It’s admirable that you want to give away the money, good on you!
I also recognise the sense that there’s an injustice that holders of wealth happen to have the decision-making power—I don’t know if that’s what motivated you with your idea, but your idea resonates with me for that reason.
I’m wondering what goals you have with your approach? Is it about finding the best way to give the money away? Or is it about the impact it will have on those 12-15 people?
You may find it interesting to compare with other things like this which have been done:
A New York philanthropist decided to do something called flow-through funding—she gave money to a bunch of people running social change organisations and told them that they could give away the money as they saw fit, as long as the money didn’t go to their own org.
SBF did something similar (not that he’s held in very high regard around these parts any more!)
However in these cases, the decision makers were chosen to be people who might be good decision makers. The same applies when people donate to EA Funds. This doesn’t appear to be the case with what you’re doing?
Further to this, if the primary goal is to learn about how the general public thinks about charitable giving, you could probably achieve the same result for far less than 100k. The remainder could be held in reserve and given to that cause if you really do think it’s the best use of the money, or to your current best guess if you do not. It seems like there’s an insight you wish to have and you’ve set a needlessly big pricetag on obtaining it.
I think it’s unlikely that people will choose to make donations that I regard as totally useless. If they do, then that’ll be learning in itself. In general, I think rich people hoarding wealth is a bigger problem for society than people making slightly suboptimal decisions about their giving, so I’m comfortable with the idea of putting a big sum towards this project.
Thanks for your kind words and for the heads up about these other initiatives—I’ll look into them.
I’m interested in the idea of who makes a “good decision maker”. I think the question of what causes are worth donating towards is in large part a value judgement which your average citizen is just as well-equipped to make as anyone else. Particularly if they’re able to draw on outside expertise, which I intend on providing to them.
It’s possible that at the end of the process the participants will say that they don’t really feel like they added much value and/or it was a burdensome responsibility, in which case that’ll be an argument in favour of leaving philanthropic decision-making in the hands of experts. However, if they feel like it is an empowering experience and/or it reaches a good outcome, it may inspire other people in my position to go in a similar direction.
Very interesting. It seems we can split the giving decision into two components:
Empirical things about the world
Value judgements, which the average citizen is as well-equipped to make as anyone else
Are you aiming for the average citizens whom you engage with to only provide input on the second, but not on the first?
In case it’s helpful, we at SoGive have been thinking about this quite a bit.
I run SoGive which does research on charity impact and supports major donors.
We ran a moral weights exercise 2 years ago which involved survey of 500 members of the public and number of qualitative surveys with donors. We’re currently in the process of revisiting this work. If you would like to have a chat, feel free to ping me via the EA Forum or on sanjay@sogive.org
Welcome to the EA Forum :-)
It’s admirable that you want to give away the money, good on you!
I also recognise the sense that there’s an injustice that holders of wealth happen to have the decision-making power—I don’t know if that’s what motivated you with your idea, but your idea resonates with me for that reason.
I’m wondering what goals you have with your approach? Is it about finding the best way to give the money away? Or is it about the impact it will have on those 12-15 people?
You may find it interesting to compare with other things like this which have been done:
A New York philanthropist decided to do something called flow-through funding—she gave money to a bunch of people running social change organisations and told them that they could give away the money as they saw fit, as long as the money didn’t go to their own org.
SBF did something similar (not that he’s held in very high regard around these parts any more!)
However in these cases, the decision makers were chosen to be people who might be good decision makers. The same applies when people donate to EA Funds. This doesn’t appear to be the case with what you’re doing?
Further to this, if the primary goal is to learn about how the general public thinks about charitable giving, you could probably achieve the same result for far less than 100k. The remainder could be held in reserve and given to that cause if you really do think it’s the best use of the money, or to your current best guess if you do not. It seems like there’s an insight you wish to have and you’ve set a needlessly big pricetag on obtaining it.
I think it’s unlikely that people will choose to make donations that I regard as totally useless. If they do, then that’ll be learning in itself. In general, I think rich people hoarding wealth is a bigger problem for society than people making slightly suboptimal decisions about their giving, so I’m comfortable with the idea of putting a big sum towards this project.
Thanks for your kind words and for the heads up about these other initiatives—I’ll look into them.
I’m interested in the idea of who makes a “good decision maker”. I think the question of what causes are worth donating towards is in large part a value judgement which your average citizen is just as well-equipped to make as anyone else. Particularly if they’re able to draw on outside expertise, which I intend on providing to them.
It’s possible that at the end of the process the participants will say that they don’t really feel like they added much value and/or it was a burdensome responsibility, in which case that’ll be an argument in favour of leaving philanthropic decision-making in the hands of experts. However, if they feel like it is an empowering experience and/or it reaches a good outcome, it may inspire other people in my position to go in a similar direction.
Very interesting. It seems we can split the giving decision into two components:
Empirical things about the world
Value judgements, which the average citizen is as well-equipped to make as anyone else
Are you aiming for the average citizens whom you engage with to only provide input on the second, but not on the first?
In case it’s helpful, we at SoGive have been thinking about this quite a bit.
I run SoGive which does research on charity impact and supports major donors.
We ran a moral weights exercise 2 years ago which involved survey of 500 members of the public and number of qualitative surveys with donors. We’re currently in the process of revisiting this work. If you would like to have a chat, feel free to ping me via the EA Forum or on sanjay@sogive.org