It's a complicated subject, of course, but my own impression is that CFAR is indeed a good place to donate on the present margin, from the perspective of long-term world-improvement, even bearing in mind that there are other organizations one could donate to that are focused on community building around effective altruism.

My reason for this is two-fold:

• (1) Both epistemic rationality and strategicness really do seem to have high yield in an effective altruism context -- and so it's worth making a serious effort to see if we can increase these (I expect we can); and
• (2) It's worth having a portfolio that includes multiple strong efforts at creating high-impact people. CEA is awesome, and if I thought that it was about to falter and that CFAR was strong, I would be seeking to direct money to CEA. But the two organizations are non-redundant -- CEA appeals largely to those who are already interested in altruism; CFAR appeals also to many potentially high-impact who are interested in entrepreneurship, or in increasing their own powers, or in rationality, and who have not yet thought seriously about do-gooding. (Who then may.)

The SPARC program (for highly math-talented high school students) seems particularly key to me as a potential influencer of future technology, and it would, I think, be much harder for other organizations in this space to run such a program.

I'd be glad to engage more directly with your concerns, if you want to fill them in a bit more -- either here or by Skype. I suspect I'll learn from the conversation regardless. Maybe CFAR's strategy will also improve.