[colophonemes]

Thanks for the comment — we welcome feedback, even if it's harsh, so no worries!

That said, I think some of this hinges on a naïve interpretation of what effective altruism is about. The idea of 'earning to give' is counterintuitive ('do more good by working in finance - whut?'), and so has been one that the media has run with. Accordingly, I think it's considerably overrepresented in many people's minds compared to how most people in the EA community actually think about things[1]. We're always looking for talented people to do direct work, and we see one of our missions as finding and attracting people to work on important issues — whether that be in animal welfare, global development, politics, research etc. etc. Indeed, nearly everyone working on this project left significantly higher-paying jobs to come work at CEA because we think it offers the best chance for us to have a positive impact.

Agree that donating to large non-profits does have the problem of the money displacing unrestricted funds (in effect, subsidising other projects within the org). That's part of the reason most of the non-profits we end up supporting are fairly small and tightly focused on a specific, well-validated intervention. We're putting previous grant history up is so that donors can make an informed decision about whether or not they think a fund manager will represent their values, but it's not necessarily an indication of where grants will be made in future.

[1] E.g. see https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-...

[matthewmarkus]

Thanks for the reply. It does sound like you're thinking these things through. Good luck!