The problem with doing this is that once BOAS takes off, the normal for-profit shareholders would have to be bought out for him to "go non-profit". And the cost to buy them out would far exceed the startup costs. This is why investors often like funding businesses at the ground floor rather than buying shares of businesses that have already captured immense market share. 

I also don't like characterizing businesses like BOAS as "nonprofit". They are trying to make an obscene profit, like other businesses, but for charities rather than private investors. 

Marcus,

I appreciate your concern for the effective use of philanthropic funds. And I would be remiss if I did not take pause when the previous #1 trader on Manifold and a generally successful investor disagrees with me. But brilliant people have been fantastically wrong on some things historically, and I think you’ve missed the mark regarding your assessment of Profit for Good.

First, regarding your BOAS claims, I will leave Vin to address that, if he elects to do so.

Your comments regarding Profit for Good generally do not engage with the arguments we have made. As you’ve indicated, a perpetual stream of funds can be unlocked through an index fund or a sufficiently diversified set of assets. This is not what we mean by a philanthropic multiplier. We assert that, in expectation, a set of PFG equities should outperform an index fund. 

According to our theory, the reason for this outperformance is because the stakeholders whose activities are relevant in business performance have a nonzero preference for the charitable cause. That is to say, if all else is equal (same price, same quality, same convenience and other relevant factors), people would rather money go toward saving a kid from malaria than enriching a random investor. This theory would apply not just to potential buyers of the product, but to other stakeholders such as potential employees, media, suppliers, and government. And unlike other forms of business, ownership of a business by a charity or charitable foundation does not necessarily negatively affect operations whatsoever. So while other forms of social enterprise often entail costs that make them less competitive (i.e., fair trade coffee costs increased supply costs to consumers), there is no inherent operational disadvantage to being owned by a foundation (indeed, in our current economy, most stock ownership of mid to large size businesses is passive).

So, the financial case for a PFG is that of operational parity (or no structural disadvantage) in conjunction with an advantage from stakeholder preference. I would emphasize that I have never contended that this stakeholder preference is large in all contexts. In fact, research shows that, by and large, people are not willing to pay significant premiums for ethical products (hence Fair Trade’s market cap). But where people do not have to pay premiums or otherwise sacrifice for ethical products, adoption happens quickly. Because PFGs method of doing good is through ownership rather than through operations, there is no structural reason they cannot offer relative parity of choice.

You might be interested to know that I have been working on a research compilation to support this thesis over the past several months. I have researched behavioral and reported preferences across a variety of stakeholder categories (consumers, employees, media, suppliers, procurers, governments, etc.). I have also researched PFG performance across the limited span of them that exist.  I have researched product adoption patterns and the relationship between product adoption and price/quality parity, and other matters. 

The research supports the common sense assertion that people prefer buying in an ethical way when it doesn’t cost them any more. That employees would rather their work have a purpose and are often willing to accept slightly lower pay to have a job full of meaning (also, much lower turnover). That media happily amplifies the stories of businesses that work for charitable rather than shareholder enrichment, enabling greater reach with lower advertising spend. That governments put socially beneficial businesses, of which Profit for Good businesses generally qualify, in privileged positions when considering contracts. 

And these advantages compound. When Humanitix saves significant labor costs because of industry-leading labor retention, it can pass on savings and charge less. Similarly, it can save money on marketing spend when Sam Harris endorses them on his podcast. When you add the stakeholder advantages across the categories, it is the ingredient for capturing market share from competitors who cannot replicate it.

I hope to have the compilation complete in the next few weeks, though I can’t make any promises. I will be using it in the book I am drafting on Profit for Good as a promising tool philanthropists could use to better the world.

I don’t really know what our cruxes are, Marcus. I suspect that it has to do with the degree of stakeholder preference (I think you put it at zero, and I think it’s generally positive and the degree of which significantly differs depending on context). I anticipate you saying that it is drowned out by other factors and I would agree that other factors are more important. But there is no reason that the balance of other factors would incline toward non-PFGs rather than PFGs and it is smart to play with a coin that is even slightly weighted toward you. And further, I think that intelligent consideration of where stakeholder preferences could make the biggest difference will make the compound advantages much more compelling than a slightly weighted coin.

You say that we should get the “sign from the market”, but this is not a market that philanthropists have historically participated in. Historically, they’ve separated their business holdings from their philanthropic activity. Where there has been external investment in PFG, such as with Humanitix by the Atlassian Foundation, for instance, it has paid off magnificently. Thankyou, a PFG in Australia has been a category leader. When it tried to get capital to expand, it could have got it from private investors in exchange for significant equity in exchange, but philanthropists did not want to take advantage of this opportunity. The Profit for Good game is just one that philanthropists has not been playing and no one has been measuring stakeholder preferences and performance implications.

It isn’t that “this has been tried and the market has spoken”. It has, generally, not been tried. Which is a damn shame given what it could do if we are right and you are wrong. 

Great piece! This connects directly to something I've been thinking about in my recent post on "orthogonal impact." The key insight isn't just that government roles have impact—it's that they often have the most impact through levers that aren't measured or incentivized by the job itself.

Consider the contrast: if you work at GiveWell or an EA-aligned charity, your performance metrics likely align with doing good. The counterfactual person who'd take your job would also be trying to maximize impact—that's literally what they're paid to do. But in government (or corporations, academia, etc.), the situation is different. A USDA official is evaluated on processing efficiency and regulatory compliance, not on whether they quietly shifted procurement standards to help millions of animals. A congressional staffer gets promoted for serving their boss well, not for adding crucial language to obscure bills that could save lives.

This misalignment between job incentives and impact opportunities is exactly what creates the leverage. The counterfactual government employee would likely focus on what gets measured—hitting their KPIs, avoiding controversy, climbing the ladder. They wouldn't spend political capital pushing for open data standards or championing unglamorous but vital legislation. These orthogonal opportunities for good sit neglected precisely because they don't help anyone's career.

Your point about government being "essential infrastructure for EA goals" is spot-on. We need people willing to occupy these positions and utilize both the official powers AND the unmeasured discretionary opportunities they contain.

This sounds valuable! Quick question about participation: I'm an EA-aligned lawyer concerned about AI safety, though not currently at a top firm or working directly in AI regulation. Would someone with general legal expertise and strong motivation to contribute to AI safety be useful for this, or are you specifically looking for lawyers already working in tech/AI policy?

I imagine fresh perspectives from lawyers outside the usual AI circles could be valuable for spotting overlooked risks, but wanted to check if that fits what you're envisioning.

Thanks for sharing your piece, Sam. There's a critical insight here that impact-maximizers might miss if they pattern-match "treat community as intrinsically valuable" to "prioritize feelings over outcomes." The actual claim is deeply pragmatic: authentic relationships are instrumentally superior for maximizing long-run expected impact.

Our current model optimizes for legible short-term proxies (fellowship completions, cause-area conversions) that fit neatly in grant reports but poorly predict what matters: who's still contributing meaningfully in 5-10 years, who's thinking independently rather than deferring, and who's building things that wouldn't exist otherwise. In expected-value terms, 20 people with genuine conviction working for a decade dominate 100 people weakly deferring for two years—especially when those 20 bring epistemic diversity and new ideas for impact rather than reproducing consensus.

If we're serious about maximizing impact, we should at least question whether our current metrics actually maximize it. What would it look like to measure success differently—tracking 36-month retention, independent project initiation, or comfort disagreeing with group consensus? If authentic community building could produce superior long-term outcomes (as history and successful movements suggest), then resisting it isn't principled; it's optimizing the wrong proxies. I'm curious what others think: are we measuring the right things, or are we leaving impact on the table?

Thanks for raising this. A large‑scale, preventable humanitarian crisis with mass civilian suffering clearly belongs on the EA radar—at minimum as a candidate problem for more systematic investigation. Right now the post reads more like a signal (“why aren’t we talking about this?”) than a case, so it may not spark the engagement you’re hoping for.

Two quick suggestions that could help:

1. Recast as a Quick Take or add a two‑paragraph “why this matters” section. Even a concise sketch—e.g. expected mortality, tractable intervention channels (cash relief, medical supply corridors, policy advocacy), and how they compare on cost‑effectiveness to other EA global‑health staples—would give readers a foothold.
2. Pose a few concrete questions for the community. For example:
   • What existing orgs have the logistical reach to deliver aid inside Gaza right now, and what are their marginal funding gaps?
   • How do political‑risk–adjusted cost‑effectiveness estimates compare with GiveWell‑style benchmarks?
   • Are there neglected advocacy levers (e.g. U.S. or EU policy pressure) where an additional EA dollar or career choice could move substantial resources?

Framing it this way signals that you recognise the need for the usual EA toolkit—scale, neglectedness, tractability—while inviting others to help fill in the numbers. I’d be keen to see a deeper dive or a collaborative back‑of‑the‑envelope if you (or anyone reading) has the bandwidth.

Sofia, love this framework—and love what you're doing with Hive!

Your post sparked a thought: Many constraints you mention (funding, visa support, networks) are actually transferable within EA. Yet we optimize mostly at the "cause area → org" level, not "whose potential is trapped by a solvable constraint?"

What if your calibration tools included asking: "What resources could the community provide to make this realistic for me?" Things like:

• Micro-grants for career pivots
• "Lendable" operations talent
• Treating introductions as community infrastructure, not private assets

I suspect many high-impact projects never happen because founders correctly identify they lack resource X, without realizing it's sitting idle elsewhere in the community. Your framework helps people see constraints clearly—the next step might be making those constraints more permeable.

Yeah, the central idea is that PFGs can have operational parity (or superiority) because how they do good is in the identity of the shareholder, rather than through some way they do their operations. And stakeholders (consumers, employees, media, suppliers, partners, lenders) have a non-zero preference for the PFG (they'd rather a charity benefit from their transaction than a random shareholder). This is why they should have a competitive advantage over normal firms. 

From this competitive advantage, you potentially have an arbitrage opportunity by philanthropists. Basically channel your money through PFGs and you get more than what you pay for. 

This is a very simple and intuitively plausible mechanism for leverage for philanthropists, yet there has been very little curiosity on the potential of this model to multiply philanthropic funding. 

What might help you conceptually is not to think of donations and shareholders as a separate thing (i.e. donations are something that limits returns) but rather think of it as business where charities are the shareholders (not conferring any disadvantage moreso than any other shareholder).