Are you considering cause-specific matching funders? Or allow matchers to choose among which charities they’ll match (as long as it’s at least 2, to ensure regular donors still have some counterfactual impact).
This could allow the individual CEA Funds, GiveWell, ACE, etc. to put matching funds there, too.
I also worry that if you don’t allow cause-specific matching funders, you’ll get fewer of them. I’d personally prefer to earmark my donations to specific causes.
This is a good point and we’ve considered it. I agree that there are advantages to allowing matchers to support only specific causes (or charities).
But there are also downsides. In addition to the ones you list below, the matching system would be somewhat less honest. Since the matcher would per default have donated to that cause/charity anyway, you as a donor don’t really influence where the matcher’s funding goes to. With our current system, in contrast, you do influence to which specific charity/cause the matcher’s funding goes to. But this comes at the costs of the matching funder, who has to be willing to support any of the nine effective charities we currently list.
I still think it’s worth thinking more about allowing for cause-specific matchings. But we don’t plan to implement it anytime soon.
Greater risk of running out of matching funds for specific EA charities.
Meta/community EA charities are kind of a public good in EA, so may go underfunded. You could require all matchers to match such charities (or at least one of them), though, although it would be good to ensure there’s consensus on what counts as a meta/community charity. E.g. 80,000 Hours is the closest to one of those listed now (and none of the others seem like meta/community EA charities), but they’re also pretty explicitly a longtermist organization and have their own cause priorities.
Are you considering cause-specific matching funders? Or allow matchers to choose among which charities they’ll match (as long as it’s at least 2, to ensure regular donors still have some counterfactual impact).
This could allow the individual CEA Funds, GiveWell, ACE, etc. to put matching funds there, too.
I also worry that if you don’t allow cause-specific matching funders, you’ll get fewer of them. I’d personally prefer to earmark my donations to specific causes.
This is a good point and we’ve considered it. I agree that there are advantages to allowing matchers to support only specific causes (or charities).
But there are also downsides. In addition to the ones you list below, the matching system would be somewhat less honest. Since the matcher would per default have donated to that cause/charity anyway, you as a donor don’t really influence where the matcher’s funding goes to. With our current system, in contrast, you do influence to which specific charity/cause the matcher’s funding goes to. But this comes at the costs of the matching funder, who has to be willing to support any of the nine effective charities we currently list.
I still think it’s worth thinking more about allowing for cause-specific matchings. But we don’t plan to implement it anytime soon.
Some potential drawbacks are:
Greater risk of running out of matching funds for specific EA charities.
Meta/community EA charities are kind of a public good in EA, so may go underfunded. You could require all matchers to match such charities (or at least one of them), though, although it would be good to ensure there’s consensus on what counts as a meta/community charity. E.g. 80,000 Hours is the closest to one of those listed now (and none of the others seem like meta/community EA charities), but they’re also pretty explicitly a longtermist organization and have their own cause priorities.