So, he works hard and does a lot of low value grunt work. LOTS of people do that. People who are truly productive figure out how to devote lots of time to the highest value work they can and minimize the time spent on crap work. Wouldn't Luke do better to raise an extra $30K/year or whatever so he can hire someone to do the odd jobs and focus on whatever is the most valuable stuff he can do?

He started soliciting people for that months ago.

Maybe tiny is not a fair term but certainly unexceptional?

The SIAI is a nonprofit organization. You know how on this site we often discuss how any money one devotes to unnecessary expenditures is money that could have gone into, say, saving lives? How we can think of money as measured in terms of dead children? And how a lot of people here think the SIAI is probably the most efficient charity in terms of expected utility?

If Luke conceives of himself as an altruist, then he's not going to ask for as much money as he can get away with, because that's simply taking more resources out of a highly efficient charity, which isn't being repaid in additional work.

That's generally what organizations do, unless they have horrible agency problems. Are you saying that they had applications from really impressive candidates and turned them down for Luke? If the executive director of the Red Cross or the president of Harvard desperately wanted the job but Luke beat them out then that would be impressive.

They sought Luke out for the position. They saw what he was doing and thought "this is a guy we should seriously hire." Have you ever been offered an executive position at a workplace you didn't apply to work at because they were that impressed by your productivity?