Our goal with hosting quarterly open threads is to give blog readers an opportunity to publicly raise comments or questions about GiveWell or related topics (in the comments section below). As always, you’re also welcome to email us at info@givewell.org or to request a call with GiveWell staff if you have feedback or questions you’d prefer to discuss privately. We’ll try to respond promptly to questions or comments.
You can view our June 2018 open thread here.
Comments
Any update on how the Blattman et al. follow-up paper will affect GiveDirectly’s recommendation?
Paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3223028
Hi Milan,
We haven’t yet reviewed Blattman et al., but plan to consider it as part of our year-end review of cash transfers mentioned in our May 2018 blog post on new cash transfer research.
I skimmed your Zusha report, and didn’t see any analysis of the negative utility of travelling on slower buses.
I *assume* that travelling on slower but safer buses is an overall net positive… but I’m not totally sure, and I’d at least like to consider the possibility that the buses are travelling at the correct speed. After all, we should be humble and give the driver some amount of credit, before we decide that we know better than them and say that they are stupidly doing something that’s not in their own best interest.
Logically, there must be some speed at which it’s no longer better (in terms of overall utility) to be slower — if not, the speed limit would be 1 MPH. Are we sure that those buses are currently travelling above that ideal speed?
Have you written anything about the trade-off between giving now vs investing the money and giving in the future?
In particular it seems like effective altruism research is still improving quickly, so we might be able to give more effectively in the future.
Hi Alex,
Our best guess is that any effects on vehicle speed are fairly small. We have limited data on this question; the only information we have is from the 2015 randomized controlled trial (RCT). We write in our report on Zusha!:
Reductions in average speed at levels similar to that referenced above are small enough that we don’t model the disutility. That said, this study raises the question of the mechanism by which accidents are reduced, if speeds don’t change. Our question about the mechanism by which the reduction in accidents occurred is one of our key uncertainties about the program, and is one of the factors that led us to discount our best-guess effect of the intervention more than for most programs with RCTs we’ve looked at.
Hi Gary,
We detailed several considerations related to giving now versus later in this 2011 blog post.
We see the following general arguments in favor of giving now and giving later.
In favor of giving now:
* It may become less cost-effective to help people in the future, due to general economic development and improvements in living conditions, and so some of the best opportunities to save or improve a life today may not exist in the future.
* Accomplishing good today may “earn interest,” by empowering people and positioning them to help others in the future.
In favor of giving later:
* We might find more cost-effective programs in the future, through our Incubation Grants program or by researching and reviewing new areas, such as policy advocacy.
* An opportunity that looks good now could look worse in the future (for example, because we learn new information or because it runs out of room for more funding).
On balance, our best guess is that the benefits of giving now are likely to outweigh the benefits of giving later, although we have a high degree of uncertainty around this. Some of the additional factors raised in the 2011 blog post also point in favor of giving now, such as providing an incentive to think carefully about where to give each year and helping charities plan around your gifts.
In addition, here are some resources outside of GiveWell from the effective altruism community that may be of interest in thinking about this question:
* Effective Altruism Forum roundup of writings on this topic
* 2015 Global Priorities Project write-up, with flowchart
Hi,
I recently stumbled upon this old blog post (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2012/12/some-general-concerns-about-givewell/) by William MacAskill and was very interested in this remark:
“GoodVentures’ endowment could easily use up the room for more funding at GiveWell’s top charities. So it raises the question why GoodVentures doesn’t donate to GiveWell’s top charities: even if not exhausting their room for more funding, at least using up a considerable proportion of it. The most plausible explanation in my mind is that GiveWell thinks that GoodVentures can better spend its money at a later date after further research. In which case, it’s hard to see why individual donors shouldn’t save and donate later, or even try to give to GoodVentures. Perhaps that’s wrong, but it’s worthy of discussion.”
I wanted to know if there had been any further discussion on it by GiveWell or others. If there hasn’t, could GiveWell give a response now? Is the reason GoodVentures is not exhausting its funds to close these gaps every year because they are holding out for a future opportunity? Or is it to strategically leave behind some funding gaps so as to entice individiual donors like myself who are attracted to effectiveness, and thus in the grand scheme of things there will have been moved a greater sum of money in totality?
Hi Mohammad,
Thanks for your question.
Good Ventures is a large charitable foundation which works closely with GiveWell, although the two organizations are distinct from one another. Good Ventures sets its overall grantmaking budget independent from GiveWell, according to its own cause prioritization. In 2017, Good Ventures’ giving to GiveWell’s top charities derived from its assumption that, in the long run, 10% of its total available capital would go to “straightforward charity” (as opposed to more speculative causes or worldviews), expected to align with GiveWell’s research and recommendations. You can read about the reasoning for Good Ventures choosing 10% in detail here.
GiveWell was involved in discussions with Good Ventures about the allocation of this pool of its funding in 2017, but, as we noted in our blog post announcing our updated top charities, “the amount [Good Ventures gave to our recommended charities] was based on discussions about how to allocate funding across time and across cause areas. It was not set based on the total size of top charities’ funding gaps or the projection of what others would give.”
Have there been any further discussions or analyses performed in relation to the Partners in Health programs following the 2012 update?
https://www.givewell.org/international/charities/PIH
Hi Charles,
We have not prioritized further investigation into Partners in Health since our 2012 review was published.
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