I’ve seen this discussed before, but not formally laid-out.
Do people who legacy fundraise not regularly, uh, strategically engage with more senior individuals in order to generate donations in the nearer future?
Right. I’d be surprised if legacy fundraisers spent much time with people under 60, let alone 40. This isn’t just about generating money in the nearer future, but also that the older contingent will have more attention for their legacy.
Yeh there are a few stats in Charity Science’s shallow review of the area. One study found that 87% of money from bequests came from people who wrote their will in their 70s/80s, and 76% from people writing in their 80s.
Hmm… I’ll gesture back at the “Effective Giving vs Effective Altruism” thing, and say that maybe while EAs qua “identify as part of EA movement and comment on the EA forum and hang out with other EAs” might be under 35, we might be able to find lots of candidate Effective Givers who are part of a totally different demographic.
Yes and in the review Charity Science distinguish between “usual EA channels” which they note, by default, target mostly young people and “GiveWell, the Life You Can Save, and the direct charities” who are not uniformly young.
I agree, should have made the comment more moderate. I just mean to say it seems quite a bit harder to design a major fundraising campaign around EA ideas for 70 year olds.
This comment felt quite snarky to me. I did apologise in case this point had been made before.
I agree the fact that the money comes a long way into the way is obvious, but I’ve never seen a quantitative examination of it before.
Looking at Charity Science’s review, I don’t see one. Glancing at the calculation of expected returns of EA legacy fundraising, it looks like no discounting was done at all, so the 18:1 expected ratio is overstated by at least several fold. I expect if they added discounting, it wouldn’t look much more attractive than other fundraising methods, and a whole project was launched on the basis of this report. The report also mentions that young people contribute a significant fraction of the EV, but I expect this would go away if discounting was included properly.
My comment was agreeing with Claire’s observation that “people who legacy fundraise… strategically engage with more senior individuals in order to generate donations in the nearer future”- nothing to do whether whether your “point had been made before” because it’s directly referring to Claire’s point.
I’ll address these new points you raise about Charity Science’s projected ratio in a separate comment if no-one from Charity Science gets there first since they’re quite distinct from the point above (after all, you don’t mention Charity Science in the OP).
I’ve seen this discussed before, but not formally laid-out.
Do people who legacy fundraise not regularly, uh, strategically engage with more senior individuals in order to generate donations in the nearer future?
Right. I’d be surprised if legacy fundraisers spent much time with people under 60, let alone 40. This isn’t just about generating money in the nearer future, but also that the older contingent will have more attention for their legacy.
Yeh there are a few stats in Charity Science’s shallow review of the area. One study found that 87% of money from bequests came from people who wrote their will in their 70s/80s, and 76% from people writing in their 80s.
That’s useful data. Almost all EAs are under 35 though, so it doesn’t help if we want to pursue legacy fundraising.
Hmm… I’ll gesture back at the “Effective Giving vs Effective Altruism” thing, and say that maybe while EAs qua “identify as part of EA movement and comment on the EA forum and hang out with other EAs” might be under 35, we might be able to find lots of candidate Effective Givers who are part of a totally different demographic.
Yes and in the review Charity Science distinguish between “usual EA channels” which they note, by default, target mostly young people and “GiveWell, the Life You Can Save, and the direct charities” who are not uniformly young.
I agree, should have made the comment more moderate. I just mean to say it seems quite a bit harder to design a major fundraising campaign around EA ideas for 70 year olds.
This also reduces the risk that they will later alter their will.
Yes, that’s absolutely right, and one of the first things to bear in mind when thinking (or commenting) about legacy fundraising.
Hi David,
This comment felt quite snarky to me. I did apologise in case this point had been made before.
I agree the fact that the money comes a long way into the way is obvious, but I’ve never seen a quantitative examination of it before.
Looking at Charity Science’s review, I don’t see one. Glancing at the calculation of expected returns of EA legacy fundraising, it looks like no discounting was done at all, so the 18:1 expected ratio is overstated by at least several fold. I expect if they added discounting, it wouldn’t look much more attractive than other fundraising methods, and a whole project was launched on the basis of this report. The report also mentions that young people contribute a significant fraction of the EV, but I expect this would go away if discounting was included properly.
http://www.charityscience.com/uploads/1/0/7/2/10726656/legacy_fundraising_pdf.pdf
My comment was agreeing with Claire’s observation that “people who legacy fundraise… strategically engage with more senior individuals in order to generate donations in the nearer future”- nothing to do whether whether your “point had been made before” because it’s directly referring to Claire’s point.
I’ll address these new points you raise about Charity Science’s projected ratio in a separate comment if no-one from Charity Science gets there first since they’re quite distinct from the point above (after all, you don’t mention Charity Science in the OP).
Sorry I misunderstood. I noticed several downvotes for the post so interpreted your comment as directed at the main post.