Anecdotally, we’ve found that our matching campaigns have brought in a disproportionately large number of new donors—the majority of whom were not previously involved with effective giving. [...] we were able to teach them about effective animal advocacy and to support them in effective giving elsewhere in the EA movement. The amount that these donors will give to effective charities during their lifetime is significantly higher than the donation-matching campaign that attracted them; we continue to build relationships with these new donors.
I think this might be a key part that merits more explication. I can think of two major objections that evidence here would help answer:
1) The consequentialist benefit of ‘standard’ marketing techniques isn’t worth the deontological cost.
2) ‘Standard’ marketing techniques are self-defeating for EA. This relies upon a belief that those that are put off by the utilon approach and attracted by the fuzzy approach are unlikely to ‘assimilate’ into EA.
Can you share more information on the number of new donors and particularly their subsequent engagement with EA? Or, if you can’t or aren’t ready to share that data, can you at least attest that you’re tracking it and working on it?
Regarding #2: The direct goal of EA is to do the most good, not to grow the community of people that identify with EA as much as possible. The latter is a means to the end. If their current approach directs a lot of money from non-EA animal lovers to effective charities, then that does a lot of good regardless of whether said animal lovers then assimilate into EA. Furthermore, I don’t think people who like the utilon approach are necessarily turned away just because there is a cute animal picture present. So long as the cute animal picture is merely a hook and not the main message, then there seems little to no harm to people who are likely receptive to the EA message, while being highly beneficial for non-EA animal lovers. I’m not seeing this as a likely downside...
We had on the order of hundreds of new donors during our 2017 matching campaign, making up 56% of the pre-matched amount raised. A very large portion of these donors are new to effective giving, as most come from the AR space.
We track donor engagement with EAA directly through retention and surveys, and we have limited indirect tracking of engagement with EA more generally. (Concerns about privacy (and GDPR) prevent us from tracking more deeply, such as through social media engagement.)
We also actively advocate EAA and EA ideas to these donors via email and other messaging.
I think this might be a key part that merits more explication. I can think of two major objections that evidence here would help answer:
1) The consequentialist benefit of ‘standard’ marketing techniques isn’t worth the deontological cost.
2) ‘Standard’ marketing techniques are self-defeating for EA. This relies upon a belief that those that are put off by the utilon approach and attracted by the fuzzy approach are unlikely to ‘assimilate’ into EA.
Can you share more information on the number of new donors and particularly their subsequent engagement with EA? Or, if you can’t or aren’t ready to share that data, can you at least attest that you’re tracking it and working on it?
Regarding #2: The direct goal of EA is to do the most good, not to grow the community of people that identify with EA as much as possible. The latter is a means to the end. If their current approach directs a lot of money from non-EA animal lovers to effective charities, then that does a lot of good regardless of whether said animal lovers then assimilate into EA. Furthermore, I don’t think people who like the utilon approach are necessarily turned away just because there is a cute animal picture present. So long as the cute animal picture is merely a hook and not the main message, then there seems little to no harm to people who are likely receptive to the EA message, while being highly beneficial for non-EA animal lovers. I’m not seeing this as a likely downside...
We had on the order of hundreds of new donors during our 2017 matching campaign, making up 56% of the pre-matched amount raised. A very large portion of these donors are new to effective giving, as most come from the AR space.
We track donor engagement with EAA directly through retention and surveys, and we have limited indirect tracking of engagement with EA more generally. (Concerns about privacy (and GDPR) prevent us from tracking more deeply, such as through social media engagement.)
We also actively advocate EAA and EA ideas to these donors via email and other messaging.