Congrats on raising a successful fundraiser. I do suspect Ben Todd is right that people give based on the personal connection regardless of the actual charity, as long as it can be plausibly spun in a good way.
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One thing I’d flag though is that your key piece of evidence is:
they both raised US$14.3/person contacted, while I raised US$14.0/person contacted
...but this number is sensitive to the number of people you contacted, because there’s diminishing marginal returns to contacting more people.
In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don’t have that number (yet).
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Most of the money came from a few people who I would call semi-EAs – my impression was that they sort of knew about EA ideas, but that they weren’t part of the community
This is another aspect that could skew things. Many fundraisers don’t have access to a bunch of semi-EAs and it’s possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others. It’s possible that you may have gotten more non-EAs to donate if the charity were AMF.
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if you think that donations to a weird charity are at least twice as valuable as donations to the best normal charity, and you want to run a birthday/Christmas fundraiser, it seems worth it to fundraise for the weird charity despite the possibility of eliciting lower donations per person contacted.
I think this is the best evidence—if you do think your charity is much better, then it does offset a large decline in total money fundraised! And I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.
they both raised US$14.3/person contacted, while I raised US$14.0/person contacted
...but this number is sensitive to the number of people you contacted, because there’s diminishing marginal returns to contacting more people.
I think that this is a problem, but not necessarily as big a problem as you think it is. The two AMF fundraisers had very different numbers of people contacted (63 vs 149), and still had almost identical funding elicited per person contacted. My guess would be that the likelihood of someone donating is closely related to how well you know the person, and that that would be why additional people contacted would be less valuable. If this is right, and I just know fewer people than you do, then it could be that my marginal contactee was just as close to me as your marginal contactee is to you.
In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don’t have that number (yet).
Do you mean comparing my amount raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who contacted about as many people as I did? The problem with that is that it wouldn’t account for variation in how many people I’m close with. I’m not really sure how to get rid of this factor, except by giving many people the same instructions about what sort of person to contact, and seeing how well they do fundraising for REG and AMF.
Most of the money came from a few people who I would call semi-EAs – my impression was that they sort of knew about EA ideas, but that they weren’t part of the community
This is another aspect that could skew things. Many fundraisers don’t have access to a bunch of semi-EAs and it’s possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others. It’s possible that you may have gotten more non-EAs to donate if the charity were AMF.
This is also an important factor. Actually, since the EA outreach pipeline tends to start by talking about effective global poverty/health interventions, my guess is that semi-EAs might also be more enthusiastic about AMF than REG, and that I just know atypical semi-EAs. In general, details about the friend group seem like they will impact how well fundraisers go.
If you do think your charity is much better, then it does offset a large decline in total money fundraised! And I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.
Yeah, this is really the most important argument in favour of weird charity fundraisers. I see a lot of room for arguments (like yours) for something on the order of a 10% dropoff in money raised, but I think that this is good evidence against a >50% dropoff (which I think was a priori plausible).
If this is right, and I just know fewer people than you do, then it could be that my marginal contactee was just as close to me as your marginal contactee is to you.
My initial reaction is that this is unlikely because I attempted to contact basically everyone I could, even people I hadn’t talked to in 4+ years.
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In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don’t have that number (yet).
Do you mean comparing my amount raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who contacted about as many people as I did? The problem with that is that it wouldn’t account for variation in how many people I’m close with. I’m not really sure how to get rid of this factor, except by giving many people the same instructions about what sort of person to contact, and seeing how well they do fundraising for REG and AMF.
Yeah, it also doesn’t count for variations in wealth among friend groups.
I think it could be useful to look at both % of people who donate and total money raised then, just to get different perspectives.
Keep in mind that it’s possible that maybe your friends would have donated more to AMF, even if the same number gave, so the absolute amount does matter some.
Congrats on raising a successful fundraiser. I do suspect Ben Todd is right that people give based on the personal connection regardless of the actual charity, as long as it can be plausibly spun in a good way.
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One thing I’d flag though is that your key piece of evidence is:
...but this number is sensitive to the number of people you contacted, because there’s diminishing marginal returns to contacting more people.
In particular, a better number would be to compare the amount you raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who also contacted their friends individually. Unfortunately I don’t have that number (yet).
-
This is another aspect that could skew things. Many fundraisers don’t have access to a bunch of semi-EAs and it’s possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others. It’s possible that you may have gotten more non-EAs to donate if the charity were AMF.
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I think this is the best evidence—if you do think your charity is much better, then it does offset a large decline in total money fundraised! And I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.
I think that this is a problem, but not necessarily as big a problem as you think it is. The two AMF fundraisers had very different numbers of people contacted (63 vs 149), and still had almost identical funding elicited per person contacted. My guess would be that the likelihood of someone donating is closely related to how well you know the person, and that that would be why additional people contacted would be less valuable. If this is right, and I just know fewer people than you do, then it could be that my marginal contactee was just as close to me as your marginal contactee is to you.
Do you mean comparing my amount raised to the median amount raised by other fundraisers who contacted about as many people as I did? The problem with that is that it wouldn’t account for variation in how many people I’m close with. I’m not really sure how to get rid of this factor, except by giving many people the same instructions about what sort of person to contact, and seeing how well they do fundraising for REG and AMF.
This is also an important factor. Actually, since the EA outreach pipeline tends to start by talking about effective global poverty/health interventions, my guess is that semi-EAs might also be more enthusiastic about AMF than REG, and that I just know atypical semi-EAs. In general, details about the friend group seem like they will impact how well fundraisers go.
Yeah, this is really the most important argument in favour of weird charity fundraisers. I see a lot of room for arguments (like yours) for something on the order of a 10% dropoff in money raised, but I think that this is good evidence against a >50% dropoff (which I think was a priori plausible).
My initial reaction is that this is unlikely because I attempted to contact basically everyone I could, even people I hadn’t talked to in 4+ years.
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Yeah, it also doesn’t count for variations in wealth among friend groups.
I think it could be useful to look at both % of people who donate and total money raised then, just to get different perspectives.
Keep in mind that it’s possible that maybe your friends would have donated more to AMF, even if the same number gave, so the absolute amount does matter some.
(...who wouldn’t be donating the same amount anyway.)
And yes, this appears to be true.
It seems quite likely, absent further evidence.
Likewise, I think we’d need further evidence to say that.