That said, I’m aware something like this has been tried elsewhere and considered unsuccessful (sorry for not mentioning where, I’m not sure whether I was told this in confidence or not, but if you message me privately I can tell you more—it was not an EA context)
The reason appears to be that donors want to have a sense of ownership of the success that they have made happen, whereas putting money into a fund makes the donor’s impact even more indirect.
(This is also the reason why I personally would be unlikely to use this facility, despite the fact that I also find it hard, difficult work to find optimal giving opportunities)
This may work if EAs are less glory-seeking donors than non-EAs (and me, for that matter!) I suspect that this is probably the case.
It is true that many in the traditional charity market have tried ideas similar to this without much success. I think the EA community is very different from traditional charity and I think the idea might make sense for the EA community. That said, I retain some probability that the idea will fail for the same reasons that it has failed outside of EA.
I think this will probably be useful to many EAs.
That said, I’m aware something like this has been tried elsewhere and considered unsuccessful (sorry for not mentioning where, I’m not sure whether I was told this in confidence or not, but if you message me privately I can tell you more—it was not an EA context)
The reason appears to be that donors want to have a sense of ownership of the success that they have made happen, whereas putting money into a fund makes the donor’s impact even more indirect.
(This is also the reason why I personally would be unlikely to use this facility, despite the fact that I also find it hard, difficult work to find optimal giving opportunities)
This may work if EAs are less glory-seeking donors than non-EAs (and me, for that matter!) I suspect that this is probably the case.
It is true that many in the traditional charity market have tried ideas similar to this without much success. I think the EA community is very different from traditional charity and I think the idea might make sense for the EA community. That said, I retain some probability that the idea will fail for the same reasons that it has failed outside of EA.