Our best-guess estimate of GWWC’s giving multiplier for 2023–2024 was 6x, implying that for the average $1 we spent on our operations, we caused $6 of value to go to highly effective charities or funds.
The Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH) estimated GWWC’s marginal multiplier to be 17.6 % (= 2.18*10^6/​(12.4*10^6)) of GWWC’s multiplier. This suggests GWWC’s marginal multiplier from 2023 to 2024 was 1.06
Why is there such a large difference between these multipliers?
After googling I think I understand a marginal multiplier is what the next dollar donated to GWWC returns but would like to clarify and post this so others such as myself don’t mistake this as a large reporting discrepency.
If I’m understanding the marginal multiplier correctly I would also be interested as to why the return on the next dollar donated is so much lower than the return on the average dollar donated.
Aidan’s response to Vasco’s comment you quoted is a starting point:
I would actually expect our marginal multiplier to be much closer to our average multiplier than the CEARCH method implies. Most importantly, I expect most of our marginal resources are dedicated to identifying and executing on scalable pledge growth strategies. I think this work, in expectation, provides a pretty strong multiplier. By comparison our average multiplier includes some major fixed costs (e.g., related to running our donation platform).
Why is there such a large difference between these multipliers?
After googling I think I understand a marginal multiplier is what the next dollar donated to GWWC returns but would like to clarify and post this so others such as myself don’t mistake this as a large reporting discrepency.
If I’m understanding the marginal multiplier correctly I would also be interested as to why the return on the next dollar donated is so much lower than the return on the average dollar donated.
Aidan’s response to Vasco’s comment you quoted is a starting point: