Launch HN: Effective Altruism Funds (YC W17 Nonprofit)
Oh boy! I&#x27;m going to say some unpopular things here, so please remember you asked for feedback.<p>I immediately click on Funds-&gt;Animal Welfare since my company, Pembient, deals in wildlife and I&#x27;ve had a lot of (negative) interactions with the conservation industry. I see that the fund targets &quot;farmed animals&quot; and even then carries a warning:<p>&quot;Risk-averse donors might choose not to focus on animal welfare because the evidence base for the most effective interventions is not yet as strong as in areas like global health and development.&quot;<p>Excellent! But then I look at the manager&#x27;s background. It seems he has extensive dealings with The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Further, at least one of the grants from the fund goes towards a HSUS project on broiler chicken welfare. OK, that&#x27;s fine; however, digging deeper I find that at least 5% of the grant covers administrative costs (i.e., $50k). Now, money being fungible, that means money has been freed up for other activities. From my perspective, that would include HSUS&#x27;s interference in The Black Rhino Genome Project:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;experiment.com&#x2F;u&#x2F;yHldOQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;experiment.com&#x2F;u&#x2F;yHldOQ</a><p>And that&#x27;s the problem with donating to large non-profits! They have so much going on that it is hard to track all the externalities.<p>Let me add that this issue, to me, is the biggest problem with Effective Altruism (EA). It says, &quot;You&#x27;re &#x27;smart,&#x27; go out and become a wealthy hedge fund manager. That&#x27;s the best use of your time, and then donate the proceeds to things that matter.&quot; I would counter and say that if you&#x27;re truly &#x27;smart,&#x27; you should be directly working on problems that matter. Doing something ancillary and then giving to a group of people who might be viewed as less &#x27;smart&#x27; because they didn&#x27;t follow the EA path is internally inconsistent. I think it reveals what EA is:  A moral salve to justify forgoing work on hard problems to accumulate wealth for selfish purposes. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, I just don&#x27;t like the marketing on top of it.<p>I said I would be harsh. Apologies, if I&#x27;ve been too harsh.