Imagine you have a charitable organization that receives funds and then pays its staff of doctors to provide free treatment to the poor. All of their donations would be spent on payroll and overhead. But this would not demonstrate that the organization is wasteful.
replyWhile that's true, the AHA does not perform medical treatments or have an in-house research lab.
replyIf someone's really passionate about putting up healthy living posters and shifting the cost of CPR education from healthcare providers, more power to them! But my guess is that most AHA donors don't know or ask what exactly their donations are accomplishing.
A lot of what the AHA does runs via payroll: advocacy, training, writing guidelines, etc. The implication of "payroll" is that the money is all going to administration, but their programs involve a lot of staff time.
reply(I have a generally EA view of the world and I don't think the AHA is an especially valuable donation opportunity.)
That's fair. I personally was a bit put out when I discovered this, I had assumed most of the donations were going to research, but advocacy and training have some value and I could believe that other people fully expect that's what the AHA does.
replyWhen effective altruists talk about ineffective altruism, they talk about AHA. When I talk about ineffective altruism, I talk about things like a targeted trust.
replyIt's the EA people who generalize from AHA to make grand ethical claims that lead to absurdity.