> But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions.
I have to partially disagree with this, because EA organizations do select causes with a decent amount of "room" for more funding. It hardly matters that they're getting billions, your money will still easily contribute 100× or plausibly 1000× to society-wide benefit compared to just spending it on yourself. Of course some people might be aware of some kind of neglected opportunity with even larger returns, but that's surely not that typical. And efforts like the Open Philanthropy Project exist to focus on higher-variance causes than what GiveWell deals with, that for this reason might not appeal to mainstream donors.
This is a common misconception. The only reason e.g. Against Malaria has a 'funding gap' is because the EA funds don't want to fill it out of fear of 'crowding out' individual donors which is a sketchy proposition.
This may have been true for some time in the past, but it seems that new funding opportunities/causes have cropped up which are competitive with AMF, so that the EA funds are once again constrained by the overall amount of funding.
You can also review OpenPhil's grant database and see that they don't really fund moon shots. They fund shovel ready, track record approved low-variance plays mostly.
I have to partially disagree with this, because EA organizations do select causes with a decent amount of "room" for more funding. It hardly matters that they're getting billions, your money will still easily contribute 100× or plausibly 1000× to society-wide benefit compared to just spending it on yourself. Of course some people might be aware of some kind of neglected opportunity with even larger returns, but that's surely not that typical. And efforts like the Open Philanthropy Project exist to focus on higher-variance causes than what GiveWell deals with, that for this reason might not appeal to mainstream donors.