Evaluating Life Extension Advocacy Foundation

Summary

In this post, I try to evaluate Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, and I flesh out interview questions to ask them. LEAF has many foci, including crowdfunding, conference organizing, investor advisement, social media advocacy, news, YouTube shows and a podcast, partnering with YouTubers and content creators such as Kurzgesagt and Life Noggin, creating useful resources on aging research, and advocating for policy change, including communication with international organizations, such as the World Health Organization.

I think that LEAF’s ratio of donations to money-brought-to-the-field is high. This organization’s most easily measurable impact comes from its crowdfunding campaigns, which have brought $384k to other organizations (with LEAF’s fee accounted for). I estimated its collaboration with Kurzgesagt to have brought to LEAF at least $3k per month for a couple of years from donors who were previously oblivious to the aging-research cause.

Other important sources of impact are LEAF’s investor network, which has a great potential influence on their ratio, the capital and human resources that it brings to the field in ways that are difficult to quantify, their role in public education on the topic, and its influence on policy and international organizations such as WHO, which may drive faster adoption of new biotechnologies, increased funding, and better international decision-making.

I invite the reader to come up with questions or criticize the questions that I have proposed. Please use the comment section in the forum or private messages.

Introduction and Focuses

Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF) is an advocacy and crowdfunding organization founded in 2014. It is now the leading advocacy organization in the space of aging research. Its foci include:

Crowdfunding basic research projects.
Organizing conferences.
Advising investors and attracting capital.
Social media advocacy.
News and blogging about aging research.
YouTube channel with news about aging research.
YouTube show (soon with its own channel) and podcast about aging.
YouTube channel about the positive impact of scientific research and how to support it.
Partnering with YouTubers and content creators in order to bring more donors and talent to the field and drive public awareness. The major milestones that they reached in this area are their collaborations with Kurzgesagt (link 1, link 2) and Life Noggin, obtaining, in total, more than 11 million views.
Creating useful resources. Examples: the longevity roadmap and everything under the tab “aging” on lifespan.io.
Advocating for policy change and defending the interests of the elderly by interacting with international organizations such as the World Health Organization. For example, in 2018, it had a part in influencing WHO’s policy. How crucial this role was will be explored in the interview.

Considerations on cost-effectiveness

One effect of advocacy is to multiply the value of donations by attracting more donations to the cause area of interest. It’s not easy, given the evidence I have, to ascertain the full extent of this effect for LEAF. The money we would want to see multiplied are the monthly donations of lifespan.io’s recurring campaign, the share it takes from crowdfunding campaigns (5% from successful campaigns for non-profits, 10% from successful campaigns for for-profits) and volunteer time converted into salary.

I’ve followed the growth of LEAF’s recurring Lifespan Heroes campaign since it was started, and I’ve seen it spike after LEAF’s collaboration with Kurzgesagt. If I remember correctly, the campaign was at around $3k per month, and in a period of a few weeks, it gained at least other $3k that probably wouldn’t have been made otherwise, since the new donations were very probably coming from people completely unaware of LEAF’s cause before watching Kurzgesagt’s videos. Since then, the recurring campaign grew more, reaching around $8k. It would be useful to ask LEAF about its retention of donors and other ways in which the organization brings in donations (to itself or other organizations). If the $3k figure is correct, it should have brought in more than $72k from new sources (if the donor retention has been high, as I suspect). If I am correct, this would have allowed LEAF to grow, other than having had an impact through the videos. I will ask for more details about this in the interview.

The crowdfunding campaigns, all together, have brought more or less $384k (with fee accounted for) to nine organizations, seven of which are non-profits. I expect the total figure brought to the field to be significantly larger due to LEAF’s other activities. For example, its investor network may be having a large non-visible impact and could easily repay its recurring campaign multiple times.

Other unknowns are: In total, how much has been donated to LEAF through the recurring campaign so far? How much money donated to the crowdfunding campaigns would have been donated anyway to other organizations?

Less quantifiable sources of impact deriving from advocacy are:

The money it brings to the field that gets donated to other organizations, and for which it’s impossible to establish that the cause has been LEAF’s advocacy.
The attraction of human resources to aging research.
A more positive attitude towards biotechnology, which may drive policy and faster adoption of biotechnologies.
Influencing the decision making of organizations such as WHO, which may drive faster adoption of new biotechnologies, increased funds to aging research, and better international decision-making.

Impact of crowdfunding:

Each crowdfunding project should be evaluated on its own merits, although we can gauge if LEAF’s decision making on what to crowdfund is good. So far, I can comment on the SENS projects that it financed, which I think were among the most effective pursued at SENS, and in the cause area in general (see my evaluation of SENS and my interview with Aubrey de Grey.)

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