Could regular small donations to Facebook Fundraisers increase donations from non-EAs?
The day before Giving Tuesday, I made a donation to a EA Facebook charity that had seen no donations in a few weeks. After I donated to about 3 other people donated within the next 2 hours (well before the Giving Tuesday start time). From what I remember, the total amount increased by more than the minimum amount and the individuals appeared not to be affiliated with EA, so it seems possible that this fundraiser might have somehow been raised to their attention. (Of course it’s possible that with Giving Tuesday approaching they would have donated anyway.)
However, it made think that regularly donating to fundraisers could keep them on people’s feeds inspire them to donate, and that this could be a pretty low-cost experiment to run. Since you can’t see amounts, you could donate the minimum amount on a regular basis (say every month or so—about $60 USD per year). The actual design of the experiment would be fairly straight forward as well: use the previous year as a baseline of activity for a group of EA organisations and then experiment with who donates, when they donate, and different donation amounts. If you want to get more in-depth you could also look at other factors of the individual who donates (i.e. how many FB friends they have).
Experimental design
Using EA Giving Tuesday’s had 28 charities that people could donate to. Of that, you could select 10 charities as your controls, and 10 similar charities (i.e. similar cause, intervention, size) as your experimental group, and recruit 5 volunteer donors per charity to donate once a month on a randomly selected day. They would make the donation without adding any explanation or endorsement.
Then you could use both the previous year’s data and the current year’s controlled charities to compare the effects. You would want to track whether non-volunteer donations or traffic was gained after the volunteer donations.
Caveats: This would be limited to countries where Facebook Fundraising is set up.
Could regular small donations to Facebook Fundraisers increase donations from non-EAs?
The day before Giving Tuesday, I made a donation to a EA Facebook charity that had seen no donations in a few weeks. After I donated to about 3 other people donated within the next 2 hours (well before the Giving Tuesday start time). From what I remember, the total amount increased by more than the minimum amount and the individuals appeared not to be affiliated with EA, so it seems possible that this fundraiser might have somehow been raised to their attention. (Of course it’s possible that with Giving Tuesday approaching they would have donated anyway.)
However, it made think that regularly donating to fundraisers could keep them on people’s feeds inspire them to donate, and that this could be a pretty low-cost experiment to run. Since you can’t see amounts, you could donate the minimum amount on a regular basis (say every month or so—about $60 USD per year). The actual design of the experiment would be fairly straight forward as well: use the previous year as a baseline of activity for a group of EA organisations and then experiment with who donates, when they donate, and different donation amounts. If you want to get more in-depth you could also look at other factors of the individual who donates (i.e. how many FB friends they have).
Experimental design
Using EA Giving Tuesday’s had 28 charities that people could donate to. Of that, you could select 10 charities as your controls, and 10 similar charities (i.e. similar cause, intervention, size) as your experimental group, and recruit 5 volunteer donors per charity to donate once a month on a randomly selected day. They would make the donation without adding any explanation or endorsement.
Then you could use both the previous year’s data and the current year’s controlled charities to compare the effects. You would want to track whether non-volunteer donations or traffic was gained after the volunteer donations.
Caveats: This would be limited to countries where Facebook Fundraising is set up.