Trying to make donation matching counterfactual is manipulative behavior, in my opinion. People should be free to make donations to the charities that they think are best, rather than the ones that are the most donation-matched. If you want to convince people to donate to your favorite charity, just give an unconditional donation and tell other people that that’s what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
I’d say that using donation matching without making it counterfactual is much more manipulative, because without establishing causality, you’d essentially be deceiving potential ‘matchers’. My proposal precisely aims to remove this deceptive potential.
It’s possible that this kind of donation matching essentially shifts power to large funders. I think this could be mitigated by having a long whitelist of effective charities (rather than one specific charity chosen by the funder), which gives matchers more leeway.
I’m not a fan of non-counterfactual donation matching, but your proposal is making things worse, not better. You are basically holding hostage your donation to try to get other people to do what you want.
On the other hand, I like the idea of a long whitelist of charities, because then it is giving other people power. But I don’t see any connection between that and your proposal; just say that if not all matching funds get distributed initially then they get distributed according to some distribution determined beforehand by the matching funder.
Trying to make donation matching counterfactual is manipulative behavior, in my opinion. People should be free to make donations to the charities that they think are best, rather than the ones that are the most donation-matched. If you want to convince people to donate to your favorite charity, just give an unconditional donation and tell other people that that’s what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
I’d say that using donation matching without making it counterfactual is much more manipulative, because without establishing causality, you’d essentially be deceiving potential ‘matchers’. My proposal precisely aims to remove this deceptive potential.
It’s possible that this kind of donation matching essentially shifts power to large funders. I think this could be mitigated by having a long whitelist of effective charities (rather than one specific charity chosen by the funder), which gives matchers more leeway.
I’m not a fan of non-counterfactual donation matching, but your proposal is making things worse, not better. You are basically holding hostage your donation to try to get other people to do what you want.
On the other hand, I like the idea of a long whitelist of charities, because then it is giving other people power. But I don’t see any connection between that and your proposal; just say that if not all matching funds get distributed initially then they get distributed according to some distribution determined beforehand by the matching funder.