Guided moral weights clarification tools: How much do you value saving a life vs. direct giving or increasing wellbeing?

[Who is SoGive? SoGive works with donors, especially major donors, to support them to have more impact with their giving. If you are interested in having a conversation about your giving, please reach out to Spencer (spencer@sogive.org).]

SoGive previously ran a survey that used a Delphi process to come to our standard moral weights. SoGive’s standard moral weights as a result of that process are represented by the ratios between SoGive’s Gold Standard Benchmarks, which are as follows:

£5,000 per life saved
£50 to double someone’s consumption (spending) for one year
£200 to avert one year of severe depression
£5 to avert the suffering of one chicken who is living in very poor conditions

This means that if our models indicate that a charity is expected to be able to (e.g.) save a life for £5,000 or less, then it will have achieved the Gold Standard (and similarly for the other benchmarks).

However, SoGive recognizes that donors who want to give the most effectively by their own lights should clarify their personal moral weights. Thus, SoGive produced betas of the following two tools to guide donors through the process of clarifying their moral weights.

Use this tool to clarify the value you put on saving a life vs. direct giving: https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/bjkk7aq/run

Use this tool to clarify the value you put on saving a life vs. improving well-being: https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/tshbjp4/run

These tools are still very much in beta! We are seeking feedback, and the tools above will change as we incorporate that feedback. (For example, the next generation of these tools will include modules about how the meat-eater problem affects the value the donor puts on the interventions.)

Do you think these tools need more work or more use cases? So do we, and we are seeking funding to be able to do a larger MoralMeter project! In particular, we would like to help donors go through a guided process to clarify the value they put on current humans vs. humans in the long-term future. If you are interested in funding a project like this, please contact spencer@sogive.org.