Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research

Track Record

Over 2022-24, we have:

• (a) Created a longlist of more than 500 causes (link)
• (b) Researched around 20 of them and successfully identified combating hypertension through top sodium reduction policies as well as combating diabetes through a tax on sugary drinks as especially cost-effective; ensuring a resilient global food supply in abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios may also be promising. (link)
• (c) Successfully persuaded Charity Entrepreneurship to incubate a sodium reduction charity. We have also secured USD 100,000 from ACX to support our regranting to nutrition policy charities, while providing research support to Founders Pledge to inform a multi-million dollar salt reduction grant they are considering. We are also constantly supplying charity recommendations to career advisory organizations like Probably Good.

Cost-Effectiveness

• Our internal cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that our work is more than 10x as cost-effective as GiveWell top charities
• Of course, one might – and indeed, should – be sceptical of an organization’s evaluation of its own effectiveness. However, an independent evaluation by Charity Entrepreneurship also expects an “exploratory altruism” organization like CEARCH to be about 8x as cost-effective as existing top philanthropic causes (link).
• That said, such estimates should not be taken literally, given the high amount of uncertainty involved. Rather, they should be understood as giving a sense of how promising cause prioritization research and outreach is, given (a) the outsized benefits from identifying extremely impactful causes and directing resources there, and (b) the low operating costs of research and outreach.