Matching campaigns get a bad rep in EA circles* but it’s totally reasonable for a donor to be concerned that if they put in lots of money into an area other people won’t donate, and matching campaigns preserve the incentive for others to donate, crowding in funding.
* I agree that campaigns claiming you’ll have twice the impact as your donation will be matched are misleading.
It’s understandable for a donor to have that concern. However, I submit that this goes both ways—it’s also reasonable for smaller donors to be concerned that the big donors will adjust their own funding levels to account for smaller donations, reducing the big donor’s incentives to donate. It’s not obvious to me which of these concerns predominates, although my starting assumption is that the big donors are more capable of adjusting than a large number of smaller donors.
Much electronic ink has been spilled over the need for more diversification of funding control. Given that, I’d be hesitant to endorse anything that gives even more influence over funding levels to the entities that already have a lot of it. Unless paired with something else, I worry that embracing matching campaigns would worsen the problem of funding influence being too concentrated.
Seems plausible that EA Funds should explore offering matches to larger projects that it wants to fund to help increase the project’s funding diversity.
Matching campaigns get a bad rep in EA circles* but it’s totally reasonable for a donor to be concerned that if they put in lots of money into an area other people won’t donate, and matching campaigns preserve the incentive for others to donate, crowding in funding.
* I agree that campaigns claiming you’ll have twice the impact as your donation will be matched are misleading.
Have you read Holden’s classic on this topic? It sounds like you are describing what he calls “Influence matching”.
It’s understandable for a donor to have that concern. However, I submit that this goes both ways—it’s also reasonable for smaller donors to be concerned that the big donors will adjust their own funding levels to account for smaller donations, reducing the big donor’s incentives to donate. It’s not obvious to me which of these concerns predominates, although my starting assumption is that the big donors are more capable of adjusting than a large number of smaller donors.
Much electronic ink has been spilled over the need for more diversification of funding control. Given that, I’d be hesitant to endorse anything that gives even more influence over funding levels to the entities that already have a lot of it. Unless paired with something else, I worry that embracing matching campaigns would worsen the problem of funding influence being too concentrated.
Seems plausible that EA Funds should explore offering matches to larger projects that it wants to fund to help increase the project’s funding diversity.