I'm saying that things can change. In recent times there's been much more availability of information than there was in the past. As such, interested donors have means of holding charities more accountable than they did in the past. The reason that the standard for accountability in the philanthropic world is so low is because donors do not demand high accountability. If we start demanding high accountability then charities will become more accountable.

Last year GiveWell leveraged 1 million dollars toward charities demonstrating unusually high accountability. Since GiveWell is a young organization (founded in 2007) I expect the amount leveraged to grow rapidly over the next few years.

(Disclaimer: The point of my above remark is not to promote GiveWell in particular, GiveWell itself may need improvement, I'm just pointing to GiveWell as an example showing that incentivizing charities based on accountability is possible.)

Since SIAI/FHI are fairly new, it's reasonable to suppose that they just happened to be the first organizations on the ground and that over time there will be more and more people interested in funding/creating/(working at) organizations with goals similar to SIAI and FHI. I believe that it's best for most donors interested in the causes that SIAI and FHI are working toward to place money in donor advised funds, commit to giving the money to an organization devoted to existential risk demonstrating high accountability and to hold out for such an organization.

(Disclaimer: This post is not anti-SIAI/FHI, quite possibly SIAI and FHI are capable of demonstrating high levels of accountability and if/when they do so that they will be worthy of funding, the point is just that they are not presently doing so.)