I emailed CEA asking whether there was any track record info, and was directed to the same pages. I expect that this will change no one’s mind on anything whatsoever. I regret doing the research to write this comment.
ETA: I misunderstood Raemon’s comment—see his reply.
Of course it’s helpful information. I’m not claiming that everything about EA Funds is bad, and I’m pretty annoyed at this pattern where I’ll make a particular criticism and people will respond to some other criticism. I’m specifically claiming that there isn’t really info about track records with respect to outcomes, despite this being a large portion of the basis on which EA is marketed.
I was just responding to the “this will change nobody’s mind whatsoever” bit. I was someone who had some vague sense of “not sure what the deal with the funds is, leaning at this point towards “they’re probably not a good place to give money”, and having someone do some legwork of checking up on that was helpful (for the purposes of changing my mind)
In fairness, it’s only been a year and some of these may take longer to have reasonable track records. But if so, there should ideally be reporting on proximate targets, and clear indications of what the endpoint is and how it might eventually be measured (or if it can’t be, a clear accounting for correlated prediction errors which will never be corrected).
Oh, oops—I read your comment backwards. Thanks for clarifying! Sorry I was a little oversensitive this time, gonna try to update on the fact that this was a false positive :)
Why are the fund managers going to report on the success of their investments when an organisation like GiveWell doesn’t do this (as per the example in the OP)?
They expect Givewell to update its recommendations, but they don’t necessarily expect Givewell to evaluate just how wrong a previous past recommendation was. Not yet anyway, but maybe this post will change this.
Because the whole point of these funds is that they have the opportunity to invest in newer and riskier ventures. On the other hand, Givewell tries to look for interventions with a strong evidence base.
There is no cashing out of the money to GiveWell. At no point will you go to it and find out how much good it has done (easily). If it turns out GiveWell did poorly all you have is the opportunity of having donated to another charity which also probably isn’t reporting its successes objectively.
For a fund, you have skin in the game. You make plans like retirement/housing/yacht where the value has to be going up or if not going up you have to alter your plans. This puts it on a different mental level.
No, because the fund managers will report on the success or failure of their investments. If the funds don’t perform, then their donations will fall.
It’s been a year. I looked at the fund pages and the only track record info I was lists of grants made and dollar amounts:
Global Health and Development Fund
Animal Welfare Fund
Long-Term Future Fund
Effective Altruism Community Fund
I emailed CEA asking whether there was any track record info, and was directed to the same pages. I expect that this will change no one’s mind on anything whatsoever. I regret doing the research to write this comment.
I mean, I found this pretty useful.
ETA: I misunderstood Raemon’s comment—see his reply.
Of course it’s helpful information. I’m not claiming that everything about EA Funds is bad, and I’m pretty annoyed at this pattern where I’ll make a particular criticism and people will respond to some other criticism. I’m specifically claiming that there isn’t really info about track records with respect to outcomes, despite this being a large portion of the basis on which EA is marketed.
I was just responding to the “this will change nobody’s mind whatsoever” bit. I was someone who had some vague sense of “not sure what the deal with the funds is, leaning at this point towards “they’re probably not a good place to give money”, and having someone do some legwork of checking up on that was helpful (for the purposes of changing my mind)
In fairness, it’s only been a year and some of these may take longer to have reasonable track records. But if so, there should ideally be reporting on proximate targets, and clear indications of what the endpoint is and how it might eventually be measured (or if it can’t be, a clear accounting for correlated prediction errors which will never be corrected).
I am now laughing at myself, because independently I read your comment the way Ben did, and downvoted it. (Have now removed the downvote.)
Oh, oops—I read your comment backwards. Thanks for clarifying! Sorry I was a little oversensitive this time, gonna try to update on the fact that this was a false positive :)
Thank you for doing this.
Why do you think this? The outside view suggests this won’t happen—disclosing success and failure is uncommon in the non-profit space.
A major proportion of the clients will be EAs
Why are the fund managers going to report on the success of their investments when an organisation like GiveWell doesn’t do this (as per the example in the OP)?
Because people expect this from funds.
You think people don’t expect it from GiveWell?
They expect Givewell to update its recommendations, but they don’t necessarily expect Givewell to evaluate just how wrong a previous past recommendation was. Not yet anyway, but maybe this post will change this.
That still leaves the question why you think people expect from funds to report on the success of their investments but don’t expect it from GiveWell.
Because the whole point of these funds is that they have the opportunity to invest in newer and riskier ventures. On the other hand, Givewell tries to look for interventions with a strong evidence base.
There is no cashing out of the money to GiveWell. At no point will you go to it and find out how much good it has done (easily). If it turns out GiveWell did poorly all you have is the opportunity of having donated to another charity which also probably isn’t reporting its successes objectively.
For a fund, you have skin in the game. You make plans like retirement/housing/yacht where the value has to be going up or if not going up you have to alter your plans. This puts it on a different mental level.
As far as I understand the EA funds there’s no cashing out of the money that’s donated to them.
Sorry misread this thread (thought it was talking about investment funds).