Habryka comments on GiveDirectly: “A website visitor was 34% more likely to donate if they saw the new design with embedded donation form instead of the old one”

[Habryka]

But my sense is that relatively few people are sophisticated donors who could accurately be described as “allocating their charity budget”. Rather, I model most people’s philanthropic motivations as unstable impulses that come and go as emotions hit them. Marketing gimmicks can be very helpful for exciting such donors, and motivating them to do something good rather than nothing.

I agree that many people aren’t very smart about their donation choices, though I would be surprised if it’s worth the tradeoff to alienate and engage in a more deceptive relationship with the people who are being smarter about their donation choices, and an article on donation matching that doesn’t go into that at the very least seems incomplete.

In as much as the EA community has norms or standards by which it evaluates the behavior of people, I think “deceptiveness about the cost-effectiveness of donations” seems like one standard that makes sense for us to apply. Maybe it makes sense for GiveDirectly to do this (though I am skeptical), but that shouldn’t deflate me being disappointed, and it of course makes it less likely that I recommend people donate to GiveDirectly, especially people who aren’t as careful about donation decisions.