I think the biggest issue is that you shouldn’t pit an effective charity against (only) a strawman. There should be at least one other choice that’s compelling for emotional/effectiveness/etc based reasons. It’s fine to include a strawman in a 3+ charity GG and could lead to some useful outcomes. For instance, if you had college students choose between AMF/not EA but still compelling charity/their school, they’d probably see their school as a strawman. So this setup can get people who might counterfactually give to their school without thinking to instead think: “there are reasons to give to my school, but my charitable dollars can do way more good elsewhere.” Not only do people explicitly reject a default giving option, they also do so based on comparative impact which is how we want them to make future giving decisions.
My hunch is that the real value of an emotionally compelling charity is in the intensity of the experience it can create. This provides the opportunity to make really valuable “post-game asks” like getting them to sign up for the newsletter of an effective charity or charity evaluator.
I think the biggest issue is that you shouldn’t pit an effective charity against (only) a strawman. There should be at least one other choice that’s compelling for emotional/effectiveness/etc based reasons. It’s fine to include a strawman in a 3+ charity GG and could lead to some useful outcomes. For instance, if you had college students choose between AMF/not EA but still compelling charity/their school, they’d probably see their school as a strawman. So this setup can get people who might counterfactually give to their school without thinking to instead think: “there are reasons to give to my school, but my charitable dollars can do way more good elsewhere.” Not only do people explicitly reject a default giving option, they also do so based on comparative impact which is how we want them to make future giving decisions.
My hunch is that the real value of an emotionally compelling charity is in the intensity of the experience it can create. This provides the opportunity to make really valuable “post-game asks” like getting them to sign up for the newsletter of an effective charity or charity evaluator.