One thing to bear in mind is that there will naturally be quite a bit of variance in fundraising ratios. There was a factor-of-20 difference between median returns from standard methods, and I’m sure quite a bit of variance for each method according to implementation. I think the GWWC team is quite talented and it would be hard for an arbitrary charity to duplicate it at the same salaries, which might make you think they’d be in the positive tail for the method chosen.
However, I think you’re right that “no conflict-of-interest” probably doesn’t carry you so far by itself.
I think the main new thing that GWWC has been doing is asking people to donate a large amount on an ongoing basis. Compared to normal ongoing giving which might be £5/month for five years, the GWWC pledge may be two or three orders of magnitude larger. The question is how much lower the rate of getting people is. My prior uncertainty on this would be extremely large—it’s obvious that it will be lower, but unclear whether just a bit or 6+ orders of magnitude.
I think the big ask means people thinking seriously about their lives, rather than making an in-the-moment decision (as I think most charitable donations are). I think it’s also much less plausible for individual charities to get this commitment from people than a general encouragement to give more—this is the proper force of my previous “no conflict-of-interest” point, but it’s broader than that because the GWWC pledge also doesn’t involve binding your future judgements about which charities actually are best.
Now, I’m not sure this is entirely new. People have tried to persuade others to be generous before. But it’s plausible that such efforts have in fact always been very effective. Because of a lack of data, and because no individual charity could scale this up to get large income for themselves, it’s not clear that the market would have been saturated even if it always were a great activity.
One thing to bear in mind is that there will naturally be quite a bit of variance in fundraising ratios. There was a factor-of-20 difference between median returns from standard methods, and I’m sure quite a bit of variance for each method according to implementation. I think the GWWC team is quite talented and it would be hard for an arbitrary charity to duplicate it at the same salaries, which might make you think they’d be in the positive tail for the method chosen.
However, I think you’re right that “no conflict-of-interest” probably doesn’t carry you so far by itself.
I think the main new thing that GWWC has been doing is asking people to donate a large amount on an ongoing basis. Compared to normal ongoing giving which might be £5/month for five years, the GWWC pledge may be two or three orders of magnitude larger. The question is how much lower the rate of getting people is. My prior uncertainty on this would be extremely large—it’s obvious that it will be lower, but unclear whether just a bit or 6+ orders of magnitude.
I think the big ask means people thinking seriously about their lives, rather than making an in-the-moment decision (as I think most charitable donations are). I think it’s also much less plausible for individual charities to get this commitment from people than a general encouragement to give more—this is the proper force of my previous “no conflict-of-interest” point, but it’s broader than that because the GWWC pledge also doesn’t involve binding your future judgements about which charities actually are best.
Now, I’m not sure this is entirely new. People have tried to persuade others to be generous before. But it’s plausible that such efforts have in fact always been very effective. Because of a lack of data, and because no individual charity could scale this up to get large income for themselves, it’s not clear that the market would have been saturated even if it always were a great activity.
Note: Ben’s answer is better (more comprehensive and more to the point) than mine.