That’s a good question, and certainly the identity of the matching donor may have played a role in the absence of criticism. However, I do find some differences there that are fairly material to me.
Given that the target for the EA Funds match was EAs, potential donors were presumably on notice that the money in the match pool was pre-committed to charity and would likely be spent on similar types of endeavors if not deployed in the match. Therefore, there’s little reason to think donors would have believed that their participation would have changed the aggregate amounts going toward the long-term future / EA infrastructure. That’s unclear with FarmKind and most classical matches.
Based on this, standard donors would have understood that the sweetener they were offered was a degree of influence over Open Phil’s allocation decisions. That sweetener is also present in the FarmKind offer. It is often not present in classical matching situations, where we assume that the bonus donor would have probably given the same amount to the same charity anyway.
The OP match offer feels less . . . contrived? OP had pre-committed to at least sharply reducing the amount it was giving to LTFF/EAIF, and explained those reasons legibly enough to establish that it would not be making up the difference anyway. It seems clear to me that OP’s sharp reduction in LTFF/EAIF funding was not motivated by a desire to influence third-party spending though then offering a one-time matching mechanism.
Even OP’s decision to offer donor matching has a potential justification other than a desire to influence third-party donations. Specifically, OP (like other big funders) is known to not want to fund too much of an organization, and that desire would be especially strong where OP was planning to cut funding in the near future. If OP’s main goal were to influence other donors, they frankly could have done a lot better job than advertising to the community of people who were already giving to LTFF/EAIF, matching at 2:1, not requiring that the match-eligible funding be from a new/increased donor, etc.[1] In contrast, FarmKind’s expressed purpose (and predominant reason for existence) is to influence third-party donations toward more effective charities.
Another possibly relevant difference is that the OP matching offer was time-limited and atypical, while FarmKind’s offer is perpetual. I’m not sure why this is intuitively of some relevance to me. Is it that I’m more willing to defer to the judgment of an organization that rarely matches, that this particular scenario warrants it? Is it that I think time-limited and atypical match offers are more likely to be counterfactual? Or is this a reaction to me finding a perpetual match to be gimmicky?
Finally, I sense that OP and the expected standard donors in the LTFF/EAIF match are significantly more aligned than FarmKind and its expected standard donors. Apparently any 501(c)(3) can be a donor-selected “favorite” charity there. Even if we think the median FarmKind donor is picking something like a cat/dog shelter, there’s still much less alignment between the donors’ expressed favorite and FarmKind’s objectives in offering the match.
So the OP situation seems directionally closer to a group of funders who are already on the same page trying to cooperate on a joint project, while the FarmKind situation seems more like an effort to divert money from standard donors who aren’t already aligned. Perhaps the clearest indicator here is FarmKind’s request, on the Forum and on its website, that people who were already on board with farmed-animal welfare not made standard donations! So I would expect OP to have acted in closer alignment to its expected standard donors’ interests than FarnKind, merely because it was already aligned with them.
The structure was also quite open to donors merely accelerating donations they were going to make to LTFF/EAIF anyway. And I expect EAs were quite likely to pick up on this.
That’s a good question, and certainly the identity of the matching donor may have played a role in the absence of criticism. However, I do find some differences there that are fairly material to me.
Given that the target for the EA Funds match was EAs, potential donors were presumably on notice that the money in the match pool was pre-committed to charity and would likely be spent on similar types of endeavors if not deployed in the match. Therefore, there’s little reason to think donors would have believed that their participation would have changed the aggregate amounts going toward the long-term future / EA infrastructure. That’s unclear with FarmKind and most classical matches.
Based on this, standard donors would have understood that the sweetener they were offered was a degree of influence over Open Phil’s allocation decisions. That sweetener is also present in the FarmKind offer. It is often not present in classical matching situations, where we assume that the bonus donor would have probably given the same amount to the same charity anyway.
The OP match offer feels less . . . contrived? OP had pre-committed to at least sharply reducing the amount it was giving to LTFF/EAIF, and explained those reasons legibly enough to establish that it would not be making up the difference anyway. It seems clear to me that OP’s sharp reduction in LTFF/EAIF funding was not motivated by a desire to influence third-party spending though then offering a one-time matching mechanism.
Even OP’s decision to offer donor matching has a potential justification other than a desire to influence third-party donations. Specifically, OP (like other big funders) is known to not want to fund too much of an organization, and that desire would be especially strong where OP was planning to cut funding in the near future. If OP’s main goal were to influence other donors, they frankly could have done a lot better job than advertising to the community of people who were already giving to LTFF/EAIF, matching at 2:1, not requiring that the match-eligible funding be from a new/increased donor, etc.[1] In contrast, FarmKind’s expressed purpose (and predominant reason for existence) is to influence third-party donations toward more effective charities.
Another possibly relevant difference is that the OP matching offer was time-limited and atypical, while FarmKind’s offer is perpetual. I’m not sure why this is intuitively of some relevance to me. Is it that I’m more willing to defer to the judgment of an organization that rarely matches, that this particular scenario warrants it? Is it that I think time-limited and atypical match offers are more likely to be counterfactual? Or is this a reaction to me finding a perpetual match to be gimmicky?
Finally, I sense that OP and the expected standard donors in the LTFF/EAIF match are significantly more aligned than FarmKind and its expected standard donors. Apparently any 501(c)(3) can be a donor-selected “favorite” charity there. Even if we think the median FarmKind donor is picking something like a cat/dog shelter, there’s still much less alignment between the donors’ expressed favorite and FarmKind’s objectives in offering the match.
So the OP situation seems directionally closer to a group of funders who are already on the same page trying to cooperate on a joint project, while the FarmKind situation seems more like an effort to divert money from standard donors who aren’t already aligned. Perhaps the clearest indicator here is FarmKind’s request, on the Forum and on its website, that people who were already on board with farmed-animal welfare not made standard donations! So I would expect OP to have acted in closer alignment to its expected standard donors’ interests than FarnKind, merely because it was already aligned with them.
The structure was also quite open to donors merely accelerating donations they were going to make to LTFF/EAIF anyway. And I expect EAs were quite likely to pick up on this.