Alrighty, I’m officially psyched about this, and I have a few more questions.
Owen wrote that the collaborative nature of charities would bar you from buying impact certificates for donations, but that this could be avoided if the charity writes them for donors, and you agreed. Since AMF converts donation into nets 1:1 unless you specifically make an unrestricted donation, I could probably just ask Rob to write a certificate for me over the full amount of the donation, right?
I believe that AMF has significant long-term impact, but you may disagree on the exact degree of significance, so a certificate over a $1,000 donation to AMF might not be priced at exactly $1,000 in the end (ignoring inflation), right? Is there going to be a precedent for such prices of donation impact certificates or should I submit one?
GiveDirectly is currently using 9% for administrative expenses and all that. If I make a $100 donation to them, should I ask for a certificate over the full amount or $91? I don’t want to rip them off impact-wise, but those 9% might be more valuable than any other 9 pp. of my donation.
What proof would you like to see that someone at GiveDirectly actually wrote that impact certificate for me?
I’d use AMF or GiveDirectly for this benchmark, but I’m also thinking about obtaining a certificate from Animal Equality that I’d be hesitant to sell to you for fear of influencing future prices of animal charity donations downward but that I would like to gift to carnivore friends in fractions that I hope offset a month of meat consumption. Is someone already doing this?
What would have to happen for impact certificates to become interesting for the mainstream investor? Would it be enough for a few major funders like Good Ventures, the Gates Foundation, a government, vel sim. announce that they will continually buy certificates for a fixed yearly budget? When will I be able to trade impact certificates at Wall Street?
Also, who is really going to own the impact you buy? Is it going to be owned by some sort of unincorporated voluntary association by the name of “The impact purchase” or by the funders in proportion to the funding they contributed?
I would buy certificates for a donation to AMF (no need to talk with them about it), but not for a bednet distribution. It is fine to offer to sell them; I probably should have included something like this as a benchmark, but I would prefer to buy them from someone else. The price I’m willing offer is unlikely to end up anywhere close to $1000, unless multiple people offer to sell certificates for a donation to amf and they end up competing with each other. If your asking price was much less than $1000 I would be incredulous, though I guess it should be a bit lower because you can take an extra deduction.
Similarly for a donation to givedirectly, I’d buy a certificate for the donation but not the cash transfer itself, so no need to worry about $100 vs $91. I won’t ask for any kind of elaborate proof, a tax receipt is plenty.
Note that I personally am not super optimistic about development, though amf donations may nevertheless be the best option on the table.
I would not bet on certificates ever becoming interesting to mainstream investors (at the point when any given certificate is sufficiently straightforward / commodified that a normal investor would buy it, they aren’t really adding any value and the philanthropist could just by it themselves). If it got big enough there may eventually be loosely grounded speculation on particularly straightforward certificates, which would mostly amount to bets on the size of philanthropy or the longevity of the certificate market.
The certificates are owned by the funders who purchase them. Different funders can have different values, and the purchasing decisions aren’t necessarily made jointly (though we will preserve truthfulness for the seller).
Okay, thanks! Seems I have nine days left. That should be plenty to submit an offer over a benchmark donation certificate. (Update: done.) I think GD is probably the simpler baseline for this.
I hope the fact of it being a benchmark for this system (greater impact) won’t affect the usefulness of the benchmark (lower impact)? Those considerations cancel each other out impact-wise, right? This is getting curiouser and curiouser.
You had a few scenarios in your first post that sounded like they would be interesting for mainstream investors, like funding research in return for a share of the certificate. That sounds like something VCs might do.
Alrighty, I’m officially psyched about this, and I have a few more questions.
Owen wrote that the collaborative nature of charities would bar you from buying impact certificates for donations, but that this could be avoided if the charity writes them for donors, and you agreed. Since AMF converts donation into nets 1:1 unless you specifically make an unrestricted donation, I could probably just ask Rob to write a certificate for me over the full amount of the donation, right?
I believe that AMF has significant long-term impact, but you may disagree on the exact degree of significance, so a certificate over a $1,000 donation to AMF might not be priced at exactly $1,000 in the end (ignoring inflation), right? Is there going to be a precedent for such prices of donation impact certificates or should I submit one?
GiveDirectly is currently using 9% for administrative expenses and all that. If I make a $100 donation to them, should I ask for a certificate over the full amount or $91? I don’t want to rip them off impact-wise, but those 9% might be more valuable than any other 9 pp. of my donation.
What proof would you like to see that someone at GiveDirectly actually wrote that impact certificate for me?
I’d use AMF or GiveDirectly for this benchmark, but I’m also thinking about obtaining a certificate from Animal Equality that I’d be hesitant to sell to you for fear of influencing future prices of animal charity donations downward but that I would like to gift to carnivore friends in fractions that I hope offset a month of meat consumption. Is someone already doing this?
What would have to happen for impact certificates to become interesting for the mainstream investor? Would it be enough for a few major funders like Good Ventures, the Gates Foundation, a government, vel sim. announce that they will continually buy certificates for a fixed yearly budget? When will I be able to trade impact certificates at Wall Street?
Also, who is really going to own the impact you buy? Is it going to be owned by some sort of unincorporated voluntary association by the name of “The impact purchase” or by the funders in proportion to the funding they contributed?
I would buy certificates for a donation to AMF (no need to talk with them about it), but not for a bednet distribution. It is fine to offer to sell them; I probably should have included something like this as a benchmark, but I would prefer to buy them from someone else. The price I’m willing offer is unlikely to end up anywhere close to $1000, unless multiple people offer to sell certificates for a donation to amf and they end up competing with each other. If your asking price was much less than $1000 I would be incredulous, though I guess it should be a bit lower because you can take an extra deduction.
Similarly for a donation to givedirectly, I’d buy a certificate for the donation but not the cash transfer itself, so no need to worry about $100 vs $91. I won’t ask for any kind of elaborate proof, a tax receipt is plenty.
Note that I personally am not super optimistic about development, though amf donations may nevertheless be the best option on the table.
I would not bet on certificates ever becoming interesting to mainstream investors (at the point when any given certificate is sufficiently straightforward / commodified that a normal investor would buy it, they aren’t really adding any value and the philanthropist could just by it themselves). If it got big enough there may eventually be loosely grounded speculation on particularly straightforward certificates, which would mostly amount to bets on the size of philanthropy or the longevity of the certificate market.
The certificates are owned by the funders who purchase them. Different funders can have different values, and the purchasing decisions aren’t necessarily made jointly (though we will preserve truthfulness for the seller).
Okay, thanks! Seems I have nine days left. That should be plenty to submit an offer over a benchmark donation certificate. (Update: done.) I think GD is probably the simpler baseline for this.
I hope the fact of it being a benchmark for this system (greater impact) won’t affect the usefulness of the benchmark (lower impact)? Those considerations cancel each other out impact-wise, right? This is getting curiouser and curiouser.
You had a few scenarios in your first post that sounded like they would be interesting for mainstream investors, like funding research in return for a share of the certificate. That sounds like something VCs might do.