All of this, and also, there are strategic considerations on GiveWell’s side: they want to be able to offer recommendations that they can defend publicly to their donor pool, which is filled with a particular mix of people looking for a particular kind of charity recommendation out of GiveWell. Directly comparing MIRI to more straightforward charities like AMF dilutes GiveWell’s brand in a way that would be strategically a bad idea for them, and these sorts of considerations are part of the reason why OpenPhil exists:
We feel it is important to start separating the GiveWell brand from the Open Philanthropy Project brand, since the latter is evolving into something extremely different from GiveWell’s work identifying evidence-backed charities serving the global poor. A separate brand is a step in the direction of possibly conducting the two projects under separate organizations, though we aren’t yet doing that (more on this topic at our overview of plans for 2014 published earlier this year).
I don’t think you are actually making this argument, but this comes close to an uncharitable view of GiveWell that I strongly disagree with, which goes something like “GiveWell can’t recommend MIRI because it would look weird and be bad for their brand, even if they think that MIRI is actually the best place to donate to.” I think GiveWell / OpenPhil are fairly insensitive to considerations like this and really just want to recommend the things they actually think are best independent of public opinion. The separate branding decision seems like a clearly good idea to me, but I think that if for some reason OpenPhil were forced to have inseparable branding from GiveWell, they would be making the same recommendations.
All of this, and also, there are strategic considerations on GiveWell’s side: they want to be able to offer recommendations that they can defend publicly to their donor pool, which is filled with a particular mix of people looking for a particular kind of charity recommendation out of GiveWell. Directly comparing MIRI to more straightforward charities like AMF dilutes GiveWell’s brand in a way that would be strategically a bad idea for them, and these sorts of considerations are part of the reason why OpenPhil exists:
I don’t think you are actually making this argument, but this comes close to an uncharitable view of GiveWell that I strongly disagree with, which goes something like “GiveWell can’t recommend MIRI because it would look weird and be bad for their brand, even if they think that MIRI is actually the best place to donate to.” I think GiveWell / OpenPhil are fairly insensitive to considerations like this and really just want to recommend the things they actually think are best independent of public opinion. The separate branding decision seems like a clearly good idea to me, but I think that if for some reason OpenPhil were forced to have inseparable branding from GiveWell, they would be making the same recommendations.