You are right that if someone only cares about their favorite charity, then donating through GM doesn’t give them any value. After all, GM never helps you to get more value for your favorite charity than you could get by donating directly to your favorite charity. But we also don’t claim that we do that. On our website, we say: “Give to both your favorite charity and a super-effective charity recommended by experts. We’ll add to your donations.” (The EA newsletter text frames things slightly differently and perhaps that’s indeed not the optimal way of promoting GM.)
But if someone cares about both their favorite charity and about giving effectively, donating through GM can get them more value. Keep in mind that our target audience are non-EA donors, many of whom haven’t heard of EA or about our highly effective charities before.
In our studies we find that many non-EA people (ca. half of our MechanicalTurk participants!) are willing to split their donation 50⁄50 between their favorite and a highly effective charity when they are offered such a splitting option even if no matching is offered. This shows that surprisingly many people do have a preference to give to effective charities. They just don’t know about effective charities yet and don’t consider the option to split their donation. The point of GM is to inform non-EA donors about effective charities and offer them this splitting option.
Suppose you have a donor who cares about their favorite charity and a very effective charity. They want to give 90% to their favorite and 10% to the effective charity. They could either donate directly to these two charities or they could donate through GM. If they donate through GM, the system adds on top of their donations.
The part that is added on top of their favorite charity is clearly counterfactual because the matching funder wouldn’t have given to that charity. The part that is added on top of the effective charity is less counterfactual because the matching funder would have given anyway to effective charities. But in expectation it is partly counterfactual because the donor can influence which specific effective charity this part of the funding should go to (and many donors may care much more about some effective charities than others). (Your efficient market hypothesis is interesting and I haven’t considered it. But I doubt that the market for effective charities is completely efficient.)
As Aaron pointed out, all of this is transparently explained on our FAQ page.
Do my matched donations have an impact?
Yes. The donors who provided the matching funding would likely not have donated to the specific charities that you have chosen. Therefore, by making a donation through Giving Multiplier, you don’t just decide to which charities your own money goes to but you also decide to which specific charities the added (i.e. matched) amounts—that were provided by the matching funders—go to. Note that most matching funders likely would have donated their amounts to a highly effective charity per default. But they would not have donated to your favorite charity and it’s unlikely that they would have donated to exactly the effective charity that you have chosen.
Our website is new and if there are ways to improve, we’d consider these. But to be clear: there is absolutely no intent of deceiving donors.
You are right that if someone only cares about their favorite charity, then donating through GM doesn’t give them any value. After all, GM never helps you to get more value for your favorite charity than you could get by donating directly to your favorite charity. But we also don’t claim that we do that. On our website, we say: “Give to both your favorite charity and a super-effective charity recommended by experts. We’ll add to your donations.” (The EA newsletter text frames things slightly differently and perhaps that’s indeed not the optimal way of promoting GM.)
But if someone cares about both their favorite charity and about giving effectively, donating through GM can get them more value. Keep in mind that our target audience are non-EA donors, many of whom haven’t heard of EA or about our highly effective charities before.
In our studies we find that many non-EA people (ca. half of our MechanicalTurk participants!) are willing to split their donation 50⁄50 between their favorite and a highly effective charity when they are offered such a splitting option even if no matching is offered. This shows that surprisingly many people do have a preference to give to effective charities. They just don’t know about effective charities yet and don’t consider the option to split their donation. The point of GM is to inform non-EA donors about effective charities and offer them this splitting option.
Suppose you have a donor who cares about their favorite charity and a very effective charity. They want to give 90% to their favorite and 10% to the effective charity. They could either donate directly to these two charities or they could donate through GM. If they donate through GM, the system adds on top of their donations.
The part that is added on top of their favorite charity is clearly counterfactual because the matching funder wouldn’t have given to that charity. The part that is added on top of the effective charity is less counterfactual because the matching funder would have given anyway to effective charities. But in expectation it is partly counterfactual because the donor can influence which specific effective charity this part of the funding should go to (and many donors may care much more about some effective charities than others). (Your efficient market hypothesis is interesting and I haven’t considered it. But I doubt that the market for effective charities is completely efficient.)
As Aaron pointed out, all of this is transparently explained on our FAQ page.
Our website is new and if there are ways to improve, we’d consider these. But to be clear: there is absolutely no intent of deceiving donors.