As far as I can tell, the EA Hotel hasn't pulled in much money during its present fundraising drive (see its Patreon & its GoFundMe).
I'm curious about why this is, and whether it's indicative of a broader dynamic operating in the community. (It reminds me of the situation the Berkeley REACH was in last year: 1, 2.)
For reference, the recent EA Hotel fundraising posts: 1, 2, 3
I think you should expand on why you believe this is the case. It would be useful for me to know your thinking, since I'm considering giving to them.
The EA Hotel would only be a top charity if it's producing higher quality work than other top charities.
Because the guests are always changing, and because the Hotel is new, we can't evaluate the work yet. We have to guess whether the work would be higher or lower quality than top charities.
A key factor for producing a large volume of quality work is feedback. Regular (eg daily or weekly) feedback helps you to focus on the right things, speed up or slow down, find better ways of doing things, and improve the quality of your work over time.
I don't expect the EA Hotel guests to be getting much high quality feedback. Many of them are working on very different projects from each other, and their peers are incentivized to be nice - it's not the kind of relationship a student has with a teacher or an employee has with a manager. In general, I think most EA Hotel guests are receiving significantly less quality feedback and mentorship than they would if they were working or studying in a formal program.
I would be less concerned about this if the average EA Hotel guest had several years of experience being mentored in their chosen field, but currently I would prefer for the majority of them to develop their skills in a way that gives them direct feedback before striking out on their own.
I agree that feedback is extremely important. I even imagine that feedback is almost universally the bottleneck to growth. Feedback in the general sense. Not just from people, but from experience as well.
We're giving guests 15 minutes of feedback per week, through personal check-ins with the manager (which is currently me). I can imagine that this is a bit less than what one would usually get from one's superior, and that this feedback is less good because management is unlikely to be an expert on the subject at hand.
Coming from a different perspective: EA seems to be more generally constrained by mentorship. If all the mentors are already mentoring at full capacity, the next best thing is to let people try and figure things out by themselves (or read books about it). I'd guess that that is better than letting people sit at home and wait for their turn, so to speak, which seems to be the real counterfactual.
I would also add that there seems to be a good amount of peer feedback and group discussion. People requesting and giving feedback on ideas and drafts, giving talks with Q&As, brainstorming together, that kind of thing.
There is a high level of shared knowledge of EA amongst hotel guests. Also the average level of education and work experience is pretty high (from a recent survey: 4.6 years university level education, 4.8 years work experience).
While I liked seeing the reasons for your belief in your subsequent comment, I also really appreciate the meta-level point this comment evoked in me (though I don't know whether this is what you meant):
"In general, most causes are unlikely to be competitive with the very best causes. Thus, a simple explanation for an organization's not getting funding is that potential funders didn't think it was among the very best opportunities after carefully thinking about it. This may be a much more important factor than arguments like 'too risky' or 'not tax-deductible'."
(Of course, risk may be factored into calculations about "the best opportunity", but I can also imagine some funders just looking at the portfolio of projects, estimating a reasonable "helpfulness" coefficient for how much value the Hotel adds, and deciding that the number didn't add up, even without consideration of risk.)
Similarly, if AMF had trouble fundraising one year, and someone asked why, the explanation I'd think of immediately wouldn't be "risk of mosquito-net fishing" or "concerns about their deal with Country X". It would be "their program's EV slipped below the EV of several other global-health charities, and many donors chose other charities on the margin instead of AMF, even if AMF is still a great charity".
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I work for CEA, but these views are my own.
What are the counterfactual top charities you have in mind?