR aren’t replaceable.
To put my utilons where my mouth is, it looks like the funding gap for CFAR is something like ~400k a year. GiveWell reckons that you can save a life for $5k by donating to the right charity. So CFAR costs 80 dead people a year to run, so there’s the question: do I think CFAR will save more than 80 lives in the next year? The answer to that might be no, even though CFAR seems to be instigating high-impact good, but if I ask myself do I think CFAR’s work over the next decade will save more than 800 lives? the answer becomes a definite yes.
Donated $180.
I was planning on donating this money, my yearly ‘charity donation’ budget (it’s meager—I’m an undergraduate), to a typical EA charity such as the Against Malaria Foundation; a cash transaction for the utlilons, warm fuzzies and general EA cred. However the above has forced me to reconsider this course of action in light of the following:
The possibility CFAR may not receive sufficient future funding. CFAR expenditure last year was $510k (ignoring non-staff workshop costs that are offset by workshop revenue) and their current balance is something around $130k. Without knowing the details, a similarly sized operation this year might therefore require something like $380k in donations (a ballpark guesstimate, don’t quote me on that). The winter matching fundraiser has the potential to fund $240k of that, so a significant undershoot would put the organization in precarious position.
A world that has access to a well written rationality curriculum over the next decade has significant advantage over one that doesn’t. I already accept that 80,000 hours is a high impact organization and they also work by acting as an impact multiplier for individuals. Given that rationality is an exceptionally good impact multiplier I must accept that CFAR existing is much better than it not existing.
While donations to a sufficiently-funded CFAR are most likely much lower utility than donations to AMF, donations to ensure CFAR’s continued existence are exceptionally high utility. For comparison (as great as AMF is) diverting all donations from Wikipedia to AMF would be a terrible idea, as would over funding Wikipedia itself. The world gets a large amount of utility out of the existence of at least one Wikipedia, but not a great deal of marginal utility by an over funded Wikipedia. By my judgement the same applies to CFAR.
CFAR isn’t a typical EA cause. This means that while if I don’t donate to keep AMF going, another EA will. However if I don’t donate to keep CFAR going there’s a reasonable chance that someone else won’t. In other words my donations to CFAR aren’t replaceable.
To put my utilons where my mouth is, it looks like the funding gap for CFAR is something like ~400k a year. GiveWell reckons that you can save a life for $5k by donating to the right charity. So CFAR costs 80 dead people a year to run, so there’s the question: do I think CFAR will save more than 80 lives in the next year? The answer to that might be no, even though CFAR seems to be instigating high-impact good, but if I ask myself do I think CFAR’s work over the next decade will save more than 800 lives? the answer becomes a definite yes.