That might be true, but there isn't exactly an "Effective Altruism Foundation" that all the donations funnel through. You basically have a bunch of random people that are donating to charities that are well regarded, with a few philanthropists here and there setting up foundations. You might be able to hijack organizations like givewell (ie. organizations that tell people which charities they should donate to), but trying to monetize that is tricky. At the end of the day you don't really control anything, because you're still reliant on individuals following your advice. So if you try to funnel money to your own foundation (for embezzling purposes), you will easily burn any goodwill that you've built up.
The Centre for Effective Altruism has a turnover in the tens of millions. Surely there are people with greater and lesser decision making abilities within that institution?
>The Centre for Effective Altruism has a turnover in the tens of millions
Google says that their annual budget is $6M, so I think you're overestimating how much money can be siphoned off. Moreover, given how trendy effective altruism is with young professionals from elite universities, getting a high position will be difficult. Sure, an ivy league graduate could fight tooth and nail to get a position at the CEA that pays a meager base salary and hope to siphon off some extra money, but he can make much more money at a professional services firm or in finance. Better yet, he can get some high ranking position at some private company that has 10x turnover and doesn't have public scrutiny (because it's not a charity). That's not to say that everyone at CEA is behaving scrupulously. It's just that getting into effective altruism to embezzle money makes little economic sense.
I think the sums are higher when you consider additional one-off donations. CEA recently bought an estate at Wytham Abbey, which would almost certainly have cost more than their yearly budget. Apparently this was funded by a one-time donation by another EA organization. Similarly, the EA-adjacent ESPR bought a $5m chateau in the Czech Republic. These are major chunks of money to throw around, especially when you factor in maintenance costs, and I have no doubt that the ability to control access to these amazing facilities gives you a lot of influence in the community.
The castle was apparently bought by facebook founder dustin moskovitz. I certainly think the CEA is misguided, but there main purpose is basically having conventions/recruitment events and if they think they'll be spending considerable sums on convention space related to that mission I can see how it makes sense to just buy a property and hold all the events there.
My understanding is that the UK castle was funded by a directed donation from another EA organization that had close ties to CEA. As far as I know, Moscovitz did not direct that organization to buy a castle. Instead a group of tightly-connected colleagues/friends in two EA organizations made the determination, without any (public) cost/benefit analysis or buy-in from the community. This is the precisely the sort of thing you’d expect to happen in a community with large amounts of money and very little accountability, which is the allegation made higher in this thread.
ETA If I’m wrong and you can point me to a detailed cost/benefit analysis, I’ll gladly withdraw my criticism.
I see the conversation has gotten ahead of me, but the Wytham Abbey purchase is absolutely an example of my concerns. The justification wasn't much more than "I like going to conferences in big posh buildings and some other people I've talked to do as well".
Makes me think of Parkinson's law: "work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion" -- but this time, "money spent expands to match the amount of donations".
I wonder how to design an organization, where people don't do that. Seems it's hard.
Maybe new metrics: Money-not-spent, and Time-we-didn't-need-to-use. But can be easily gamed, hmm