Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Presenting five new effective giving initiatives, published by CE on August 13, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Introduction

In May 2024, Ambitious Impact (AIM) ran a program to incubate new effective giving initiatives (EGIs) in partnership with Giving What We Can. In short, EGIs focus on raising awareness and funneling public and philanthropic donations to the most cost-effective charities worldwide.

In the last few years, several Effective Giving Initiatives, such as Doneer Effectief, Effektiv Spenden, and Giving What We Can, have moved millions in funding to the best charities globally. The success of these and other similar organizations suggests that further initiatives in this space could be highly beneficial, given that many highly effective charities are bottlenecked by access to funding.

This article introduces five new effective giving initiatives incubated through the program we ran earlier this year in their own words. It summarizes their country of operation, near-term plans, targets, and any room for additional seed funding.[1]

Organization Summaries

Ellis Impact

Co-founders: Fernando Martin-Gullans, Helene Kortschak

Country of operation: United States (New York City)

Website: www.ellisimpact.org

Email address: [email protected], [email protected]

Seed grant: $84,000

Background (why is this a promising country/angle for an EGI?)

While Americans are the global leaders in total charitable giving, with over $450 billion donated annually, they currently give less than 0.5% of it to the most effective charities. Ellis Impact aims to expand effective giving by focusing on high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in New York City.

Why HNWIs? Charitable donations are overwhelmingly heavy-tailed. For example, less than 5% of donors account for 40% of donations at existing EGIs such as Giving What We Can and Effektiv Spenden.

Why New York City? Home to the largest number of millionaires (>350,000) and a GDP of $1.2 trillion, NYC has the highest wealth concentration in the world and is more economically powerful than many countries with existing EGIs (e.g., Netherlands, Sweden, Norway). It also has the highest charitable giving in the US, totaling $20 billion per year in itemized donations.

Near-term plans

Our first six months will focus on expanding our local network of prospective donors by attending events (e.g., networking events, conferences, galas) and tapping into existing and under-explored communities in NYC (e.g. EA Finance). We plan to further engage prospective donors through 1-1 advising and hosting our first lean, in-person events to raise awareness around effective giving, bring together like-minded individuals, and introduce them to cause area experts.

Targets (reach/giving multiplier/etc.)

Our minimum goal for our first nine months is to counterfactually raise our seed funding amount in public donations (>$84,000). Our ambitious goal is to raise three times as many counterfactual donations as we received in seed funding (i.e., $252,000).

Room for more funding

In late July, we raised $84,000 from the Seed Funding Network, allowing us to run for nine months. We would require an additional $20,000 to extend our runway to 12 months, decreasing the risk of having to shut down before we can demonstrate good results since, according to the experience of other HNW donor advisors, donor relationships potentially take longer than nine months to cultivate.

Any funding on top of that would be used for hosting and attending additional and higher-quality events to meet and engage prospective donors.

If you are interested in supporting our efforts in other ways, we are currently:

Looking for warm introductions to prospective donors in NYC as well as super connectors and ambassadors for future warm introductions. If you know someone you think we shou...