Great question. I actually don’t think that data will prove very useful yet, although I’d be happy to share it with you directly. We primarily found donations in the mobile app to heavily follow defaults, and intentionally didn’t yet spend much time experimenting with defaults. We were struggling with donor acquisition, and the evidence was already strong that we could influence donation choices, so we turned our attention to the donation pages. We haven’t yet rolled out the new donor portal where defaults will once again become critical, but once we do, experimenting with defaults will become very important (and then that data would be more revealing).
As to the stat I mentioned: we ran a series of campaigns focused on donating money saved during COVID (e.g. donating the price of your canceled commute or donating a refunded concert ticket). We rapidly built a portfolio of relevant charities when COVID hit, and as always, the donation volume closely tracked our defaults. Some defaults were doing direct relief/included to increase familiarity (e.g. Feeding America). Others were recommended by 80k (e.g. Gates Foundation), Founder’s pledge (e.g. John’s Hopkins CHS), or had received Open Philanthropy grants (e.g. CDC Foundation). We defaulted JHCHS to 10%, which it received. CDC Foundation also received 25%. However, I doubt their share was allocated to preventing future pandemics (in retrospect, it is clear that the OP grants were carefully earmarked for specific programs). But that seems like a question of default selection, so my conclusion was that defaults almost entirely determine the donation volume to each charity. I wasn’t unsure whether to count the 25%, so I listed it as 10-35%.
We’ve actually seen far more than 35% go to longtermism in some cases. One campaign defaulted to the Good Technology fund had 93% of donors giving to CHAI, CISAC, FHI, JHCHS, MIRI, and NTI (donate every time a news article comes out on nuclear disarmament). What’s more, one donation rule that had nothing to do with longtermism achieved 85% simply because Good Tech was the default (donate every time This American Life airs). But these had a lower sample size, so I wouldn’t conclude much beyond the exceptional influence of defaults.
Defaults seem to predict a massive portion of the variance, which suggests it shouldn’t be too challenging to get donors to support longtermism. If we can get enough donors into the portal, the hard work will be carefully choosing which charities to default. If we reach the point where the donation volume is high enough, I am hopeful we can rely on help from other EA organizations that are better suited to make these decisions than we are. We may even establish an independent nonprofit (that doesn’t answer to the for-profit) which owns decisions around charity recommendations.
Great question. I actually don’t think that data will prove very useful yet, although I’d be happy to share it with you directly. We primarily found donations in the mobile app to heavily follow defaults, and intentionally didn’t yet spend much time experimenting with defaults. We were struggling with donor acquisition, and the evidence was already strong that we could influence donation choices, so we turned our attention to the donation pages. We haven’t yet rolled out the new donor portal where defaults will once again become critical, but once we do, experimenting with defaults will become very important (and then that data would be more revealing).
As to the stat I mentioned: we ran a series of campaigns focused on donating money saved during COVID (e.g. donating the price of your canceled commute or donating a refunded concert ticket). We rapidly built a portfolio of relevant charities when COVID hit, and as always, the donation volume closely tracked our defaults. Some defaults were doing direct relief/included to increase familiarity (e.g. Feeding America). Others were recommended by 80k (e.g. Gates Foundation), Founder’s pledge (e.g. John’s Hopkins CHS), or had received Open Philanthropy grants (e.g. CDC Foundation). We defaulted JHCHS to 10%, which it received. CDC Foundation also received 25%. However, I doubt their share was allocated to preventing future pandemics (in retrospect, it is clear that the OP grants were carefully earmarked for specific programs). But that seems like a question of default selection, so my conclusion was that defaults almost entirely determine the donation volume to each charity. I wasn’t unsure whether to count the 25%, so I listed it as 10-35%.
We’ve actually seen far more than 35% go to longtermism in some cases. One campaign defaulted to the Good Technology fund had 93% of donors giving to CHAI, CISAC, FHI, JHCHS, MIRI, and NTI (donate every time a news article comes out on nuclear disarmament). What’s more, one donation rule that had nothing to do with longtermism achieved 85% simply because Good Tech was the default (donate every time This American Life airs). But these had a lower sample size, so I wouldn’t conclude much beyond the exceptional influence of defaults.
Defaults seem to predict a massive portion of the variance, which suggests it shouldn’t be too challenging to get donors to support longtermism. If we can get enough donors into the portal, the hard work will be carefully choosing which charities to default. If we reach the point where the donation volume is high enough, I am hopeful we can rely on help from other EA organizations that are better suited to make these decisions than we are. We may even establish an independent nonprofit (that doesn’t answer to the for-profit) which owns decisions around charity recommendations.