Create a tobacco taxation charity
Joey Savoie from Charity Entrepreneurship
"There’s strong evidence that increasing tobacco taxation reduces tobacco consumption and that reduced tobacco consumption results in improved health outcomes. Without cessation increases, tobacco use may account for some 10 million deaths per year by 2030, with most deaths occurring in LMIC (Ibid.). For example, in India, smoking accounts for nearly 40 percent of tuberculosis deaths among middle-aged males, or about 120,000 deaths annually.
WHO (2011) estimates a 10% price increase in tobacco causes a 4% reduction in tobacco consumption. Jha, et. al. (2013b) estimates that increasing taxes to the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended level of 70% of total sale price in all LMIC would result in an 11-27% decrease in smoking mortality and therefore save tens of millions of lives.
There are also numerous pieces of evidence suggesting that government implementation of tobacco taxation is highly cost-effective. Savedoff and Alwang, (2015), writing for the Center for Global Development, price tobacco taxation as $3 - $70 per DALY averted. Jha, et. al., (2013), writing for the Copenhagen Consensus, estimates a 4000% return, with a $500M/yr tobacco control program averting more than one million deaths annually. Jha, et. al., (2013) also states that tobacco taxation is the most important and most cost-effective portion of the tobacco control campaign. A systematic review of 84 studies also found that taxation was among one of the more effective tobacco control initiatives (Thomas, et. al., 2008). Experts we spoke to at tobacco lobbying campaigns and evaluative organizations (e.g., the DCP3) also broadly agreed that this was a strong area."
When the right founders come along, funding for this project is available through Charity Entrepreneurship.
Create a conditional cash transfer charity
Joey Savoie from Charity Entrepreneurship
"CCTs entail giving someone a cash incentive for completing a certain activity. CCTs can incentivize behavior that improves wellbeing while also improving well-being by increasing wealth.
GiveDirectly, a GiveWell top charity, has a well-evidenced, high-impact intervention through unconditional cash transfers (UCTs), where money is unconditionally given to some of the world’s poorest (see GiveWell’s review of GiveDirectly). A CCT seems like it may be able to achieve higher cost-effectiveness than UCTs by successfully incentivizing highly valuable health behaviors. However, the beneficial effects of the cash transfer may be much lower than in the UCT since the ability to target the poorest is compromised.
There are numerous behaviors that could be incentivized and many different incentive sizes and delivery methods. Additionally, it is easy to randomly assign participants to different conditions, including a control condition. Thus, there’s much room to experiment with CCTs, which makes it a flexible, testable and possibly cost-effective intervention class."
When the right founders come along, funding for this project is available through Charity Entrepreneurship.
Create new animal rights charities
Joey Savoie from Charity Entrepreneurship
When the right founders come along, funding for these projects is available through Charity Entrepreneurship.
Create safety-conscious companies in areas with the potential to become GCRs
Kerry Vaughan
"Companies working on research projects that have the potential to become global catastrophic risks (synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, molecular nanotechnology etc.) have insufficient direct incentives to ensure that their research is safe. As a result, those in the relevant fields may be less safety conscious than is warranted. It may be high impact for those concerned about the safety of these technologies to create for-profit companies in the relevant fields. This could give these projects unparalleled advocacy opportunities both with other companies in the field and with other interested parties (e.g. regulators) who may trust the opinion of those in the industry more than they trust outsiders. It could also divert resources away from less safety-conscious projects. This could also speed up progress towards undesirable outcomes, so it’s unclear if projects of this type would be positive impact in expectation."
Fundraise from the crypto community
Kerry Vaughan
Start a philanthropic advising organization
Kerry Vaughan
"While most donations come from individuals, the largest concentration of donations comes from large foundations. An organization that provides advisory services to foundations, especially to foundations that are being created might be especially high impact."
Targeted outreach to niche communities
Kerry Vaughan
"Raising for Effective Giving has had success targeting a particular niche market (poker players) who are likely to be receptive to arguments for effective giving. There may be promising opportunities to develop similar projects targeting niche groups."
Do outreach to corporate giving officers
Kerry Vaughan
"In the US 72% of giving ($241B) comes from individuals, yet since the average household only donates around $3,000, outreach on a household-by-household basis may not be as cost effective as other options. It may be possible to circumvent this problem by working with corporate social responsibility officers at large corporations to encourage them to advocate for effective charities at their companies. This would provide a way to influence many donors without needing to engage in outreach to each individual."
Set-up donations trading
Kerry Vaughan and Tee Barnett
"Due to differences in national laws about tax deductions, not all donors have tax-deductibility for donations to all organizations that they might support. Yet, it is usually legal to donate to an organization for someone else in exchange for them donating to an organization for you. This kind of donation trading has the potential to help everyone achieve optimal tax deductibility. It might be possible to set up a platform for donors in different countries to exchange donations in order to get effective tax deductibility / Gift Aid despite giving to foreign charities."
A few EAs have started to tackle aspects of this problem - ask a Summit organizer for more information.