Request for Proposals: Effective Giving
We are excited to announce a new Request for Proposals (RFP) for effective giving organizations, defined as initiatives that raise funds for highly effective charities. Through this RFP, we aim to identify and support additional efforts in the effective giving space and streamline the application process for potential grantees.
Motivation
Our Effective Giving & Careers Fund has historically supported a variety of effective giving organizations across multiple countries. Examples of current grantees include Giving What We Can, Effektiv Spenden, and Doneer Effectief (you can find other recent grants here).
Effective giving currently comprises ~70% of our portfolio, reflecting its central role in our broader funding strategy. In the past few years, we have been surprised by the growth of the effective giving ecosystem: new initiatives have launched worldwide, and existing efforts have successfully channeled substantial funds to promising opportunities.
Based on our internal analysis, we estimate that our current grantees deliver an average adjusted return on donations of 6x across our effective giving portfolio, with some grantees as high as ~10x. We believe that additional organizations weâre not currently supporting may be poised to generate similar impact. Through this RFP, we hope to:
Invite and encourage new and existing effective giving organizations to apply for funding.
Simplify and standardize the application process for both applicants and our internal review team.
Better understand the current funding needs and gaps within the effective giving space.
Eligibility
Any organization contributing to raising funds for effective charities can apply. This includes, but is not limited to:
Donation platforms (and associated outreach efforts) in their respective operating countries.
Organizations advising (U)HNW donors on charitable giving.
Organizations recruiting pledgers (i.e. those encouraging individuals to pledge a percentage of their income to charity).
Organizations using matching or multiplier schemes to encourage donations to more effective charities.
Groups raising awareness of effective giving or funneling new donors to other effective giving organizations.
Additional considerations
Our current grantees raise funds across a variety of focus areas that align with Coefficient Givingâs strategic priorities (global health and development, farm animal welfare, global catastrophic risks). Any organization raising funds for those areas is welcome to apply.
Your organization should be able to justify how it can cost-effectively use additional funding.
Existing grantees on renewable grants will continue to be assessed for general support on their regular schedule. However, they are welcome to apply for top-up funding if they believe they can utilize additional funds cost-effectively. Top-up funds awarded through this RFP will be a one-time supplement rather than a permanent increase to future grant renewals.
Funding amount and grant structure
In general, we think unrestricted funding for general operating support can be the most valuable funding type, so we expect to provide that by default where possible. That said, we are open to funding specific projects or needs; also, other factors such as the granteeâs corporate structure may influence how we structure our grant.
We aim to represent at most 50% of operational funding for more established organizations, but are comfortable contributing to a larger percentage of total funding for newer organizations. Please keep that in mind when you apply for funding.
We expect most grants to be for one or two years and non-renewable by default.
We donât have a predetermined minimum or maximum number of applications we intend to fund. We are keen to support as many promising opportunities as possible.
Ideas weâd be excited about:
New country-level organizations in promising markets (e.g. higher-income Asian countries)
Professionalized marketing support for effective giving organizations
Growth and donor advisory capacity, especially for high-net-worth donors
More ambitious partnerships with mainstream philanthropy
Targeted outreach to high-influence audiences (e.g. celebrities, public figures)
Working with corporate social responsibility arms of companies to direct funds to effective charities
Partnering with donor-advised fund platforms to nudge donors toward cost-effective giving at the point of allocation
Workplace giving campaigns and payroll giving integrations to reach donors earlier in their giving journey
Selection criteria and evaluation process
We expect to consider the following factors in our assessment:
Track record (if applicable). This will include, but not be limited to, our estimated return on donations
Strength of the theory of change and plans moving forward
Scalability and growth potential
Geographic or strategic fit with our current portfolio
Our application was designed to be comprehensive and provide all of the information we think we will need to assess the candidates. That being said, we may reach out to certain applicants for additional information.
Application logistics
You can apply using this link. If useful, you can refer to this sample application using a mix of mock and real data. Applications are due by June 26, 2026, at 11:59 pm PT.
We aim to notify all applicants of their status by the end of August. Due to the anticipated high number of applications, we wonât be able to provide individualized feedback to organizations we decide not to fund.
If you have any questions related to this RFP, please feel free to contact Melanie Basnak at melanie.basnak@coefficientgiving.org or Kearney Capuano at kearney.capuano@coefficientgiving.org. Please note that we will not be fielding questions after June 15.
Very interesting RFP.
Could you share evidence for the
This seems surprisingly high in light of other research I have seen on counterfactial returns to donor matches and other standard interventions., and the idea that charities will already want to invest money in efforts to maximize donations, nearly up to the point where an additional dollar invested in marketing yields $1 in additional contributions.
If there is truly this kind of multiplier that would suggest that Effective Giving organizations are dramatically, drastically underfunded.
If an investment in an organization can yield anything over 1x in counterfactual donations, this would be worth funding.
Even more so, if we assume that there are indirect benefits and spillovers to getting people to make effective donations. E.g., Effective giving organizations that convince people to donate to global health charities are likely to be simultaneously convincing them to be more supportive of foreign aid and pro-development trade policies. The things that convince people to donate or pledge for effective animal welfare charities are also likely to convince people to change their diet and support animal welfare legislatio, etc.
(Flagging I work at CG, but not on this team!)
Curious what you think of the Giving What We Can impact evaluation? I helped write the first one, which claimed that over the 2020â2022 period it had an average multiplier of 30x. I think the more recent one claimed it had a 6x multiplier.
I think thereâs an important distinction between average and marginal effectiveness â the above claim seems true in the abstract for orgs that can move >$1 on the margin but not on average. And IMO itâs much harder to estimate marginal cost-effectiveness, because itâs forward looking, whereas historical average cost-effectiveness is a bit easier.
Thanks, Iâll try to gave a look at that and comment (I might have seen it in the past).
What you say about average vs. marginal seems true in principle but
A. âwe estimate that our current grantees deliver an average adjusted return on donations of 6x across our effective giving portfolioâ
Saying âdeliverâ to me present tense implies âdeliver and will continue to deliverâ, suggesting the marginal returns should be comparable.
B. Given the nature of what these funds go for and what these organizations are doing, to me it indeed seems intuitive to expect marginal returns to be fairly similar to the previous returns.
Starting new ~regional initiatives: Okay, once the markets are saturated for âfounding new effective giving orgs in new areasâ there should be diminishing returns. But it would seem like that should already have been picked up by the data from the most recent crop.
For marketing and advertising activities, I even more expect the returns to perhaps decrease somewhat with future expenditure, but in a sort of gradual, continual way.
I might be overlooking some aspects of what the organizations and these grants are doing ⊠But generally, I tend to expect that more money brings diminishing returns, but only gradually diminishing returns. So if Estonia was seen as the ânext most promising targetâ, and founding an organization there had 5x returns, and Latvia is the next one on the priority list, you might expect that to have 4.5x returns.
This could still be (and Iâd guess is?) referring to the past and expected future average cost-effectiveness.
I also think that itâd be pretty reasonable to have a bar higher than 1x. (I donât know what CGâs bar actually is.) There are many contentious choices you make when coming up with a multiplier â e.g., how do you discount future donations, how do you discount donations to less cost-effective charities, do you adjust for the opportunity cost of the labor of the employees who could otherwise do impactful work or eartn to give, etc. Thereâs also just a huge amount of uncertainty in various places, especially around counterfactuality. So given all that, I think itâz reasonable to just zoom out and think: hmm, this intervention looks great overall, but I think the multiplier model isnât robust enough to justify further support of organizations that it estimates only have a 1.1x multiplier.
If itâs average future that still could justify a 1x bar, depending on what weâre averaging over.
I agree with the concerns about uncertainty, displacing less-effective charities, and counterfactuality. But Iâd rather see attempts to adjust the estimate for that rather than ~âweâre saying 6x but not really, probably lower after considering thisâ. This will help avoid temptations towards soldier/âpromotion mentality, and make it more comparable to other estimates.
(RE âopportunity cost of the labor of the employees who could otherwise do impactful work or eartn to give, etcââif EA people are putting in free labor into these efforts, that should also be factored into the cost estimates, naturally, not just the direct CG investment.)
I donât think it does. Itâs conceptually coherent for an organization to have a very high average cost-effectiveness while also having a marginal cost-effectiveness below 1x. For this reason, I donât think you should have a âbarâ for average cost-effectiveness. (You might be making the point that if the average cost-effectiveness is above 1, then you are better off making the grant than burning the money, and so it clears a bar in that sense, but itâs not clear itâs worth making the grant vs making a potentially much smaller grant, and so itâs not a helpful âbarâ in the sense the term is usually used.)
Sure, but these are hard to account for. I agree itâs better to adjust the model when itâs possible, but youâll still be left with a model that has a tonne of uncertainty.
Yep! I wasnât trying to suggest you shouldnât account for that.
I want to make sure weâre talking about the same thing here. Iâd be want to know the cost-effectiveness in terms âfor each $1 we spend to promote givingâ (via starting new orgs or doing more fundraising) âhow much do we raise in truly counterfactual donations to the most effective charitiesâ and Iâd want this to be net of any donations or effective work that might be crowded out.
E.g., suppose Joe lives in the USA and earns $100k per year. Without our spending Joe, would not give anything to charity and would also not be doing socially-useful work. We spend $1 on ads and this causes Joe (a rich guy) to give $1.50 to The Humane League or The Malaria Consortium, without affecting anyone elseâs behavior. From the PoV of ~âthe EA communityâ we have earned our $1 back plus gained an additional 50 cents. Again from the global EA community perspective, wouldnât we always want to do this?
The example you gave is about marginal cost-effectiveness (we spend â$1 on adsâ). I agree that then, in this abstract/âidealized case, you should spend the $1 on ads. I think all the uncertainty you would realistically have makes it less obvious, though.
But average cost-effectiveness would be more like, we spent $1,000,000 on an organization that did a bunch of different activities, and we think that led to $1,500,000 counterfactually going to charity. This seems good on average, but thereâs a further question of whether we should give another $1 to the organization. And I think that the 6x figure of the orignal post is referring to average cost-effectiveness (âour current grantees deliver an average adjusted return on donations of 6x across our effective giving portfolioâ). This is at least conceptually coherent with the bar for the marginal $ being closer to 1x.
I think you might find the GWWC impact evals interesting, they go into an enormous amount of depth on all these issues.
Okay, thank you. I aim to take a look at these evals and hopefully learn something and maybe give some useful feedback.
And one more point which maybe is obvious but just to get it out there.
I agree that a large amount of uncertainty will persist, but I suppose we should aim to do the modeling and adjustments is mean zero. E.g., weâd put in a large adjustment for âpotential non-counterfactualityâ for things like âmaybe the people who pledged would have pledged later on anyways and the fact that they pledged and donated now means that theyâre likely to end their pledges earlier.â
I suspect that the impact evaluations indeed consider things like these, and I am looking forward to going over them when I have a moment. Thanks for engaging.