We at Giving What We Can have been running a fundraiser to raise £150,000 by the end of June, so that we can make our budget through the end of 2015. We are really keen to keep the team focussed on their job of growing the movement behind effective giving, and ensure they aren't distracted worrying about fundraising and paying the bills.

With 4 days to go, we are now short just £34,000!

We also still have £6,000 worth of matching funds available for those who haven't given more than £1,000 to GWWC before and donate £1,000-£5,000 before next Tuesday! (For those who are asking, 2 of the matchers I think wouldn't have given otherwise and 2 I would guess would have.)

If you've been one of those holding out to see if we would easily reach the goal, now's the time to pitch in to ensure Giving What We Can can continue to achieve its vision of making effective giving the societal default and move millions more to GiveWell-recommended and other high impact organisations.

So please give now or email me for our bank details: robert [dot] wiblin [at] centreforeffectivealtruism [dot] org.

If you want to learn more, please see this more complete explanation for why we might be the highest impact place you can donate. This fundraiser has also been discussed on LessWrong before, as well as the Effective Altruist forum.

Thanks so much!

As you probably know, Giving What We Can exists to move donations to the charities that can most effectively help others. Our members take a pledge to give 10% of their incomes for the rest of their life to the most impactful charities. Along with other extensive resources for donors such as GiveWell and OpenPhil, we produce and communicate, in an accessible way, research to help members determine where their money will do the most good. We also impress upon members and the general public the vast differences between the best charities and the rest.

Many LessWrongers are members or supporters, including of course the author of Slate Star Codex. We also recently changed our pledge so that people could give to whichever cause they felt best helped others, such as existential risk reduction or life extension, depending on their views. Many new members now choose to do this.

What you might not know is that 2014 was a fantastic year for us - our rate of membership growth more than tripled! Amazingly, our 1066 members have now pledged over $422 million, and already given over $2 million to our top rated charities. We've accomplished this on a total budget of just $400,000 since we were founded. This new rapid growth is thanks to the many lessons we have learned by trial and error, and the hard work of our team of staff and volunteers.

To make it to the end of the year we need to raise just another £110,000. Most charities have a budget in the millions or tens of millions of pounds and we do what we do with a fraction of that.

We want to raise the money as quickly as possible, so that our staff can stop focusing on fundraising (which takes up a considerable amount of energy), and get back to the job of growing our membership.

Some of our supporters are willing to sweeten the deal as well: if you haven't given us more than £1,000 before, then they'll match 1:1 a gift between £1,000 and £5,000.

You can give now or email me (robert dot wiblin at centreforeffectivealtruism dot org) for our bank details. Info on tax deductible giving from the USA and non-UK Europe are also available on our website.

What we are doing this year

The second half of this year is looking like it will be a very exciting for us. Four books about effective altruism are being released this year, including one by our own trustee William MacAskill, which will be heavily promoted in the US and UK. The Effective Altruism Summit is also turning into 'EA Global' with events at Google Headquarters in San Francisco, Oxford University and Melbourne, headlined by Elon Musk.

Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people will be finding out about our philosophy of effective giving for the first time.

To do these opportunities justice Giving What We Can needs to expand its staff to support its rapidly growing membership and local chapters, and ensure we properly follow up with all prospective members. We want to take people who are starting to think about how they can best make the world a better place, and encourage them to make a serious long-term commitment to effective giving, and help them discover where their money can do the most good.

Looking back at our experience over the last five years, we estimate that each $1 given to Giving What We Can has already moved $6, and will likely end up moving between $60 and $100 to the most effective charities in the world. (This are time discounted, counterfactual donations, only to charities we regard very highly. Check out this report for more details.)

This represents a great return on investment, and I would be very sad if we couldn't take these opportunities just because we lacked the necessary funding.

Our marginal hire

If we don't raise this money we will not have the resources to keep on our current Director of Communications. He has invaluable experience as a Communications Director for several high-profile Australian politicians, which has given him skills in web-development, public relations, graphic design, public speaking and social media. Amongst the things he has already achieved in his three months here are: automation of the book-keeping on our Trust (saving huge amounts of time and minimising errors), very much improved our published materials including our fundraising prospectus, written a press release and planned a media push to capitalise on our getting to 1,000 members and Peter Singer’s book release in the UK.

His wide variety of skills mean that there are a large number of projects he would be capable of doing which would increase our member growth, and we are keen for him to test a number of these. His first project would be to optimise our website to make the most of the increased attention effective altruism will be generating over the summer and turn that into people actually donating 10% of their incomes to the most effective causes. In the past we have had trouble finding someone with such a broad set of crucial skills. Combined with how swiftly and well he has integrated into our team, it would be a massive loss to have to let him go and later down the line need to try to recruit a replacement.

As I wrote earlier you can give now or email me (robert dot wiblin at centreforeffectivealtruism dot org) for bank details or personalised advice on how to give best. If you need tax deductibility in another country check these pages on the USA and non-UK Europe.

I'm happy to take questions here or by email!

This is a re-post of something I wrote for the Effective Altruism Forum. Though most of the ideas have been raised here before, perhaps many times, I thought it might still be of interest as a brief presentation of them all!

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* The people you think are totally wrong may not actually be totally wrong.

Effective altruism is a ‘broad tent’

As is obvious to anyone who has looked around here, effective altruism is based more on a shared interest in the question 'how can you do the most good' than a shared view on the answer. We all have friends who support:

• A wide range of different cause areas.
  
• A wide range of different approaches to those causes.
  
• Different values and moral philosophies regarding what it means to 'help others'.
  
• Different political views on how best to achieve even shared goals. On economic policy for example, we have people covering the full range from far left to far right. In the CEA offices we have voters for every major political party, and some smaller ones too.
  

Looking beyond just stated beliefs, we also have people with a wide range of temperaments, from highly argumentative, confident and outspoken to cautious, idiosyncratic and humble.

Our wide range of views could cause problems

There is a popular saying that 'opposites attract'. But unfortunately, social scientists have found precisely the opposite to be true: birds of a feather do in fact flock together.

One of the drivers of this phenomenon is that people who are different are more likely to get into conflicts with one another. If my partner and I liked to keep the house exactly the same way, we certainly wouldn't have as many arguments about cleaning (I'll leave you to speculate about who is the untidy one!). People who are different from you may initially strike you as merely amusing, peculiar or mistaken, but when you talk to them at length and they don't see reason, you may start to see them as stupid, biased, rude, impossible to deal with, unkind, and perhaps even outright bad people.

A movement brought together by a shared interest in the question ‘what should we do?’ will inevitably have a greater diversity of priorities, and justifications for those priorities, than a movement united by a shared answer. This is in many ways our core strength. Maintaining a diversity of views means we are less likely to get permanently stuck on the wrong track, because we can learn from one another's scholarship and experiences, and correct course if necessary.

However, it also means we are necessarily committed to ideological pluralism. While it is possible to maintain ‘Big Tent’ social movements they face some challenges. The more people hold opinions that others dislike, the more possible points of friction there are that can cause us to form negative opinions of one another. There have already been strongly worded exchanges online demonstrating the risk.

When a minority holds an unpopular view they can feel set upon and bullied, while the majority feels mystified and frustrated that a small group of people can't see the obvious truth that so many accept.

My first goal with this post is to make us aware of this phenomenon, and offer my support for a culture of peaceful coexistence between people who, even after they share all their reasons and reflect, still disagree.

My second goal is to offer a few specific actions that can help us avoid interpersonal conflicts that don't contribute to making the world a better place:

1. Remember that you might be wrong

Hard as it is to keep in mind when you're talking to someone who strongly disagrees with you, it is always possible that they have good points to make that would change your mind, at least a bit. Most claims are only ‘partially true or false’, and there is almost always something valuable you can learn from someone who disagrees with you, even if it is just an understanding of how they think.

If the other person seems generally as intelligent and informed about the topic as you, it's not even clear why you should give more weight to your own opinion than theirs.

2. Be polite, doubly so if your partner is not

Being polite will make both the person you are talking to, and onlookers, more likely to come around to your view. It also means that you're less likely to get into a fight that will hurt others and absorb your precious time and emotional energy.

Politeness has many components, some notable ones being: not criticising someone personally; interpreting their behaviour and statements in a fairly charitable way; not being a show-off, or patronising and publicly embarrassing others; respecting others as your equals, even if you think they are not; conceding when they have made a good point; and finally keeping the conversation focussed on information that can be shared, confirmed, and might actually prove persuasive.

3. Don't infer bad motivations

While humans often make mistakes in their thinking, it's uncommon for them to be straight out uninterested in the welfare of others or what is right, especially so in this movement. Even if they are, they are probably not aware that that is the case. And even if they are aware, you won't come across well to onlookers by addressing them as though they have bad motivations.

If you really do become convinced the person you are talking to is speaking in bad faith, it's time to walk away. As they say: don't feed the trolls.

4. Stay cool

Even when people say things that warrant anger and outrage, expressing anger or outrage publicly will rarely make the world a better place. Anger being understandable or natural is very different from it being useful, especially if the other person is likely to retaliate with anger of their own.

Being angry does not improve the quality of your thinking, persuade others that you're right, make you happier or more productive, or make for a more harmonious community.

In its defence, anger can be highly motivating. Unfortunately it is indiscriminate about motivating you to do very valuable, ineffective and even harmful things.

Any technique that can keep you calm is therefore useful. If something is making you unavoidably angry, it's typically best to walk away and let other people deal with it.

5. Pick your battles

Not all things are equally important to reach a consensus about. For good or ill, most things we spend our days talking about just aren't that 'action relevant'. If you find yourself edging towards interpersonal conflict on a question that i) isn't going to change anyone's actions much; ii) isn't going to make the world a much better place, even if it does change their actions; or iii) is very hard to persuade others about, maybe it isn't worth the cost of interpersonal tension to explore in detail.

So if someone in the community says something unrelated or peripheral to effective altruism that you disagree with, which could develop into a conflict, you always have the option of not taking the bait. In a week, you and they may not even remember it was mentioned, let alone consider it worth damaging your relationship over.

6. Let it go

The most important advice of all.

Perhaps you are discussing something important. Perhaps you've made great arguments. Perhaps everyone you know agrees with you. You've been polite, and charitable, and kept your cool. But the person you're talking to still holds a view you strongly disagree with and believe is harmful.

If that's the case, it's probably time for you both to walk away before your opinions of one another fall too far, or the disagreement spirals into sectarianism. If someone can't be persuaded, you can at least avoid creating an ill-will between you that ensures they never come around. You've done what you can for now, and that is enough.

Hopefully time will show which of you is right, or space away from a public debate will give one of you the chance to change your mind in private without losing face. In the meantime maybe you can't work closely together, but you can at least remain friendly and respectful.

It isn't likely or even desirable for us to end up agreeing with one another on everything. The world is a horribly complex place; if the questions we are asking had easy answers the research we are doing wouldn't be necessary in the first place.

The cost of being part of a community that accepts and takes an interest in your views, even though many think you are pulling in the wrong direction, is to be tolerant of others in the same way even when you think their views are harmful.

So, sometimes, you just have to let it go.

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PS

If you agree with me about the above, you might be tempted to post or send it to people every time they aren’t playing by these rules. Unfortunately, this is likely to be counterproductive and lead to more conflict rather than less. It’s useful to share this post in general, but not trot it out as a way of policing others. The most effective way to promote this style of interaction is to exemplify it in the way you treat others, and not get into long conversations with people who have less productive ways of talking to others.

Thanks to Amanda, Will, Diana, Michelle, Catriona, Marek, Niel, Tonja, Sam and George for feedback on drafts of this post.