Making a multi-year commitment is pretty close to borrowing from your future self in order to donate more now.
It’s not exactly that, since the funds can’t be spent immediately (and the recipients will have less than absolute confidence that you will follow through). But if the recipient charities are constrained by the size of their financial buffer then the effect to the charity may be very close to a larger donation up-front. And relative to actually borrowing money to do this you get a better interest rate.
If this reasoning would push you to preferring a multi-year commitment, I don’t see why that would change with the size of donation.
Below points don’t rebut your claims. Rather, they’re a clarification.
By “commitment”, I meant either making public an intention of multi-year donations, and/or notifying the charity in question of this intention. For regular donations of sufficiently small amounts, the impact on the organization’s budget would be negligible. e.g., If I donate ten dollars each month to an organization receiving several million dollars each year, I’m sure they appreciate it appreciates that, but it’s hardly something to contact one of their directors about. If one intends to donate relatively large sums to an organization monthly or yearly, informing them for their own sake seems wise. Knowing what capacity they can operate for the next year when making a budget helps organizations, and if a single donor provides 10% of the funds, a heads-up would be nice.
I’m assuming donors associated with effective altruism may be funding smaller organizations, e.g., the AMF rather than UNICEF. Also, they may want a closer relationship with the organization they’re funding to track effectiveness over time. So, we as donors may have more special relationships with effective charities, impacting how we communicate our intentions to them.
Making a multi-year commitment is pretty close to borrowing from your future self in order to donate more now.
It’s not exactly that, since the funds can’t be spent immediately (and the recipients will have less than absolute confidence that you will follow through). But if the recipient charities are constrained by the size of their financial buffer then the effect to the charity may be very close to a larger donation up-front. And relative to actually borrowing money to do this you get a better interest rate.
If this reasoning would push you to preferring a multi-year commitment, I don’t see why that would change with the size of donation.
Below points don’t rebut your claims. Rather, they’re a clarification.
By “commitment”, I meant either making public an intention of multi-year donations, and/or notifying the charity in question of this intention. For regular donations of sufficiently small amounts, the impact on the organization’s budget would be negligible. e.g., If I donate ten dollars each month to an organization receiving several million dollars each year, I’m sure they appreciate it appreciates that, but it’s hardly something to contact one of their directors about. If one intends to donate relatively large sums to an organization monthly or yearly, informing them for their own sake seems wise. Knowing what capacity they can operate for the next year when making a budget helps organizations, and if a single donor provides 10% of the funds, a heads-up would be nice.
I’m assuming donors associated with effective altruism may be funding smaller organizations, e.g., the AMF rather than UNICEF. Also, they may want a closer relationship with the organization they’re funding to track effectiveness over time. So, we as donors may have more special relationships with effective charities, impacting how we communicate our intentions to them.