I think there’s a real question here and it is plausible that large donors do better.
I will point out that if it’s correct that there are better returns from scale the conclusion probably isn’t that small donors are best giving to charities like the GiveWell recommendations while large donors can do better. Instead small donors would be best getting to a position where their money acts like that of large donors.
Here are three possible mechanisms for that:
(i) Give money to large donors, such as the Gates foundation;
(ii) Coordinate with others, pooling money so that many small donors act as a single large donor;
(iii) Gamble, exchanging certainty of a small donation for a small probability of a large donation.
How much of the large donor effect is due to leadership and catalysing teams to solve problems etc. by brand/authority/charisma/reasoning etc. rather than necessarily the funding behind it? I think we’re already doing quite a lot of this, but there’s probably room to stimulate more front line promising initiatives?
I think there’s a real question here and it is plausible that large donors do better.
I will point out that if it’s correct that there are better returns from scale the conclusion probably isn’t that small donors are best giving to charities like the GiveWell recommendations while large donors can do better. Instead small donors would be best getting to a position where their money acts like that of large donors.
Here are three possible mechanisms for that: (i) Give money to large donors, such as the Gates foundation; (ii) Coordinate with others, pooling money so that many small donors act as a single large donor; (iii) Gamble, exchanging certainty of a small donation for a small probability of a large donation.
Yeah if there are increasing returns to scale we can just head to the Blackjack table and have some excitement with our do-gooding!
How much of the large donor effect is due to leadership and catalysing teams to solve problems etc. by brand/authority/charisma/reasoning etc. rather than necessarily the funding behind it? I think we’re already doing quite a lot of this, but there’s probably room to stimulate more front line promising initiatives?
I’m especially interested in coordinating with others, something like a crowdfunding site with prescreened projects would be great.
Otherwise, gambling’s cool too :)