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Evidence-Based Policy Cause Area Report
Evidence-Based Policy Cause Area Report AUTHOR: 11/18 MARINELLA CAPRIATI, DPHIL 1 — Founders Pledge Animal Welfare Executive Summary By supporting increased use of evidence in the governments of low- and middle-income countries, donors can dramatically increase their impact on the lives of people living in poverty. This report explores how focusing on evidence-based policy provides an opportunity for leverage, and presents the most promising organisation we identified in this area. A high-risk/high-return opportunity for leverage In the 2013 report ‘The State of the Poor’, the World Bank reported that, as of 2010, roughly 83% of people in extreme poverty lived in countries classified as ‘lower-middle income’ or below. By far the most resources spent on tackling poverty come from local governments. American think tank the Brookings Institution found that, in 2011, $2.3 trillion of the $2.8 trillion spent on financing development came from domestic government revenues in the countries affected. There are often large differences in the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of social programs— the amount of good done per dollar spent can vary significantly across programs. Employing evidence allows us to identify the most cost-effective social programs. This is useful information for donors choosing which charity to support, but also for governments choosing which programs to implement, and how. This suggests that employing philanthropic funding to improve the effectiveness of policymaking in low- and middle-income countries is likely to constitute an exceptional opportunity for leverage: by supporting the production and use of evidence in low- and middle-income countries, donors can potentially enable policy makers to implement more effective policies, thereby reaching many more people than direct interventions. -
2018 ▶ Do Not Enter Social Security Numbers on This Form As It May Be Made Public
OMB No. 1545-0047 Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax Under section 501(c), 527, or 4947(a)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code (except private foundations) 2018 ▶ Do not enter social security numbers on this form as it may be made public. Department of the Treasury Open to Public Internal Revenue Service ▶ Go to www.irs.gov/Form990 for instructions and the latest information. Inspection A For the 2018 calendar year, or tax year beginning01/01 , 2018, and ending12/31 , 20 18 B Check if applicable: C Name of organization CENTRE FOR EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM USA INC D Employer identification number Address change Doing business as 47-1988398 Name change Number and street (or P.O. box if mail is not delivered to street address) Room/suite E Telephone number Initial return 2054 UNIVERSITY AVE SUITE 300 510-725-1395 Final return/terminated City or town, state or province, country, and ZIP or foreign postal code Amended return BERKELEY, CA, 94704 G Gross receipts $ 10,524,715 Application pending F Name and address of principal officer: Amy Labenz H(a) Is this a group return for subordinates? Yes ✔ No 2054 UNIVERSITY AVE SUITE 300, BERKELEY, CA 94704 H(b) Are all subordinates included? Yes No I Tax-exempt status: ✔ 501(c)(3) 501(c) ( ) ◀ (insert no.) 4947(a)(1) or 527 If “No,” attach a list. (see instructions) J Website: ▶ www.centerforeffectivealtruism.org H(c) Group exemption number ▶ K Form of organization: ✔ Corporation Trust Association Other ▶ L Year of formation: 2013 M State of legal domicile: NJ Part I Summary 1 Briefly describe the organization’s mission or most significant activities: Effective altruism is a growing social movement founded on the desire to make the world as good a place as it can be, the use of evidence and reason to find out how to do so, and the audacity to actually try. -
Against 'Effective Altruism'
Against ‘Effective Altruism’ Alice Crary Effective Altruism (EA) is a programme for rationalising for the most part adopt the attitude that they have no charitable giving, positioning individuals to do the ‘most serious critics and that sceptics ought to be content with good’ per expenditure of money or time. It was first for- their ongoing attempts to fine-tune their practice. mulated – by two Oxford philosophers just over a decade It is a posture belied by the existence of formidable ago–as an application of the moral theory consequential- critical resources both inside and outside the philosoph- ism, and from the outset one of its distinctions within ical tradition in which EA originates. In light of the undis- the philanthropic world was expansion of the class of puted impact of EA, and its success in attracting idealistic charity-recipients to include non-human animals. EA young people, it is important to forcefully make the case has been the target of a fair bit of grumbling, and even that it owes its success primarily not to the – question- some mockery, from activists and critics on the left, who able – value of its moral theory but to its compatibility associate consequentialism with depoliticising tenden- with political and economic institutions responsible for cies of welfarism. But EA has mostly gotten a pass, with some of the very harms it addresses. The sincere ded- many detractors concluding that, however misguided, its ication of many individual adherents notwithstanding, efforts to get bankers, tech entrepreneurs and the like to reflection on EA reveals a straightforward example of give away their money cost-effectively does no serious moral corruption. -
Messages to Overcome Naturalness Concerns in Clean Meat Acceptance: Primary Findings
Messages to Overcome Naturalness Concerns in Clean Meat Acceptance: Primary Findings July 2018 Authors: Jo Anderson & Chris Bryant Research team: Jo Anderson (Faunalytics), Chris Bryant (University of Bath), Kathryn Asher (Animal Charity Evaluators; formerly Faunalytics), Che Green (Faunalytics), Kris Gasteratos (Cellular Agriculture Society), Bruce Friedrich (The Good Food Institute), Jeff Rotman (Deakin University), Jamie Macfarlane (The Good Food Institute). Funding: We gratefully acknowledge Animal Charity Evaluators and the Animal Advocacy Research Fund for their assistance in funding this project. Introduction Studies of clean meat (also called Contents cultured meat, in vitro meat, etc.) to date Key Findings (page 3) have found that consumers’ willingness to eat it is uncertain (Pew Research, Methodology (page 4) 2014; Slade, 2018; Surveygoo, 2018; Terminology The Grocer, 2017; Wilks & Phillips, 2017; Sample & Procedure YouGov, 2013). Results (page 6) Did Participants Believe the Messages? One of consumers’ primary concerns Perceived Unnaturalness of Clean Meat about clean meat is its alleged Perceived Unnaturalness of Conventional Meat unnaturalness. This is a theme that has Perceived Importance of Meat Naturalness been seen in many qualitative studies Willingness to Pay (WTP) for Clean Meat (Laestadius, 2015; Verbeke, Marcu, et Behavioral Intentions al., 2015) and cited as one of the most Beliefs about Clean Meat common reasons for rejecting clean meat Attitude in surveys (The Grocer, 2017). Indeed, Affect Siegrist and Sütterlin (2017) have Overall Pattern of Results: Supplementary demonstrated that the perceived Analysis unnaturalness of clean meat explains a Conclusions (page 16) great deal of consumers’ safety Experimental Messages concerns. Further, Siegrist, Sütterlin, and Implications Hartmann (2018) show that this Limitations perception evokes disgust and likely Future Directions causes rejection of clean meat in References (page 19) practice. -
Cultivated Meat
2019 State of the Industry Report Cultivated Meat Photo credit: Memphis Meats Contents Section 1: Introduction 3 Box 1: What Is Cultivated Meat? 4 Section 2: Companies 6 Overview 6 Table 1: Current Competitive Landscape for Cultivated Meat Industry 7 Global Perspective 11 Figure 1: Geographic Distribution of Cultivated Meat Companies 11 Product Focus: A Growing Field but Still Plenty of White Space 12 Companies Embrace Opportunities in the Cultivated Meat Value Chain 12 Box 2: Example Value-Chain Entry Points 14 Looking Ahead 15 Section 3: Investments 16 Overview 16 Figure 2: Cultivated Meat Industry Investment Overview (2016–2019) 16 Figure 3: Investments in Cultivated Meat Companies (2016–2019) 17 Deals 18 Investors 19 Figure 4: Cultivated Meat Company Investor Composition (2016–2019) 19 Table 2: Investors in Cultivated Meat Companies 20 Box 3: New Venture Funds Bring Dry Powder into 2020 24 Global Snapshot 25 Figure 5: Top Investing Countries by Number of Unique Investors 25 Box 4: Belgian Consortium Aligns Diverse Partners to Bring 26 Cultivated Foie Gras to Market Looking Ahead 26 State of the Industry Report Cultivated Meat Contents 1 Contents Section 4: Science and Technology 27 Overview 27 Research Highlights 29 Box 5: Technical Opportunities for Seafood Research in 2020 30 Looking Ahead 30 Box 6: Cultivated Milk Is an Emerging Application for Cell 31 Culture Technology Section 5: Regulation 32 Overview 32 Federal Regulation of Cultivated Meat 32 International Regulation of Cultivated Meat 32 State Label Censorship 32 Box 7: AMPS -
Climate Change Cause Area Report
Climate Change Cause Area Report AUTHOR: LAST UPDATED 05/2018 JOHN HALSTEAD, DPHIL Executive Summary Climate change is an unprecedented problem requiring unprecedented global cooperation. However, global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have failed thus far. This report discusses the science, politics, and economics of climate change, and what philanthropists can do to help improve progress on tackling climate change. 1. The climate challenge and progress so far The first section provides an overview of the science of climate change, what needs to be done in order to avoid dangerous warming, and progress so far. One can mark the advent of the Industrial Revolution with James Watt’s patent for the steam engine in 1769. Until that point, for most of human history concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere had hovered around 280 parts per million (ppm). They recently passed 400 ppm for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years. This has been driven by the massive increase in deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution. CO2 and other greenhouse gases, such as methane, remain in the atmosphere and trap some of the heat leaving the planet, causing global warming. The metric of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) expresses the warming effect of all greenhouse gases in terms of the warming effect of CO2. The challenge facing humanity is not to reduce emissions rates to a lower level: if emissions continue at a constant (even low) positive rate, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to increase and so will global temperatures. -
Open Philanthropy Project
NYC research event 2016-12-5 Open Phil half GiveWell NYC Research Event, December 5, 2016 – Open Philanthropy Project 06/07/17 Page 1 of 14 NYC research event 2016-12-5 Open Phil half This transcript was compiled by an outside contractor, and GiveWell did not review it in full before publishing, so it is possible that parts of the audio were inaccurately transcribed. If you have questions about any part of this transcript, please review the original audio recording that was posted along with these notes. 0:00:01 Holden Karnofsky: Okay, so yeah, now I'm going to talk about the Open Philanthropy project. Basically the story of the Open Philanthropy project. Elie and I founded GiveWell in 2007 and then in 2011 we met Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin is the co-founder of Facebook and Asana and they were asking kind of a similar question to what had made us start GiveWell but very different also. When we started GiveWell we were asking, "Hey, I want to give a few thousand dollars, I have a few hours to think about it. What do I do to do the most good?" 0:00:31 HK: And they were asking more something like, "We are giving away billions of dollars. We have our whole lives to think about this, all the time. What do we do to do the most good?" That is a question we obviously found very interesting and had a similar challenge around it in the sense that if you want to read people arguing about what our public policy should be, what our trade policy should be, there's an infinite amount to read. -
Farm Animal Funders Briefings
BRIEFING SERIES February, 2019 v1.0 TABLE OF CONTENTS Smart Giving: Some Fundamentals 2 Supporting Alternative Foods To Farmed Animal Products 4 Veg Advocacy 7 Corporate Campaigns For Welfare Reforms 9 Fishes 12 Legal and Legislative Methods 13 A Global Perspective on Farmed Animal Advocacy 15 Shallow Review: Increasing Donations Through Your Donation 19 2 Smart Giving: Some Fundamentals How Much To Give? There are a number of approaches to how much to give, Why Give? including: For the world: There are over 100 hundred billion farmed animals alive at any moment in conditions that Giving what you don’t need cause severe suffering, that number has been increasing over time and is projected to continue to do so. Consuming animal products is associated with many x % Pledging a set percentage negative health outcomes and animal agriculture is a chief cause of environmental degradation—causing approximately 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. % Giving to reach a personal best For you: Giving activates the brain’s reward centers, Some people give everything above what is necessary to resulting in increased life satisfaction and happiness. satisfy their needs, in part because of evidence that high levels of income have diminishing returns on wellbeing. How Can We Help Identify Cost-effective Funding Thousands of people (including some of the wealthiest) How To Give? Opportunities? publicly pledge some set percentage for giving. Pledging could increase your commitment to giving, further Effective giving is important because top Farmed Animal Funders release briefings and research connect you with a giving community, and inspire others. giving options are plausibly many times more different promising areas. -
CEllular AGriculture N
CELLULAR AGRICULTURE NOMENCLATURE: Optimizing Consumer Acceptance Published September 2018 Updated January 2020 Keri Szejda, Ph.D. Senior Consumer Research Scientist The Good Food Institute Executive Summary The purpose of this research project was to better understand consumer perceptions of names used to describe meat produced through cellular agriculture. We generated a comprehensive list of potential names and then conducted a series of consumer studies to test name outcomes. The study included four distinct phases. Phase 1 was a stakeholder study, which generated a list of 74 names to consider for consumer testing. Phase 2 was a consumer survey to assess viability of a shorter list of 31 names selected from the Phase 1 list. Phases 3 and 4 were consumer experiments testing the top five selected names from the Phase 2 survey. These five names were: “clean meat,” “cell-based meat,” “craft meat,” “cultured meat,” and “slaughter-free meat.” These experiments were designed to test the unique influence of each of these names on consumers’ perception of the name itself (including the degree to which the name sounds appealing, accurately describes the product, and differentiates from conventional meat). The experiments also tested the unique influence of each of the names on consumers’ behavioral intentions, including likelihood of trying and of purchasing the product. The results from Phase 3 replicated in the Phase 4 experiment, lending additional validity to the results. Overall, “slaughter-free,” “craft,” “clean,” and “cultured” performed best in name appeal, “slaughter-free” and “cell-based” performed best in descriptiveness and differentiation, and “slaughter-free” and “craft” performed best in likelihood of trying and of purchasing the product. -
Author: Sjir Hoeijmakers, Msc Last Updated 05/2019
AUTHOR: LAST UPDATED SJIR HOEIJMAKERS, MSC 05/2019 1. Women’s empowerment One hundred and four countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs; only 56% of women giving birth in Africa deliver in a health facility; and at least 35% of women worldwide have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence. These are just some of the challenges that women and girls around the globe face today. In this report, we focus on women’s empowerment, by which we mean improving the lives of women and girls. We researched charity programmes aimed at women’s empowerment to find those that most cost-effectively improve the lives of women and girls. As a heuristic for finding the most cost- effective interventions, we chose to focus on programmes aimed at low- and middle-income countries. 2. Our process We used a top-down approach to select charities. First, we categorised women’s empowerment in low- and middle-income countries into twelve subfields. We then reviewed literature and interviewed twenty experts in these subfields. This yielded a shortlist of eleven promising interventions across subfields, including the graduation approach to combat extreme poverty, empowerment-self-defence courses to prevent sexual violence, and interpersonal group therapy to treat depression. With this shortlist, we began evaluating charities. We started with a longlist of 163 women’s- empowerment charities, and narrowed it down to a shortlist of 15 charities based on our intervention research and a quick scan of organisational strength. We then compared the shortlisted organisations using more detailed information on both cost-effectiveness and strength of evidence. -
Risks of Space Colonization
Risks of space colonization Marko Kovic∗ July 2020 Abstract Space colonization is humankind's best bet for long-term survival. This makes the expected moral value of space colonization immense. However, colonizing space also creates risks | risks whose potential harm could easily overshadow all the benefits of humankind's long- term future. In this article, I present a preliminary overview of some major risks of space colonization: Prioritization risks, aberration risks, and conflict risks. Each of these risk types contains risks that can create enormous disvalue; in some cases orders of magnitude more disvalue than all the potential positive value humankind could have. From a (weakly) negative, suffering-focused utilitarian view, we there- fore have the obligation to mitigate space colonization-related risks and make space colonization as safe as possible. In order to do so, we need to start working on real-world space colonization governance. Given the near total lack of progress in the domain of space gover- nance in recent decades, however, it is uncertain whether meaningful space colonization governance can be established in the near future, and before it is too late. ∗[email protected] 1 1 Introduction: The value of colonizing space Space colonization, the establishment of permanent human habitats beyond Earth, has been the object of both popular speculation and scientific inquiry for decades. The idea of space colonization has an almost poetic quality: Space is the next great frontier, the next great leap for humankind, that we hope to eventually conquer through our force of will and our ingenuity. From a more prosaic point of view, space colonization is important because it represents a long-term survival strategy for humankind1. -
Final Conference Program
EAGxBoston 2019 Conference Program Saturday April 27th Time Session 9:00- Breakfast and Registration 9:30 Main Gathering Area Welcome; Introduction to Effective Altruism 9:30- Chris Bakerlee; Holly Elmore 9:50 B103 First Keynote Presentation 9:50- Philanthropy, Philosophy and Cash Transfers 10:35 Michael Faye B103 10:35- Break 11:10 Main Gathering Area Advocacy for Climate Policy 11:10- Lightning Talks Michael Green 11:50 B101 B103 11:50- Lunch 1:15 Main Gathering Area Plant-based and Cell-based Meat Policy: Learning States: Latest Developments and Opportunities for 1:15- Enabling Smart Solutions for Policy Impact Impact 1:55 Asim Ijaz Khwaja Cameron Meyer Shorb B103 B101 1:55- Informal Breakout Discussions: Cause Areas 2:45 Main Gathering Area Why Banning Lethal Autonomous Personal Giving Panel Discussion 2:45- Weapons Should Be a Top EA Priority Cullen O'Keefe, Jason Ketola, and Julia Wise 3:25 Max Tegmark B101 B103 3:25- Informal Breakout Discussions: Interest Areas 4:15 Main Gathering Area Retrospective on Elected Office: Charity Entrepreneurship 4:15- Successes and Failures Scott Weathers 4:55 Elizabeth Edwards B103 B101 4:55- Break 5:20 Main Gathering Area Information Hazards, Coordination Problems, Self-Care for Altruists: 5:20- and Mitigating Catastrophic Bio-Risks A Discussion on Well-Being in EA 6:00 Kevin Esvelt Julia Wise B103 B101 6:00- Brief Closing Remarks 6:05 Separately, in B103 and B101 1 Sunday April 28th Time Session 9:00- Breakfast and Registration 9:30 Main Gathering Area Second Keynote Presentation 9:30- Fireside