I think I’m broadly sympathetic to arguments against EA orgs doing matching, especially for fundraising within EA spaces. But there are some other circumstances I’ve encountered that these critiques never capture well, and I don’t personally feel very negative when I see organizations doing matching due to them.
There is at least one EA sympathetic major animal welfare donor who historically has preferred most their gifts to be only via matching campaigns. While I think they would likely donate these funds anyway, donating to matches run by them (which I believe are a large percentage of matches you see run by animal orgs) would cause counterfactual donations to that specific animal charity. So at least some percentage of matches you see in EA causes funding to move from a less preferred charity to a more preferred one for the matched donors. This matching donor also gives to many projects EAs might view as less effective, so giving to these matches is frequently similarly good to getting matched by Facebook on EA Giving Tuesday.
I think a much larger portion of donation matching than people in EA seem to believe is more like EA Giving Tuesday on Facebook than completely illusory — the funds would go to charity otherwise, but probably somewhat less effective charity. This probably isn’t the majority of donation matches, but I’ve frequently seen donors make their matching gifts somewhat genuinely. I’ve worked at probably 3-4 nonprofits that have run donation matching campaigns, including outside of EA. Only once have I seen a match where the charity expected to get the full amount independent of if the match was met by other donors. Of course, the counterfactual here is how good other donation opportunities for the donor might be, but for an EA organization working with a donor who frequently gives to less effective causes, the situation could be very similar to EA Giving Tuesday matches from Facebook.
I’ve frequently seen matching campaigns as a way to pitch the matcher on making a larger gift, not the other way around. This obviously isn’t transparent / explicitly said, but many normie charities explicitly will go “do a matching campaign!” to a potential major donor, to get them more interested/increase the amount they’ll give. Insofar as people believe the match is real, the net effect of this is the matching donor giving more than they would otherwise to that specific charity, and the matched donors also having some level of real counterfactual match.
For matches, it seems like sometimes, it just straightforwardly would increase the amount the matcher donates (because they are excited about the match, etc). So while the match might not be a true 1:1 match, it probably does counterfactually increase the funding going to the group and charity overall, even if the floor for the increase is 0.
There is a comment on LessWrong that suggests that matching is good for tax reasons for nonprofits. I don’t think this comment is correct on the facts or reason for matches, but donor diversity does help nonprofits pass the public support test, which reduces administrative costs, and matches probably do help organizations achieve this by increasing donor diversity.
I also think I generally feel bad vibes about this kind of post. I don’t know how to reconcile this with the EA I want to see, but if I imagine starting a new potentially cool project aimed at making the EA ecosystem more funding diverse, and immediately get a prominent person making a really big public critique of it, it would make me feel pretty horrible/bad about being on the forum / pursuing this kind of project within EA. That being said, I don’t think projects are above criticism, or that EA should back off having this kind of lens. But it just makes me feel a bit sad overall, and I agree with another commenter that donation matching debates often feel like isolated demands for rigour and are blown way out of proportion, without the potential benefits (more money for effective charity) being considered.
Maybe I feel something like this kind of critique is great, and debates about matching are great, but this as a top-level post seems a lot more intense than comments on the FarmKind announcement post, and the latter seems like the right level of attention for the importance of the criticism?
I think a much larger portion of donation matching than people in EA seem to believe is more like EA Giving Tuesday on Facebook than completely illusory — the funds would go to charity otherwise, but probably somewhat less effective charity.
Moreover, through whose eyes do we assess this?
Suppose Open Phil decides to match $1MM in new-donor, small/medium donations to effective animal-welfare charities. It announces that any unused portion of the match will go to an AI safety organization. For example, it might think the AI safety org is marginally more effective but would prefer $1MM to the effective animal charities plus influencing $1MM that would otherwise go to dog/cat shelters. That does not strike me as manipulative or uncooperative; it would be an honest reflection of Open Phil’s values and judgment.
If Joe EA views both the animal charities and the AI safety org as roughly equal in desirability, the match may not be counterfactual. But through the eyes of Tom Animal Lover (likely along with the vast majority of the US population), this would be almost completely counterfactual. Tom values animal welfare strongly enough (and/or is indifferent enough to AI) that the magnitude of difference between the animal charity and the AI charity dwarfs the magnitude of difference between the AI charity and setting the money on fire.
All that is to say that if our focus is on respecting donors, I submit that we should avoid rejecting good matching opportunities merely because they are not counterfactual based on our own judgment about the relative merits of the charities involved. Doing so would go beyond affording donors respect and honesty and into the realm of infantilizing them.
I do think there are ways of doing donation matching that are more real than others, but at least in the case of EA organizations I would like to see the organization be public about this so donors can make informed tradeoffs. If I think $1 going to X is 70% as valuable as $1 going to Y, but X advertises 100% matching campaign, the details of the campaign matter if I’m going to make an informed decision on giving my dollar to X vs Y. For example, the organization could say what would happen with the money if it was not matched and whether past matches had been fully depleted.
In the case of FarmKind they are public about the details, which is great and I’m glad they do. Except that because all the money in the bonus fund is going to go to effective charities regardless of whether others donate, I think the first two considerations you give (match funders who also support less effective charities; matches sometimes don’t run out) don’t apply here.
I’m not happy about bringing this to a top-level post, but I also don’t really see other good options. I had previously raised issues with this general approach as misleading donors and the creators of FarmKind were aware of these arguments and decided to continue anyway. When Ben and I raised some of these issues in the comments on their announcement, my understanding was that FarmKind was not considering making any changes in response to our objections and considered the matter closed (ex: “That’s all the time I have to spend on this topic.”).
without the potential benefits (more money for effective charity) being considered
I’m confused why you’d say this—I mention this several times in my post as a reason for donation matching?
I’m confused why you’d say this—I mention this several times in my post as a reason for donation matching?
Yeah, I agree I was ambiguous here — I mean that it might be useful to see the tradeoffs more directly — e.g. the scale of the costs anti-matching people see against the theoretical upside of running matches (especially if the effects are potentially not major, as David Reinstein suggests). I think I see matching campaigns as much more like marketing than dishonesty though, and if I felt like they were more like dishonesty I might be more against them.
One thing I’ve thought about since writing my original comment: I think plausibly the degree to which one should think matching is bad ought to be somewhat tied to what the organization is doing. E.g. The Humane League or GiveWell aren’t trying to promote effective giving generally (maybe GiveWell a bit more) — they’re trying to move funds to specific impactful things, and so I maybe think our tolerance for hyperbolic marketing ought to potentially be a bit higher. I could see the case for an organization that was dedicated to effective giving specifically (e.g. Giving What We Can?) not doing matching due to the issues you outline as being stronger, since one of their goals is helping donors think critically about charitable giving. Maybe GiveWell is more ambiguously between those two poles though. Similarly, is FarmKind’s goal to move money to theoretically impactful animal groups, or to promote effective giving? Not really sure, but I’d guess more the former.
I think I’m broadly sympathetic to arguments against EA orgs doing matching, especially for fundraising within EA spaces. But there are some other circumstances I’ve encountered that these critiques never capture well, and I don’t personally feel very negative when I see organizations doing matching due to them.
There is at least one EA sympathetic major animal welfare donor who historically has preferred most their gifts to be only via matching campaigns. While I think they would likely donate these funds anyway, donating to matches run by them (which I believe are a large percentage of matches you see run by animal orgs) would cause counterfactual donations to that specific animal charity. So at least some percentage of matches you see in EA causes funding to move from a less preferred charity to a more preferred one for the matched donors. This matching donor also gives to many projects EAs might view as less effective, so giving to these matches is frequently similarly good to getting matched by Facebook on EA Giving Tuesday.
I think a much larger portion of donation matching than people in EA seem to believe is more like EA Giving Tuesday on Facebook than completely illusory — the funds would go to charity otherwise, but probably somewhat less effective charity. This probably isn’t the majority of donation matches, but I’ve frequently seen donors make their matching gifts somewhat genuinely. I’ve worked at probably 3-4 nonprofits that have run donation matching campaigns, including outside of EA. Only once have I seen a match where the charity expected to get the full amount independent of if the match was met by other donors. Of course, the counterfactual here is how good other donation opportunities for the donor might be, but for an EA organization working with a donor who frequently gives to less effective causes, the situation could be very similar to EA Giving Tuesday matches from Facebook.
I’ve frequently seen matching campaigns as a way to pitch the matcher on making a larger gift, not the other way around. This obviously isn’t transparent / explicitly said, but many normie charities explicitly will go “do a matching campaign!” to a potential major donor, to get them more interested/increase the amount they’ll give. Insofar as people believe the match is real, the net effect of this is the matching donor giving more than they would otherwise to that specific charity, and the matched donors also having some level of real counterfactual match.
For matches, it seems like sometimes, it just straightforwardly would increase the amount the matcher donates (because they are excited about the match, etc). So while the match might not be a true 1:1 match, it probably does counterfactually increase the funding going to the group and charity overall, even if the floor for the increase is 0.
There is a comment on LessWrong that suggests that matching is good for tax reasons for nonprofits. I don’t think this comment is correct on the facts or reason for matches, but donor diversity does help nonprofits pass the public support test, which reduces administrative costs, and matches probably do help organizations achieve this by increasing donor diversity.
I also think I generally feel bad vibes about this kind of post. I don’t know how to reconcile this with the EA I want to see, but if I imagine starting a new potentially cool project aimed at making the EA ecosystem more funding diverse, and immediately get a prominent person making a really big public critique of it, it would make me feel pretty horrible/bad about being on the forum / pursuing this kind of project within EA. That being said, I don’t think projects are above criticism, or that EA should back off having this kind of lens. But it just makes me feel a bit sad overall, and I agree with another commenter that donation matching debates often feel like isolated demands for rigour and are blown way out of proportion, without the potential benefits (more money for effective charity) being considered.
Maybe I feel something like this kind of critique is great, and debates about matching are great, but this as a top-level post seems a lot more intense than comments on the FarmKind announcement post, and the latter seems like the right level of attention for the importance of the criticism?
Moreover, through whose eyes do we assess this?
Suppose Open Phil decides to match $1MM in new-donor, small/medium donations to effective animal-welfare charities. It announces that any unused portion of the match will go to an AI safety organization. For example, it might think the AI safety org is marginally more effective but would prefer $1MM to the effective animal charities plus influencing $1MM that would otherwise go to dog/cat shelters. That does not strike me as manipulative or uncooperative; it would be an honest reflection of Open Phil’s values and judgment.
If Joe EA views both the animal charities and the AI safety org as roughly equal in desirability, the match may not be counterfactual. But through the eyes of Tom Animal Lover (likely along with the vast majority of the US population), this would be almost completely counterfactual. Tom values animal welfare strongly enough (and/or is indifferent enough to AI) that the magnitude of difference between the animal charity and the AI charity dwarfs the magnitude of difference between the AI charity and setting the money on fire.
All that is to say that if our focus is on respecting donors, I submit that we should avoid rejecting good matching opportunities merely because they are not counterfactual based on our own judgment about the relative merits of the charities involved. Doing so would go beyond affording donors respect and honesty and into the realm of infantilizing them.
I do think there are ways of doing donation matching that are more real than others, but at least in the case of EA organizations I would like to see the organization be public about this so donors can make informed tradeoffs. If I think $1 going to X is 70% as valuable as $1 going to Y, but X advertises 100% matching campaign, the details of the campaign matter if I’m going to make an informed decision on giving my dollar to X vs Y. For example, the organization could say what would happen with the money if it was not matched and whether past matches had been fully depleted.
In the case of FarmKind they are public about the details, which is great and I’m glad they do. Except that because all the money in the bonus fund is going to go to effective charities regardless of whether others donate, I think the first two considerations you give (match funders who also support less effective charities; matches sometimes don’t run out) don’t apply here.
I’m not happy about bringing this to a top-level post, but I also don’t really see other good options. I had previously raised issues with this general approach as misleading donors and the creators of FarmKind were aware of these arguments and decided to continue anyway. When Ben and I raised some of these issues in the comments on their announcement, my understanding was that FarmKind was not considering making any changes in response to our objections and considered the matter closed (ex: “That’s all the time I have to spend on this topic.”).
I’m confused why you’d say this—I mention this several times in my post as a reason for donation matching?
Yeah, I agree I was ambiguous here — I mean that it might be useful to see the tradeoffs more directly — e.g. the scale of the costs anti-matching people see against the theoretical upside of running matches (especially if the effects are potentially not major, as David Reinstein suggests). I think I see matching campaigns as much more like marketing than dishonesty though, and if I felt like they were more like dishonesty I might be more against them.
One thing I’ve thought about since writing my original comment: I think plausibly the degree to which one should think matching is bad ought to be somewhat tied to what the organization is doing. E.g. The Humane League or GiveWell aren’t trying to promote effective giving generally (maybe GiveWell a bit more) — they’re trying to move funds to specific impactful things, and so I maybe think our tolerance for hyperbolic marketing ought to potentially be a bit higher. I could see the case for an organization that was dedicated to effective giving specifically (e.g. Giving What We Can?) not doing matching due to the issues you outline as being stronger, since one of their goals is helping donors think critically about charitable giving. Maybe GiveWell is more ambiguously between those two poles though. Similarly, is FarmKind’s goal to move money to theoretically impactful animal groups, or to promote effective giving? Not really sure, but I’d guess more the former.