Vetted Causes was founded as an attempt to work within the effective altruism community by providing unbiased reviews of animal charities.
We were initially shocked by how flawed the metrics being advertised were, and we wanted to bring this to the community’s attention. However, we now realize this is unimportant to EA’s leaders. ACE refuses to fix their metrics, and many are in support of using inflated metrics because they lead to more donations.
Our values simply don’t align with the values EA practices. We still think that giving to effective charities is a good idea, but this can only be accomplished if leaders are willing to be honest in their evaluations. We are going to continue to pursue this idea under a new organization outside of EA.
We appreciate that there are many EAs that are honest and just want to help those in need, and we’d like to personally thank those people.
If I can put this succinctly:
Ironically, in spite of yourself, you probably did have a positive impact, because many of the charities were engaging with you in good faith and took on your feedback. You should be happy mate!
Thank you for your work improving the evaluations of Animal Charity Evaluators, and for the evaluations you have done.
I think that highly engaged animal welfare focused EAs doing evaluations on a volunteer or near-volunteer basis, and publishing them for others to learn things from, is very important in a field so starved for funding.