GiveWell and the Centre for Effective Altruism are recruiting
Both GiveWell and the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) --an Oxford-based umbrella organization consisting of Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, The Life You Can Save, and Effective Animal Activism—have been discussed here before. So I thought some folks might want to know that these organizations are recruiting for a number of positions. Here are relevant excerpts from the official job announcements:
GiveWell: Research Analyst
GiveWell is looking for a Research Analyst to help us evaluate charities, find the most outstanding giving opportunities, and publish our analysis to help donors decide where to give.
Effective Animal Activism: Executive Director
Effective Animal Activism is a recently-founded project of 80,000 Hours. It is the world’s first online resource and international community for people who want to reduce animal suffering effectively. We are currently looking for a part-time executive director. Responsibilities will include creating content, managing the community, publicizing the site, and overseeing as well as undertaking further charity research. Future projects include creating a publication on our intervention evaluation once complete, attending conferences, running ad campaigns, and reaching out to the media, animal charities and philanthropists.
Giving What We Can: Head of Communications
We are looking for someone to communicate Giving What We Can’s message to the world. As Communications Manager you would be responsible for handling our press relations and guiding our public image.
80,000 Hours: Head of Careers Research
We are looking for someone to drive cutting-edge research into effective ethical careers and translate it into one-on-one and online careers advice, which you’ll share with interesting people from all over the world.
The Life You Can Save: Director of Outreach (Intern)
We are looking for someone to lead our outreach to pledgers and supporters as well as local groups, other charities, and corporations. In this role, you’ll play a key part in setting our strategic priorities and driving the growth of The Life You Can Save. You’ll be working alongside Peter Singer – one of the most influential ethicists of the 20th century.
Centre for Effective Altruism: Head of Fundraising and External Relations
We are looking for someone to manage our fundraising and represent us to other organisations. In this role you would serve all four organisations in the Centre for Effective Altruism: Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, The Life You Can Save and Effective Animal Activism.
(Full disclosure: I’m friends with the co-founders of CEA and have donated to Effective Animal Activism.)
As I noted on the 80,000 Hours thread, intermediaries are nearly always an added expense on the distribution side. In this case, distribution of donations. The immediate impact is that fewer donation dollars (or whatever currency) find their way to the target organizations. The exception is if an intermediate organization facilitates a 100% pass-through, due to other funding or altruistic efforts.
The intermediary here is mostly notional. CEA is the only entity with legal existence, but on a practical level nearly all employees are effectively GWWC, 80k employees etc., with the CEA employees mainly being for shared services such as operations. So there isn’t really much of overhead or anything.
My understanding is that CEA exists in order to simplify the paperwork of multiple projects. For example, Effective Animal Activism is not its own charity; instead, you donate to CEA and transfer the money to EAA. As bryjnar said, there’s not really any overhead in doing this. Using CEA as an umbrella much simpler than trying to get 501(c)(3) status for EAA on its own, which would be painstaking process.
I am disappointed that my realistic and fact based observation generated a down vote.
At the risk of an additional down vote, but in the interest of transparent honest exchange, I am pointing out a verifiable fact, however unsavory it may be interpreted.
If over time the time cost of intermediaries (additional handling and overhead costs) remains below the cost of the steps to eliminate intermediaries (the investment required to establish a 501(c)(3)) then I stand corrected. While an improbable situation, it could well be possible.
As the person who runs the central CEA Ops division, I can promise you that it saves time and money costs, and doesn’t impose any significant such costs that I can think of. Registering as a UK charity and a 501(c)3 (and a company that can have employees, interns and an office) has taken a lot of work, and I’m glad that GWWC, 80k, Effective Animal Actisism and The Life You Can Save haven’t had to duplicate (or quadruple) that work.
PS: Despite this view, I promise it wasn’t me who downvoted you :)
Don’t worry too much about solitary downvotes.
Given the costs of regulatory compliance—getting IRS approval of a 501(c)(3) and such—I’m not sure when the relative costs of charitable intermediaries do and don’t exceed their benefits.
A good source that backs you up on this is Fiennes’s book ” It Ain’t What You Give, It’s the Way That You Give It: Making Charitable Donations That Get Results” (which I strongly recommend for anyone interesting in the issues of rational charity giving).