In principle this can work OK with consequentialist donors who reason about the costs of delay and the counterfactual impacts of others’ money. The decision problem for consequentialist donors is very complicated though. Also, there is a bunch of negative-sum jockeying which would be nice to eliminate. (Owen suggests encouraging epistmic modesty. That makes sense, but even if the participants were perfect reasoners they would still destroy value in negative sum conflict, and it seems like that’s a more fundamental problem.)
Delay plays a natural role in the naive consequentialist decision procedure. The most enthusiastic donors will give earliest, with less natural donors stepping in only as things get increasingly dire. This kind of works, but the direness is completely unnecessary and it would be nice to do the same thing without e.g. having charities operate on the brink of bankruptcy.
A related problem is the signaling dynamic between fundraisers—who want to convince donors that the need is significant—and donors—who may treat fundraisers’ claims as cheap talk.
One natural solution to all of these issues is for charities to explicitly allocate credit to donors vs. employees vs. volunteers, and for every to try to get as much “credit” as possible. The fraction allocated to donors can then be adjusted to raise the desired amount of money, and the most enthusiastic donors—those willing to donate in exchange for the smallest share of the charity’s impact—will be the ones to donate. This can provide a much more honest signal about charity’s need for funds.
This is not the most realistic solution. But it would be nice to see someone try it some day, e.g. by raising money by selling certificates for their activities. I don’t think the logistics are complicated, and I think the scheme may be a significant improvement over the status quo (with lots of VOI); I think the biggest problem is that it’s not good for morale or donor communications.
In principle this can work OK with consequentialist donors who reason about the costs of delay and the counterfactual impacts of others’ money. The decision problem for consequentialist donors is very complicated though. Also, there is a bunch of negative-sum jockeying which would be nice to eliminate. (Owen suggests encouraging epistmic modesty. That makes sense, but even if the participants were perfect reasoners they would still destroy value in negative sum conflict, and it seems like that’s a more fundamental problem.)
Delay plays a natural role in the naive consequentialist decision procedure. The most enthusiastic donors will give earliest, with less natural donors stepping in only as things get increasingly dire. This kind of works, but the direness is completely unnecessary and it would be nice to do the same thing without e.g. having charities operate on the brink of bankruptcy.
A related problem is the signaling dynamic between fundraisers—who want to convince donors that the need is significant—and donors—who may treat fundraisers’ claims as cheap talk.
One natural solution to all of these issues is for charities to explicitly allocate credit to donors vs. employees vs. volunteers, and for every to try to get as much “credit” as possible. The fraction allocated to donors can then be adjusted to raise the desired amount of money, and the most enthusiastic donors—those willing to donate in exchange for the smallest share of the charity’s impact—will be the ones to donate. This can provide a much more honest signal about charity’s need for funds.
This is not the most realistic solution. But it would be nice to see someone try it some day, e.g. by raising money by selling certificates for their activities. I don’t think the logistics are complicated, and I think the scheme may be a significant improvement over the status quo (with lots of VOI); I think the biggest problem is that it’s not good for morale or donor communications.