Reid Hoffman, the founder of Linkedin, recently reviewed Will's book, Doing Good Better.
Overall, it was very positive. One difference, however, was that he thinks we should continue to give some portion of our resources locally rather than internationally, and he justifies this on the basis of having a greater long-run impact. I hadn't seen this argument made by someone who agrees with so much of effective altruism before (normally those in favor of local giving reject the idea that we should maximise our social impact at all, or seem to have misunderstood effective altruism). I'm not convinced, but I think we should take the argument seriously:
But we're also members of local communities, and we have a moral obligation to support philanthropic efforts in those communities too, even if they don't leverage our contributions as efficiently as they might somewhere else.
Local participation in philanthropy isn't just a moral obligation though. It also has its own utilitarian component through strong derivative impact. When you donate locally, you function as a tangible role model to others in your community. You help build networks for action. You form partnerships and alliances with other community members, and position philanthropy as a local norm, a tangible part of the culture that has a compounding effect over time by solidifying community ties, facilitating engagement and collaboration, and creating a tradition of mutual support.
See the full article.
Those two quotes you reproduced sound like they can be summarized as:
These seem contradictory to me. Should you give to effective causes, or not?
A little later he argues that you can't be perfectly effective all the time and you should give locally to allow yourself some leniency. This is a common EA idea (Eric Herboso argued for it on here recently). This argument is somewhat more plausible to me. It only applies to people who feel a strong desire to give locally; for me personally, giving locally doesn't feel good, so this argument doesn't apply to me.
I think it would be more charitable to interpret as the noncontradictory statements: