I'm curious to know if anyone has put thought or time into improving/overhauling existing charities from an EA perspective. Has there been much thought or discussion put into the idea of making existing charities more effective?
There are lots of organizations out there that contract for nonprofits to make their marketing or fundraising more effective, but has anyone contemplated creating a consulting organization that would work with organizations within an EA framework? This seems to be not just a potentially large opportunity to effect change but a really big empty space that no one is working in.
There are of course a few potential pitfalls. It is hard to instigate change anywhere, but particularly in organizations that believe they are doing good work, or organizations that have been around for a long time. This bias against change would be a hard one to overcome, but I think EAs have gotten particularly good at asking very pointed questions about doing great charity work. This insight could be a huge resource for groups that truly want to improve.
I've thought about this myself quite frequently and would be stoked to hear thoughts from others.
When I met Holden Karnofsky (the executive director of Givewell) at the 2014 Effective Altruism Summit, I asked him if Givewell ever intended to consult or revamp charities to become more effective rather than just evaluating and recommending already effective charities. He said no. His reason for this is because he believes it's substantially more difficult to create an effective charity than evaluate existing ones. I'm inclined to agree with him, as the risks and rewards of creating a charity are spread across the whole non-profit world, not jeopardizing the potential value of Givewell's marginal resources. Note I just mean I now think it makes sense for Givewell not to go into consulting, but I still think others need try to create effective charities.
Note Mr. Karnofsky's statement reflects the position of Givewell's leadership, but this doesn't mean other effective altruists working for, aligned with, or near Givewell couldn't get involved in such a project. Givewell already values independent thinking among its employees, exemplified by their annual blogs about where each of its research employees intends to donate and why.
I'm inclined to agree with Holden for a number of reasons. First and foremost being that this isn't really what GiveWell does. They are very good at what they do, which is evaluate existing charities; while I see the tie-in with knowing how a good charity is run, it is a far cry from making organizational changes. Which is the other reason I agree with him, doing this is hard. Like really, really, substantially hard.
However I think hard and 'not worth doing' are very different things. I also agree that CEA or EA Ventures would be more appropriate venues to... (read more)