Should you become a charity entrepreneur? (with Joey Savoie)
Joey Savoy, a charity entrepreneur, discusses charity entrepreneurship, its advantages over for-profit social enterprises, and his nuanced perspective on expected value theory for maximizing global impact.
Deep Dive Analysis
20 Topic Outline
Introduction to Charity Entrepreneurship
Charity vs. For-Profit: Incentives and Impact
Challenges and Growth of Large Charities
Charity Entrepreneurship's Incubator Model
Common Mistakes of New Charity Founders
Differentiating Effective Altruism from Other Movements
Plurality of Values and Epistemics in EA
Charity Entrepreneurship's Cause Area Selection Process
Debate on Diversification vs. Going All-In
Skepticism and Limitations of Expected Value Theory
Joey Savoie's Personal Principles: The Three H's
Sacrificing Personal Happiness for Altruism
Belief in Objective Moral Truth and Self-Identity
Drivers of Ethical Behavior: Emotions, Social Norms, Beliefs
Lessons from the FTX Catastrophe for EA
Critique of Long-Termism and Evidentiary Thresholds
Avoiding Project Flipping in Altruism
Foundation Entrepreneurship: A New Funding Model
Finding Meaning Through Altruism
Advice for Non-EAs and EAs
6 Key Concepts
Charity Entrepreneurship
A career path focused on starting new charitable organizations with the sole or primary goal of maximizing positive impact. It is seen as less competitive than social enterprise and allows for exclusive focus on impact, though it still faces donor-pleasing pressures.
Effective Altruism (EA)
A movement that, in theory, is a question rather than an answer, open to updating its cause areas and methods based on evidence. It differentiates itself by its cross-cause aspect and a more accepted plurality of value systems and epistemics compared to movements with fixed ideologies.
Moral Parliament
A mental model where one assigns 'seats' to different ethical views within their decision-making framework. This allows for consideration of various perspectives, even non-consequentialist ones, to ensure actions are robust and avoid violating other ethical norms.
Expected Value Theory Limitations
While powerful for small, well-defined bets, its applicability is questioned for large, complex decisions with uncertain probabilities or multiple values. It can produce non-robust, astronomically large numbers that may override other valid considerations, leading to potentially repugnant conclusions if relied upon too heavily.
Instrumental Rationality
A focus on whether a model or theory actually helps achieve one's goals, rather than just being epistemically 'right' about the world. It acknowledges that even valid models can be fallible when applied by humans, and simpler, robust models with fewer, well-cited inputs are often preferred over overly complex ones.
Foundation Entrepreneurship
A new idea focused on incubating funders, teaching them how to make effective granting decisions independently. This aims to create a healthier, more decentralized funding ecosystem with multiple intelligent actors, reducing heavy dependence on a few funders and avoiding large-scale failures.
8 Questions Answered
Charity entrepreneurship allows founders to focus exclusively on having impact, as charities are not constantly pulled between a for-profit motive and doing good, and operate in a less competitive market for talent.
Often, large charities optimize for growth and donor acquisition rather than impact, and their diverse activities make it harder to maintain high impact across the board. The most effective charities tend to be smaller, more narrow, and focused.
Out of five charities, typically two become 'big successes' (field leaders or evaluator-recommended), two are 'unsure' (making progress but not exponential growth), and one explicitly fails and shuts down, which is less common in the charity world generally.
While many groups claim to do good, EA differentiates itself by being a 'question' rather than a fixed 'answer,' open to updating its cause areas and methods based on evidence, and accepting a broader plurality of value systems and epistemics.
Diversification is often a better strategy, especially for large funders, due to quickly diminishing marginal returns in any single cause area. It's also a modest approach given the difficulty of making definitive judgments on complex ethical trade-offs.
He views health and happiness as 'satisficing goals,' aiming to be 'healthy enough' or 'happy enough' (e.g., 8 out of 10), rather than infinitely optimizing them. His helping goal, however, is unbounded, and he would sacrifice significant personal happiness for a greater increase in global good, driven by a strong sense of universalization and low self-identity importance.
The community should focus on improving governance, making fewer assumptions about funding, and encouraging diversity of perspectives. However, it should avoid becoming overly risk-averse regarding trivial or net-neutral risks, while being extremely cautious with risks that could cause major harm or violate widely held ethical norms.
The primary concern is epistemic, related to the types of evidence and arguments used. Critics worry about over-reliance on highly uncertain, high-value expected value calculations and a lack of critical thinking across diverse actors, rather than an ethical disagreement on whether future people matter.
43 Actionable Insights
1. Adopt Altruism as Purpose
Set altruism as your fundamental life purpose and build your life around it, as it can be a deeply satisfying way to find meaning and accomplish significant good.
2. Maximize Good with Resources
Strive to do as much good as possible with your available resources, as different actions yield different levels of positive impact.
3. Quantify Good & Maximize
Actively quantify the good different actions can achieve and choose options that offer the best output for your time, energy, or donations, such as giving to highly effective charities.
4. Develop Personal Principle System
Create a structured personal framework, like the ’three H’s’ (Helping, Happiness, Health) with pillars and heuristics, to align your actions with your core values and track progress.
5. Satisfice Health & Happiness
Aim for ‘good enough’ levels of health and happiness rather than optimizing them infinitely, allowing you to quickly gain benefits and allocate more energy to unbounded goals like helping others.
6. Find Meaning Through Purpose
Cultivate a central purpose in life, such as altruism, to drive motivation and indirectly achieve happiness by chasing meaning rather than explicitly seeking happiness.
7. Assess Entrepreneurial Autonomy
Before starting a charity, honestly evaluate your ability to complete independent projects without external management, as charity founders require strong self-direction.
8. Align Drive with Impact
Combine an entrepreneurial mindset—liking to start new things—with a strong, ideally top, drive for impact, to ensure your charity stays aligned with its core mission.
9. Consider Charity Entrepreneurship
Explore charity entrepreneurship as a career path if your primary goal is to have a significant impact, as it offers advantages like a less competitive market and direct focus on doing good.
10. Aim for High-Impact Charities
Strive to create charities that are highly effective and can significantly outperform existing organizations, as even a slightly more effective charity can have a much greater impact.
11. Focus Narrowly for Impact
Design charities to be smaller and more narrowly focused on specific activities, as it’s easier to achieve high impact in one area than across many diverse activities.
12. Choose Diverse Co-Founders
Select co-founders with complementary skill sets to avoid internal competition and ensure a broader range of expertise for the organization’s success.
13. Avoid Premature Idea Lock-In
Resist locking into a specific charity idea too early, especially if it’s not a great fit, to allow for flexibility and better alignment with your strengths and market needs.
14. Self-Assess Risk Tolerance
Understand your personal tolerance for risk, pressure, and intensity, as charity entrepreneurship can be demanding and may not be a suitable career fit for everyone.
15. Utilize Charity Evaluation Resources
Consult resources from established charity evaluators like GiveWell and Charity Entrepreneurship’s website to understand what makes a charitable organization effective and identify promising areas.
16. Seek Impact-Focused Donors
Align your charity with donors who are primarily impact-oriented, as this helps align incentives and makes it easier to secure funding for truly effective work.
17. Incubate Independent Charities
When building a multi-charity organization, foster independent charities rather than large departments, allowing them to fail or succeed on their own merits and promoting market selection for impact.
18. Schedule Project Reevaluation
Implement specific reevaluation points for projects (e.g., every 2-3 years) to assess progress, explore new opportunities, and make informed decisions about continuing or switching focus, preventing aimless ‘flipping’.
19. EA: Defer Less, Think Independently
For effective altruists, actively resist deferring too much to thought leaders and instead cultivate independent critical thinking about strategies, ethics, and effectiveness.
20. Improve Governance & Diversity
Implement better governance, avoid excessive funding assumptions, and foster diversity of perspectives and viewpoints within organizations to prevent major failures like FTX.
21. Distinguish Trivial from Catastrophic Risks
Differentiate between acceptable, trivial risks (e.g., a charity failing) and catastrophic risks (e.g., causing widespread harm), and avoid becoming risk-averse for the former while being extremely cautious about the latter.
22. Prioritize Proven Interventions
Focus on interventions that are traditionally good and uncontroversial across many ethical metrics, such as distributing bed nets or reducing lead exposure, as they offer robust and widely accepted benefits.
23. Strengthen Ethical Scrutiny
If you possess social resilience and are willing to deviate from societal norms for altruism, you have a greater obligation to be exceptionally thoughtful and scrutinize your ethics to ensure actions are constructive across diverse viewpoints.
24. Employ a Moral Parliament
Use the ‘moral parliament’ framework, assigning seats to different ethical viewpoints, to ensure that decisions consider a wide range of moral principles, even if some are minority views.
25. Integrate Modesty in Ethics
Approach ethical decision-making with modesty, acknowledging the possibility of being wrong and considering other plausible viewpoints, as even small adjustments can significantly benefit other ethical systems.
26. Act Positively Across Ethics
Strive to take actions that are viewed positively across a plurality of ethical views, rather than solely optimizing for one, to ensure broader acceptance and epistemic safety.
27. Use Expected Value as Tool
Treat expected value calculations as one valuable tool among many for assessing impact, rather than the sole determinant, especially when other evidence points in a different direction.
28. Seek Convergence Across Models
Aim for decisions and insights that are supported by the convergence of multiple analytical models (e.g., expected value, expert wisdom, multi-factor scoring), rather than relying on a single, potentially outlier model.
29. Sandbox Multiple Worldview Models
Systematically evaluate decisions using different ‘sandboxed’ models or frameworks (e.g., expected value, expert wisdom, multi-factor scoring) to ensure robustness and avoid repugnant conclusions from over-reliance on one.
30. Prioritize Instrumental Rationality
Focus on instrumental rationality—accomplishing your goals effectively—over purely epistemic rationality, recognizing that being ‘right about the world’ is valuable only insofar as it helps achieve desired outcomes.
31. Favor Simple, Robust Models
Opt for models with fewer, well-cited inputs over complex models with many guessed variables, as simpler models are easier to check, explain, and lead to more reliable predictive validity.
32. Keep Models Simple & Memorable
Design models and frameworks to be simple enough to hold in your head, facilitating easier reasoning, flaw detection, explanation, and critique by others.
33. Simplify Principles for Memory
Structure personal principles and heuristics into memorable, concise formats (e.g., lists of three) to ensure consistent application and easy recall in daily decision-making.
34. Shape Environment for Habits
Actively modify your environment to make good habits easy to perform and bad habits difficult, thereby improving adherence to healthy routines.
35. Avoid Major Unhealthy Habits
Consciously avoid significant unhealthy habits like smoking, excessive drinking, drug use, and maintaining a low BMI, as these are fundamental to overall health.
36. Embrace Openness to Ideas
Maintain an open mindset within effective altruism, being receptive to new ideas and potential shifts in cause areas, rather than rigidly adhering to existing answers.
37. Cultivate Value Plurality
Encourage and accept a diversity of value systems and epistemologies within the effective altruism movement, recognizing that different plausible viewpoints can lead to similar high-impact conclusions.
38. Diversify Funder Worldviews
Large funders should adopt a strategy of worldview diversification, supporting a range of promising cause areas and approaches, rather than going ‘all-in’ on a single perceived best option.
39. Recognize Diminishing Returns
Understand that marginal returns for funding or talent in a specific cause area diminish quickly, meaning that the first investments are far more cost-effective than subsequent ones.
40. Prioritize Talent Acquisition
Acknowledge that talent is the most limiting factor for impact, as the pool of highly skilled individuals interested in a specific cause area saturates quickly, leading to diminishing returns for ideas.
41. Foster Decentralized Funding
Promote a decentralized network of independent, impact-oriented funders with diverse epistemologies and values, to create a healthier ecosystem and avoid over-reliance on a few central figures.
42. Scrutinize Longtermist Arguments
Deeply engage with and critically scrutinize the specific assumptions, evidence, and historical track record of arguments for long-termist cause areas, rather than accepting naive expected value calculations at face value.
43. Apply Evidentiary Threshold
Require arguments, especially those with potentially astronomical expected values, to pass a rigorous evidentiary threshold before being considered valid, regardless of the theoretical magnitude of their potential impact.
5 Key Quotes
Charities don't just pop out of the ground, right? They need to come from some sort of place. And I don't think most people have that on their radar as a thing to do or a career path to pursue.
Joey Savoie
A charity could be not successful at all, but very, very large in terms of budget size. But yeah, I do think if you look at the, you know, the 10 best charities in the world, they are on the smaller side, they are on the more narrow and focused side.
Joey Savoie
I prefer a model with five inputs, each of which are really well cited, rather than a model with 45 inputs, half of which you completely guessed at.
Joey Savoie
I think that having a central purpose to your life is super undervalued in general. So generally having meaning, like if you have some sort of goal, I'm going to write a bestselling book or whatever, it kind of pushes you forward, keeps you motivated.
Joey Savoie
I think that a lot of effective altruists are really brilliant, really smart, really interested, want to make their whole life about charity and helping the world. And yet they kind of like pick a relevant thought leader. And like, I benefit a lot from this in terms of I have been around for a while and I do get picked. But I think these people are people who would be leaders of the EA movement if they had been here 10 years earlier. And I just want those people to actually independently come to conclusions and think through their strategies and think through what their actual ethics are and what's the most effective thing.
Joey Savoie
3 Protocols
Charity Entrepreneurship Incubator Program
Joey Savoie- Co-founders are selected (pre-idea, pre-co-founder).
- Co-founders are paired together over two months.
- Participants are trained in relevant skills.
- Logistical barriers (e.g., registration, first grants) are removed by Charity Entrepreneurship.
- Charities are launched as independent organizations.
Joey Savoie's Personal Guiding Principles (The Three H's)
Joey Savoie- Identify three top-line principles (Helping, Happiness, Health).
- Under each principle, define three pillars.
- Under each pillar, define three concrete heuristics.
- Score performance on heuristics quarterly.
- Ensure heuristics lead to pillar success, and pillars lead to principle success.
- For satisficing goals (Happiness, Health), aim for a target level (e.g., 90-10 approach) rather than infinite optimization.
- For unbounded goals (Helping), pursue infinite ambition.
Strategy for Avoiding Project Flipping
Joey Savoie- Commit to working on a project 'head down' for a specific duration (e.g., two years).
- At the end of the committed period, 'come up for air' to reevaluate and explore new options.
- Nail down the next project and focus on it for another committed period (e.g., three years).
- Repeat the cycle, remembering to wear the 'focus' hat during work periods and the 'reevaluation' hat at designated times.