Make a $100 donation into $200 (or more)

[WilliamKiely]

Latest Update: On Nov 24 at 1:01pm PT, the matching fund pool was increased to $600,000. Check the realtime dashboard to see how much is still available to allocate.

Of the first $250,000 in matching funds, more than 82% went to nonprofits you all donated to:

Donation Match Terms

This year, starting on November 1, Every.org is offering a very attractive $250,000 true counterfactual donation match. (Realtime dashboard of remaining funds.)

1. Every.org will match the first donation you make to each US 501(c)(3) nonprofit you give to 1:1 up to $100 per donor per nonprofit.

2. Currently, Every.org will contribute an extra $10 to your donation if you click to share your donation after donating. This might change (what it was originally).

The Match Terms in Every.org’s words:

A donor can support multiple nonprofits, but only the first donation they make to each of those nonprofits will be matched. If someone makes two $50 donations to the same organization, then only the first $50 would be matched. If someone makes a $1000 donation, then only the first $100 is matched. If someone makes ten $100 donations to different organizations, then all ten donations will be matched.

Steps to Participate

1. Join with: https://​​www.every.org/​​join/​​@william.kiely?c=gg25 (If you’re a new user, this will give you and I $25 in giving credit in addition to the match described above (Update: I believe this new user incentive was removed by Nov 24), plus help me track how many EAs participate in the match so I can share the information with the community.)

2. Check the live dashboard to see if there are remaining matching funds.

3. If so, donate $100^[1] to a nonprofit of your choice (to get your donation automatically matched 1:1)

4. After donating, click one of the links to share your donation (to get the extra share incentive, currently +$10)

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for every nonprofit you want to support!

FAQ Answers

• Everyone can participate, regardless of country, even if you already joined last year.

• Fees are low, so donate by card if it’s easier for you. Or if you’d prefer to eliminate all fees you can do so by connecting your bank account.

• Tax receipts: You can get these easily in your account on your My Giving page.

If this sounds familiar...

It’s because 198 of you participated in a previous donation match sponsored by the same Every.org after seeing the post Make a $10 donation into $35 in December 2020.

We successfully directed $4,950 in matching funds to highly effective nonprofits during that match. It was quite popular because it only took ~3 minutes for each person to direct $25 in matching funds. I’m hopeful that even more of you will participate in Every.org’s current match since it’s just as easy and yet the limits are much higher.

---

1. ↩︎

   You can donate less than $100 and still get matched, but note that you will forfeit your ability to get the full match for that nonprofit, even if you donate again. Per the terms: “If someone makes two $50 donations to the same organization, then only the first $50 would be matched.”

[MichaelStJules]

Based on their dashboard, EA charities got ~$200,000 of the first $250,000 in matching funds.

[Avi Norowitz]

Wow, very impressive! I badly underestimated how much matching funds would be directed to EA-aligned nonprofits. And since the matching funds has been increased to $350k, this number is likely to go up significantly.

I count $210k in donations towards nonprofits that are at least marginally EA-aligned, out of $252k currently (83%):

https://​​docs.google.com/​​spreadsheets/​​d/​​134p73NxhVvB8ggP4uu0kNwttbvb0KNk7PSh6ZLwzKZY/​​edit#gid=1518752980

But that may be an underestimate, because the page only lists the top 100 nonprofits. So there could be more EA-aligned nonprofits that are each receiving ⇐ $210 in matching funds and are not listed. If we consider just the top 100, then that’s $210k out of $238k (88%).

[WilliamKiely]

Thanks! I confirmed that ~$200k is accurate and added this update to the top of the post:

Using data from Every.org’s new dashboard, about $202,000 of the first $250,000 matched went to nonprofits you all donated to, broken down by cause area as follows:

[Avi Norowitz]

I think the following should probably be considered EA-aligned nonprofits (at least marginally) as well, which would imply somewhat higher impact:

• Our World in Data: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​tag/​​our-world-in-data

• Crate Free Illinois: https://​​www.openphilanthropy.org/​​focus/​​us-policy/​​farm-animal-welfare/​​crate-free-illinois-campaigning-against-gestation-crates

• Living Goods: https://​​www.givewell.org/​​charities/​​living-goods-November-2014-version

• International Refugee Assistance Project: IRAP: https://​​www.openphilanthropy.org/​​focus/​​us-policy/​​immigration-policy/​​international-refugee-assistance-project-general-support-2020

• Population Services International: https://​​www.thelifeyoucansave.org/​​best-charities/​​population-services-international/​​

• Seva Foundation: https://​​www.thelifeyoucansave.org/​​best-charities/​​seva/​​

• Pratham USA: https://​​www.givewell.org/​​international/​​charities/​​pratham

[WilliamKiely]

Thanks! My boxes-checking was very quick and I missed those. Updated my $247k update:

[MichaelStJules]

Consider coordinating donation trades with others, i.e. you donate to their preferred charities in order for them to donate to yours, so that you both get more matched donations for your preferred charities overall.

[anishazaveri]

Longtermists who want to donation trade against animal charities send me a message on the forum. UPDATE: Here are the ones I’ve already donated to: https://​​www.every.org/​​@anisha.zaveri

[Tobias Dänzer]

I’m interested in directing more matched donations towards MIRI via donation trading with others who would not counterfactually donate to MIRI by themselves. As for myself, I’m from the Less Wrong cluster and so mostly care about x-risk stuff and meta stuff and would e.g. not counterfactually donate to animal charities.

After the trade, we could share screenshots of the confirmation email received after donating, to confirm that the trade has taken place.

If you’re interested, send me a message. I expect the remaining matching funds to deplete within the next 24-48 hours, so there isn’t much time to coordinate. (EDIT: Given that the fundraiser has at least twice added additional funds, I would no longer consider this as particularly urgent.)

PS: I have donated to GiveWell, Our World in Data, Centre for Effective Altruism, and MIRI, so can’t get those donation-matched anymore. EDIT: Link to my donations.

[Denkenberger🔸]

I will donate to a charity of anyone’s choice if you donate to ALLFED. This is where I have donated so far. Please message me through the forum.

[Julia_Wise🔸]

Done! Thanks for posting this!

[jared_m]

+1. This was fun, it was a great excuse to bring up some EOY giving by a month — and your instructions were ultra-clear. Thank you, William!

[Aric Floyd]

every.org just announced on the #FallGivingChallenge blog post that another $100k has been added to the matching fund, bringing the total up to $475k.

[WilliamKiely]

Change history for the “share incentive” after donating:

Original language from the post: (no longer applies)

Every.org will double each match to 2:1 if after donating you click to share your donation on social media or with a friend. (Note that Every.org told me that if the matching funds are being used up too quickly, they may turn off this extra-match-for-sharing at their discretion, meaning it will just be a 1:1 match rather than a 2:1 match.)

Updated “share incentive” language from 10 hours into the match:

Every.org will contribute an extra $10 to your donation if you click to share your donation after donating.

Every.org gave the reason for this change to me in an email: “At the current pace the funds would expire in about 4 days instead of lasting the entire month, so we are planning to change the share incentive to a flat $10. We might update it throughout the month.”

[Greg_Colbourn]

The funds clearly aren’t going to last a month. I think another 24-48 hours would be good going given the trajectory. I guess they haven’t factored in EAs being attracted to it like moths to a (heart-filamented) lightbulb :)

[Luke Eure]

Thank you so much for sharing! From the dashboard it looks like they’ve upped the matching fund to $350K (adding $100K from the original $250K).

[Andy_Schultz]

“Nov 2 8:43pm PT update—Amazing! Givers have rallied in less than 48 hours to unlock nearly $250k in matching. We are thrilled to announce that a generous donor has added an additional $100k into the Incentive Fund to keep the momentum going! Check out our realtime dashboard to see how much of the funds are left.” https://​​blog.every.org/​​fall-giving-challenge/​​

[Kevin Ulug]

Edit: just refer to this list of orgs https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​f6kg8T2Lp6rDqxWwG/​​list-of-ea-related-organisations

+ see the Founder’s Pledge funds that Michael shared https://​​www.every.org/​​founderspledge


Here’s the subset of longtermist and infrastructure orgs I was able to find on the site:

- Founder’s Pledge (also their funds that Michael links in another comment)

- Future of Life Institute
- The Center for Human-Compatible AI

- Legal Priorities Project

- Nuclear Threat Initiative

- Machine Intelligence Research Institute

- Rethink Charity

- Rethink Priorities

- Centre For Effective Altruism

- Center for Election Science

- Generation Pledge

- Center for Applied Rationality

- WANBAM

[Jeremy]

You can find direct links to about 20 orgs from the linked post that I donated to here (edit: for anyone who couldn’t see it because it was private, it is public now). As of 10:30 ET Nov 1 they are still tripling matching for social media sharing and there are plenty of funds left.

As of 10:45am ET, it seems like the social media sharing bonus has been discontinued. Can anyone else confirm? It disappeared for me on my 21st donation, so maybe it’s just limited to 20 per person or something?

See comment below. Social media sharing bonus is now flat $10.

[Greg_Colbourn]

Your profile is set to private so can only see if following (have sent a follow request).

[Jeremy]

It’s public now. Sorry!

[Tessa A 🔸]

At 12:27pm ET, I see the “✅ You unlocked an additional US$10 match by sharing #FallGivingChallenge 🍁” after I click to copy the link, but don’t see anything about an additional $100 match.

[Greg_Colbourn]

The $100 for sharing has been dropped to $10. See update here.

[deleted]

[Kevin Kuruc]

Thanks! Just used this for a few donations. It looks like they’ve increased the pool to $620K and there is still ~15K left.

[Charles He]

Uh, I think I just failed every.org:

It’s Nov 22, and there’s still plenty left, so I donated a bit to a few EA charities.

But I saw this Milo thing and well…

It’s this sanctuary for oddball cats, just look at it!

So you got Thaddeus Truespell, who was shy and blind and abandoned, until he got adopted into the sanctuary and blossomed with all his new friends.

There’s even pictures of Thaddeus throughout his day.

So well...

There is plenty of matching room left:

There’s still thousands of matching dollars left!! Please help fix my mistake!

[Jack]

LEEP is now live on everyorg.com too! Thanks for alerting us to this @WilliamKiely

https://​​www.every.org/​​leadexposureeliminationproject

[BrianTan]

Thanks so much for posting this! For those who want to know, as of now, the 2:1 match is still ongoing, and there are still $213,811 left in matching funds (see live count here). I assume this will run out within the next 1-3 days.

[MichaelStJules]

Should we crowdsource a list of EA charities (and how to find them, if they’re harder to find)? Do we have a list from last year?

[Greg_Colbourn]

New additions since the start of the match: ALLFED and CEEALAR

[Greg_Colbourn]

CEEALAR now has it’s own page, separate from PPF (our US fiscal sponsor, which donations are still routed through). The benefit of this is that donations can be matched separately (with the PPF fundraisers, you can only get a match for one of them).

[WilliamKiely]

Great, just donated!

[MichaelStJules]

For someone interested in donating to animal charities, I checked through the past 2 years of Open Phil grants, current ACE recommended charities, and the last two EA Animal Welfare Fund payouts, and donated to most of the ones I could find and that still made sense (e.g. weren’t small temporary programs, or restricted funding to only a very small part of what the group does), plus a few others. You can access them on my profile, but here are direct links that are shareable and don’t have my profile name in them:

1. https://​​www.every.org/​​animal.welfare.fund

2. https://​​www.every.org/​​thehumaneleague

3. https://​​www.every.org/​​gfi

4. https://​​www.every.org/​​globalfoodpartners

5. https://​​www.every.org/​​faunalytics

6. https://​​www.every.org/​​wildanimalinitiative

7. https://​​www.every.org/​​albertschweitzerfoundation

8. https://​​www.every.org/​​ciwf

9. https://​​www.every.org/​​mercyforanimals

10. https://​​www.every.org/​​animalcharityevaluators

11. https://​​www.every.org/​​rethink-priorities

12. https://​​www.every.org/​​fish-welfare-initiative

13. https://​​www.every.org/​​crate-free-illinois

14. https://​​www.every.org/​​reducetarian

15. https://​​www.every.org/​​animal.ethics

[Taymon]

I maintain such a list.

[Tessa A 🔸]

Here’s a link to my profile, which includes donations to about 20 EA-aligned charities: https://​​www.every.org/​​@tessa.alexanian

[MichaelStJules]

Founders Pledge has a few funds you can use to find some individual EA charities, and you can donate both to the funds and to the individual charities and get them matched separately.

[Tessa A 🔸]

Yes, I found this super helpful, especially the ability to double-dip on matching. Links to the individual Founders Pledge funds:

• Animal Welfare Index: https://​​www.every.org/​​animal.welfare.fund

• Climate Change Fund: https://​​www.every.org/​​climate.change.fund

• Global Health and Development Fund: https://​​www.every.org/​​global.health.fund

• Science and Technology Index (includes NTI, CHAI, Center for Health Security): https://​​www.every.org/​​science.technology.fund

• Global Education Index: https://​​www.every.org/​​global.education.fund

You can click through to individual charity pages from each of these pages.

[MichaelStJules]

Charity Entrepreneurship and some more of their incubated charities are now up with their own individual pages that each can get matched for:

• https://​​www.every.org/​​charityentrepreneurship

• https://​​www.every.org/​​leadexposureeliminationproject

• https://​​www.every.org/​​highimpactprofessionals

• https://​​www.every.org/​​animal-ask

• https://​​www.every.org/​​healthierhens

Another fairly new EA charity people might have missed:

• https://​​www.every.org/​​taimaka-project

[haven]

Fish Welfare Initiative is now live on every.com! Thanks @WilliamKiely for making us aware of this opportunity.

https://​​www.every.org/​​fishwelfareinitiative/​​f/​​improve-the-welfare-of-farmed-fish-in-india

[MaxRa]

Thanks a lot for sharing! :) I donated to RP, CEA, OWID, Legal Priorities Project, CEEALAR, Founders Pledge, FLI, CHAI, ALLFED, OpenPhil & Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute.

[Jon Wolverton]

Thanks! You allowed me to redeem myself after screwing up my alarm and not getting up in time for the Facebook match.

There’s still 4~5K matching funds left, which at this rate will probably last 1~2h, so jump on it quickly if you see this.

[Aric Floyd]

every.org just announced yet another addition to the matching fund on the #FallGivingChallenge blog post: this extra $50k brings the total matching funds up to $525k, about $75k of which are still unused as of this evening.

[MichaelStJules]

Is Every.org EA-aligned? They’re partnered with Founders Pledge and Giving Multiplier, two EA charities. They’re also supported by the Gates Foundation.
https://​​www.every.org/​​about-us

Was one of the points to support crypto and stock donations more easily?

EDIT: Also I guess their goal is to be like a more accessible donor-advised fund.

[liam.kirsh]

Yeah, you can even donate appreciated shares through them! If I had known ahead of time about this match, I would have tried that approach.

[Tobias Dänzer]

To spare some others the hassle, while donating by bank is supposedly free of fees, the add-a-bank process asks for a “bank routing number”, which as far as I can tell is a US-only concept, so if you’re from outside the US you’ll have to donate by another method instead.

[Greg_Colbourn]

EDIT: this didn’t work (the transfer got reverted from Wise back to Revolut).

It might be possible to use Wise (formerly TransferWise). I’ve done it; it seems to have gone through on every.org but not left my Wise account yet. First you have to add cash to your USD balance (I did this using Revolut to minimise conversion losses), then you get a routing number and account number on the “Inside the US” tab of “Your USD account details”; you can then use this to add the bank account to every.org (which takes a few hours; you need to confirm the amounts of a couple of small test transactions they send).

[Tobias Dänzer]

Thanks for posting this. Have donated. For 3 donations, I got 3x100$ matched, plus 25$ from the referal link, plus 3x10$ for ostensibly “sharing” donations, plus 3$ from “liking” donations, or 358$ in matching funds for 300$ donated, which comes to 119% in matching minus maybe 2.3% in credit card fees.

[WilliamKiely]

Moving this from the main post to here:

EAs support a wide range of causes and nonprofits. It’d be great if we could support each other’s preferred nonprofits in addition to our own in order to direct as large a fraction of the available matching funds to highly effective nonprofits as we can. (Just keep in mind that nonprofits often vary in cost-effectiveness by more than a factor of 3, so you shouldn’t keep donating to the next-most-effective nonprofit you can think of just to get the match if it will use marginal donations less than 3 times as cost-effectively as the most effective nonprofit you can identify.)

[WilliamKiely]

After you donate, check your notifications on the site for confirmation that your donation was matched. I just donated $100 to MIRI and received two notifications that my donation was matched because I clicked the link to share it:

Here is the link I was given to share my donation with friends or on social media after donating: https://​​www.every.org/​​@william.kiely/​​miri/​​3

[Eevee🔹]

Is there a deadline for the Fall Giving Challenge, or will it continue until the matching funds run out?

[WilliamKiely]

The deadline is Nov 30 at 23:59:59 PST:

Every.org’s #FallGivingChallenge 2021 campaign will last 30 days, from Nov 1 00:00:00 EST to Nov 30 23:59:59 PST.

That said, Every.org has hinted to me that they will probably do another donation match of some kind in December. I don’t know any details about it, but I think the existence of another match does mean that donors’ ability to influence where the matching funds Every.org has raised will not not be lost after tomorrow. Though it is possible that even with another match the terms will change and make it harder (or easier) to direct the matching funds. So if the existing match still looks appealing, I’d recommend participating now.

[Eevee🔹]

So glad I discovered this—there’s still quite a bit of money left! I just donated $100 to Rethink Priorities and got matched for a total of $210. (My profile)

[WilliamKiely]

Donations to BERI (Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative) were just enabled on Friday FYI: https://​​www.every.org/​​@william.kiely/​​existence

[Gary Miguel]

I’m guessing that donating via DAF or stock would be too slow to get the match in time. Can someone with more experience confirm though?

[TylerMaule]

Anyone know where the $250k is coming from? This is all I could find:

Matching funds are provided by generous donors who contribute to help amplify grassroots giving

[MichaelStJules]

I’d guess the Gates Foundation, Camp.org or associated funders, since those are listed as supporting funders.
https://​​www.every.org/​​about-us

[Rory]

If anyone is wishing to donate while the remaining matching funds are still available, but are struggling to find more EA-aligned charities to donate to, my page may be of use: https://​​www.every.org/​​@rory.tierney

I’ve tried to find and donate to as many EA-aligned orgs I could, based on the very helpful links in this post. I can’t guarantee they are all the most cost-effective but I think they are all recommended by at least one EA-related organisation (e.g. Open Phil, Founders Pledge) and should be worth donating to while matching still applies.

Edit: note for Players Philanthropy Fund I believe you will want to donate to one of the EA-relevant fundraisers (CEEALAR, ALLFED etc.) rather than the organisation itself.

[david_reinstein]

I’m wondering how it was we in effective altruism more able to capture so much of this?

• Is it that every.org is EA affiliated and somehow gave us an early scoop?

• Or is it we are the main group of smallish donors that really care about the amount the charities receive and thus pay attention to these things

-… on the second point, you might think that Facebook giving Tuesday match is a counter example, as most of that ends up going to jonEA charities. However, FB giving Tuesday is heavily publicised.

[WilliamKiely]

Or is it we are the main group of smallish donors that really care about the amount the charities receive

In short, I think that’s basically the reason. In particular, EAs got donations matched to at least 66 different nonprofits. Many EAs participating in this match donated to 10+ different nonprofits. I’m not aware of any other groups of people who are that excited to support that wide a range of different nonprofits. So the $100 per donor per nonprofit limit really helped EAs direct a disproportionate amount of the matching funds due to our disproportionate willingness to donate to several different charities.

Regarding your other ‘early scoop’ hypothesis: Every.org reached out to me about this #FallGivingChallenge in mid-October (because they liked my post promoting their #25DaysOfGiving initiative last year), but I don’t think this is what led to the EA community directing such a large portion of the matching funds to effective charities. This can most apparently be seen from the facts that: (1) I waited until after the match began to publish this post and promote the match to others in EA ; (2) Every.org published their announcement post more than a week before the match, so presumably others had early notice of it; (3) Most significantly, the matching funds still have not run out yet after more than a week of being available, meaning speed wasn’t a significant factor.

Point 3 above also suggests that the number of people interested in the match is clearly limited. In fact, even within EA the number of people interested is limited. This Forum post has not dropped off the front page of the EA Forum as of November 8th and yet the number of new EAs participating in the match has continually decreased each day since November 2nd and is now quite low. At this point, the number of people getting their donations matched each day is low enough that the initial $475k of matching funds will not be used up for weeks—perhaps not even by the end of the match (November 30th)--unless something accelerates the pace at which people start getting their donations matched again.

Regarding the Facebook Giving Tuesday match, note that EAs direct a highly disproportional amount of the available matching funds (probably way more disproportional than in this Every.org match). The difference is just that the Facebook match is far more competitive (approximately a million people make a donation of Facebook on Giving Tuesday each year), such that it’s impossible for any one group—including EAs—to direct a large fraction of the matching funds.

[david_reinstein]

The difference is just that the Facebook match is far more competitive (approximately a million people make a donation of Facebook on Giving Tuesday each year)

Why do you think the FB GT match is so much more popular. Is it just more prominent? That sort of goes with my proposed HA1.

[WilliamKiely]

Facebook just has a massive audience. In years past they’ve promoted the match via a mention of it in people’s Facebook newsfeed. Presumably many millions of people saw that. They’ve also prompted donating to nonprofits on Facebook via prompting users to create a birthday fundraiser for their favorite nonprofit and matching some small amount of donations (like $2-$5 IIRC). Every.org is a fairly new nonprofit with a small team and clearly doesn’t have that kind of reach.

[david_reinstein]

FB promo: Wasn’t it something like “we will donate the first $1”?

[david_reinstein]

Point 3 above also suggests that the number of people interested in the match is clearly limited.

If it’s this, and not lack of awareness, it’s bizarre. Millions of Americans donate small-ish amounts to eligible charities each year. They could increase the amounts the charities receive, or reduce their out-of-pocket donations ‘for free’.

If Amazon.com was having a ‘spend $100 on each store, get $100 more for free’, this would be used up in a sneeze. Can it be that people really only care about the amount they sacrifice and not the amount the charities get?

Alternative hypothesis HA1: Most relevant people are not aware of this match HA2: People don’t trust it, it seems ‘too good to be true’ HA3: People think “it’s not really getting free money/​free charity, because if I don’t take advantage, an equally good charity/​donor will do

Of these, only HA1 seems plausible to me.

In fact, even within EA the number of people interested is limited. This Forum post has not dropped off the front page of the EA Forum as of November 8th and yet the number of new EAs participating in the match has continually decreased each day since November 2nd and is now quite low.

How is this possible? Isn’t it an easy gain for GWWC and other pledgers? Do we all have such high value of time that the small effort involved here doesn’t merit the $400-$4000 (oom) gain from giving to an overlapping set of charities we care about?

[WilliamKiely]

Increased awareness would certainly lead to increased participation I think, but I think your HA3 is true for most people (especially non-EAs). So many charities have used donation “matches” in their fundraising campaigns that most people might not even realize how this one is different or the significance of that difference if they were to take a quick look at some short marketing copy from Every.org about it, and so I wouldn’t expect them to be so interested in it like EAs often are.

On that note my uncertain guess is that some significant fraction of the interest in the Facebook match comes from nonprofits promoting the match to their supporters. Given Facebook’s limits of $20k/​donor being much higher than Every.org’s limit here ($100 per donor per nonprofit), nonprofits may be much more motivated to bother marketing the Facebook opportunity to their supporters than the Every.org match.

[david_reinstein]

… I was also thinking about this in the sense of “from the individual EA donor’s point of view, is the match really counterfactual/​marginal if it’s capped? If it’s all going to end up captured by other EA charities then individually it may not be counterfactual, but collectively among EAs it still is..

[WilliamKiely]

At this point the remaining matching funds are being used up very slowly—slowly enough that it is very conceivable they will not all be used up by the end of the match (Nov 30th). So it seems it really is counterfactual.

But of course you make a good point that if the counterfactual is that the money is likely to go to some EA charity if a marginal individual doesn’t donate, then this does diminish the value of participation from a marginal individual’s perspective. But insofar as individual EAs see big differences in the value of directing the money to different EA nonprofits (e.g. charities working in different cause areas), then the fact of other EAs participation may not make participation that much less appealing.

[david_reinstein]

I also worry that if our EA efforts fade, some other non-EA group will discover this and pick up the slack.

Worth your/​our making another ‘update’ post on this as a CtA?

Could also be noted: If you don’t have much money to donate now, you can still

Get $25 free for signing up with a link like yours (and another $25 to the ‘linker’).

Donate $10 to each of a handful of charities and ‘aggregators’ of these (like Founders Pledge and GiveWell) and get the $10 match, $5 for adding bank details, plus a $10 addition from copying the social media link, and a few more bucks from ‘liking’ donations.

So, e.g., “you can get $215 in donations for just $50!)” … might be a good pitch for the less cash-liquid in our midst.

25 + 25 + 5*(10 + 10 + 10 + 3)

[WilliamKiely]

I thought about making another ‘update’ post, but it’s not clear to me that it’s good to try that hard to promote this one way people can increase the effectiveness of how some money is spent. Afterall, $85k (the amount of matching funds left currently) is a very small amount relative to the amount of money that people spend on charitable endeavors in general (and also relative to the amount of money in EA). Arguably EAs’ limited attention would be better spent working towards more ambitious goals (such as trying to ifluence how many millions or billions of dollars are spent).

The reason why I don’t think this logic applies to sharing about this match in the first place is because I think this match was valuable from a community engagement perspective. I think many EAs enjoyed participating in it and there’s value in that in terms of making them feel more engaged with EA and the EA community in general, which I expect will make them more effective over the course of their lives on average.

That said, while two posts promoting the same opportunity in the same channel seems like too much when the opportunity is as “small” as this match, I may post a brief “here’s how it went” post at the end of the match since that’s a different kind of post and I think people may be interested.

[david_reinstein]

Just some quick counterpoints to consider, in weighing whether to post ‘update: funds still available’:

• the match amount might be increased again

• something like this may occur again in future, and it may be good to be aware of it

• I’m curious how close to ‘fully taking advantage of this’ we can come

• 85k seems fairly substantial in comparison with some ‘money/​action’ things that get attention on EA Forum (epistemic status: not so sure about this)

• you could probably combine this with the “here’s how it went” post … without much loss, and also get more feedback on questions surrounding ‘why is it that EAs were able to get so much of these funds’

[Paul_Lang]

Did anyone else use Google Pay? Didn’t seem to incur fees for me.

[Jon Wolverton]

No fees with Google Pay for me either, but they didn’t give me that option until I’d used up my $25 referral credit.

[Charles He]

When donating here for the first time, I ran into a technical issue setting up banking (maybe related).

At one point, I had spent ~10 minutes trying to set up the EFT. This was all just to reduce fees by ~2%.

I considered procrastinating, which could have led me to give up.

I just used a credit card in the end.

I think people can just use any method that works, it’s ok to roundoff the 2%.

[AceM]

I used the referral link and donated to https://​​www.every.org/​​sanctuary-hostel, i did get the $25 and i also referred another person, they donated to the same animal charity. I did not get $25 from their donation, is that still happening?

For some reason, there is $5 in my account from Every Org that expires on ¹²⁄₂₄.

[WilliamKiely]

FYI I’ve emailed every.org to notify them of the issues people mentioned they had when attempting to donate with Bitcoin and PayPal and bank account. (I haven’t heard about any issues when donating via card.) If anyone experienced any other issues, feel free to comment here.

[Avi Norowitz]

I posted this on another thread, but for visibility, I reported my PayPal issue to Every.org and received this reply:

Hi Avi,

Thank you so much for your generosity and participating in the #FallGivingChallenge!

Due to the sudden high volume, PayPal seems to be holding our transactions and your donations are currently stuck in “pending” for us. We are investigating the issue and will let you know when we have an update.

The match will be applied after the PayPal donation is cleared and you will receive a receipt then. We will make sure you receive both the $100 and $10 match for sharing for your first donation to Centre for Effective Altruism USA.

Thank you for the detailed feedback: we are making a change to issue receipts for PayPal donations immediately to reduce confusion.

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you once again for using Every.org!

— Tina, co-founder & COO at Every.org

[Avi Norowitz]

I actually had to resubmit the donation:

Just following up here. It seems there was an error and the donation failed to process. If you would like to retry the donation to Centre for Effective Altruism USA, the match should automatically be applied.

While resubmitting the donation with a credit card, it did indicate that I would get $100 matched. I’m not sure if this will be the case for other donors with PayPal issues, or if it’s necessary for each donor to contact every.org for help.

[MichaelStJules]

Every.org will match the first donation you make to each US 501(c)(3) nonprofit you give to 1:1 up to $100 per donor per nonprofit.

Every.org will double each match to 2:1 if after donating you click to share your donation on social media or with a friend. (Note that Every.org has told me that if the matching funds are being used up too quickly, they may turn off this extra 2:1 match for sharing at their discretion.)

Could you move this to the top of the post, so they get the most important info first?

Maybe move “If this sounds familiar...” to the bottom, since I don’t think anyone actually needs to read that.

[WilliamKiely]

Done.

[MichaelStJules]

How many $/​hour of work per person do you expect from this? Including the time to sign up, make donations, check the confirmations, everything. Maybe how many $/​hour for the first donation, and then separately for each later donation?

[WilliamKiely]

Using the Twitter timestamps for Josh You’s first and fourth donation shared (five minutes apart), it took him less than 2 minutes per donation. This equates to ($200 matched) /​ (2 minutes) = $6,000 in matching funds moved per hour.

That is probably close to the high end of cost-effectiveness. For others who take their time reading this post and read other things on Every.org’s site, they might spend 20 minutes and only make one $100 donation, which would equate to about $600 moved per hour spent (or $300/​hour if they only get a 1:1 match).

[WilliamKiely]

I think a lot of people might get enjoyment from participating though, and might participate at times when they wouldn’t be working such that it doesn’t cut into the time they spend doing productive work this week, so thinking of it just in terms of dollars directly moved per hour spent might not make the most sense.

There are also harder to quantify benefits that might be more significant, like increasing the prevalence of EA-aligned nonprofits on Every.org. One obvious benefit of giving publicly in this way is that the President of the Board of Every.org Garret Camp has a net worth of $3.6 billion, and showing him which nonprofits we think use marginal dollars most effectively might help inspire him to learn more about those nonprofits or effective altruism in general, and perhaps donate a lot more to EA-aligned organizations some day.

[humayun saleem]

MANA Medical Relief is dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through disaster response, provision of basic health care to underserved communities, development programs and knowledge transfer. Our medical missions have provided timely and effective aid for the sick and injured in over 30 countries, while the many hospitals, basic health units, clinics and collaborative projects that it supports provide a continuum of care to the poor and needy. IMR provides a great platform to Muslim and non-Muslim physicians and allied health care professionals to participate in medical relief activities around the world.

[erickb]

I tried making a donation of bitcoin and it looks like that was not matched. Have other people tried this?

[erickb]

It was eventually matched, 17 hours later.

[Avi Norowitz]

I tried to submit a donation to CEA via PayPal and it didn’t work right. I’m not sure how representative my experience is but it may be preferable for others to use credit card.

For my PayPal donation to CEA:

• I can’t remember whether I got a confirmation dialog.

• I did not receive an email receipt from every.org.

• I don’t see the transaction in my PayPal activity.

But:

• My profile says I’ve supported CEA.

• When I try to donate again to CEA, I don’t see the +$100 match.

So I’m not sure what happened. I submitted 4 more donations to other nonprofits via credit card and all those went through fine.

I may follow-up with every.org if/​​when I have time to report the issue.

[Avi Norowitz]

I reported the issue to Every.org and received this reply:

Hi Avi,

Thank you so much for your generosity and participating in the #FallGivingChallenge!

Due to the sudden high volume, PayPal seems to be holding our transactions and your donations are currently stuck in “pending” for us. We are investigating the issue and will let you know when we have an update.

The match will be applied after the PayPal donation is cleared and you will receive a receipt then. We will make sure you receive both the $100 and $10 match for sharing for your first donation to Centre for Effective Altruism USA.

Thank you for the detailed feedback: we are making a change to issue receipts for PayPal donations immediately to reduce confusion.

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you once again for using Every.org!

— Tina, co-founder & COO at Every.org

[Louisevdh]

I experienced this too. And I’m still not sure whether I’ve given to a few of the orgs and how much because I got stuck in a PayPal loop that kept saying I needed to click “continue” rather than the final step of “pay now”. Also got the indication of a match, and it shows in my record of donations on every.org, but not on PayPal so far. Only happened for PayPal. CC and bank were fine. Also in my case it sometimes even caused duplicate matches of $100 for the same org so definitely a glitch…

[BrianTan]

Did they charge your Paypal or not at all?

[Avi Norowitz]

As far as I can tell, not at all.

[Avi Norowitz]

I actually had to resubmit the donation:

Just following up here. It seems there was an error and the donation failed to process. If you would like to retry the donation to Centre for Effective Altruism USA, the match should automatically be applied.

While resubmitting the donation with a credit card, it did indicate that I would get $100 matched. I’m not sure if this will be the case for other donors with PayPal issues, or if it’s necessary for each donor to contact every.org for help.

[Ramiro]

Thanks for the post. I realized that:

1. you don’t actually need to share the info about your donation, you just have to click on the “share” button

2. you can double your impact with an additional email

3. that’s sorta dangerous, because they don’t require confirmation through your mail box. so you could just use your friend’s e-mail to get bonus donations, which I assume is probably not ethical not legal.

[Ross_Tieman]

No longer considered a good idea:

Why don’t EA orgs just us this as an arbitrage opportunity?

Create a spread sheet and share it on the forum
EA orgs can add themselves to the spreadsheet if they agree to donate 100 dollars to all other charities on the list at a time x.

If 10 sign up they send $1,000 out and receive $2,000 back

If 30 sign up they send out $3,000 and receive $6,000 back consuming $90,000 of the total match remaining.

At 4:57 pm GMT there is ~194 K left for matching

This would also be an interesting case study in game theory, does EA have what it takes?

[WilliamKiely]

I don’t think people should do this because it seems like it is not in the spirit of the match.

Additionally, it would create a large risk of having the orgs removed from match eligibility (including retroactively removed). From the match terms and conditions:

Any activity not in the spirit of requesting separate individuals to support donations is being moderated by Every.org and Every.org reserves the right to permanently disqualify organizations for any attempts of misconduct. Every.org reserves the right to make final decisions on all matters concerning the allocation of the Incentive Fund.

[Ross_Tieman]

That is a good point—upon reflection, risk of organizations being removed outweighs the potential benefit, thanks for looking into the terms and conditions.

[Aric Floyd]

As others have noted, every.org announced on their blog page about this giving challenge that an additional $100k had been added to the incentive fund, which seems likely to be depleted by this time tomorrow.

William’s post covered most of this, but just to lay it out explicitly: if you are really intent on squeezing the most out of this opportunity, the suggestions below will allow you to direct a total of $420 to a charity of your choice (+ give an additional $25 to William that they will presumably distribute to a worthy cause) by spending $167. This takes the effective multiplier of this match up from 2.1x to more than 2.5x; that is not an enormous difference per donation, but each takes on the order of seconds to minutes, so in terms of an hourly rate of value generated, perhaps not a bad way to use one’s time. Note that all giving credits can be used like cash and so are included in the Giving Challenge and matched like any other donation.

• +$25 giving credit (and an additional $25 for William to donate): Make a new account via William’s referral link before making two $100 donations (two donations are required because you can only cash in your giving credits after your first donation is completed).

• +$5 giving credit (and also avoids 2 to 4.5% of your donation being skimmed by processing fees): Directly link a bank account as your payment method

• +$3 giving credit: At some point before you make your final donation, click a heart to “like” any three donations anywhere on every.org (this is the smallest gain, but also the lowest effort—it should take only a few seconds).

• $10 additional match: As mentioned in Will’s post, click any of the “share” buttons that appear after you confirm your donation, including the simple “copy link” button. You do not have to follow through with posting or sharing anything in order for the additional $10 to be added, though I would highly encourage spreading the word about this opportunity if you haven’t already!)

[MichaelStJules]

Please don’t make separate accounts with multiple e-mails, since that’s not in the spirit of the match and could get our charities disqualified. See William’s comment.

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