EA Giving Tuesday will likely hibernate in 2022, unless handed off to another EA-aligned organization

[mjamer]

Update October 13, 2022: Giving What We Can and One for the World are supporting a pared-down version of EA Giving Tuesday in 2022. Read more and sign up for updates in their post.

Summary

• We’re actively seeking an EA-aligned organization to lead EA Giving Tuesday in 2022 and future years. If you have ideas or leads, reach out to me (Megan Jamer) at [e-mail].

• Since 2017, the EA Giving Tuesday donation matching initiative has helped hundreds of EA donors direct over $1.9M USD in extra funding to effective nonprofits.

• Rethink Charity currently houses EA Giving Tuesday, and needs to hand it over to another EA-aligned organization before giving season.

• If not handed off, EA Giving Tuesday will “hibernate.” It’s likely the website and most of the resources will remain online indefinitely, but may be out of date.

What is EA Giving Tuesday?

EA Giving Tuesday organizes people around a shared goal: to direct matching funds to highly effective nonprofits that they wouldn’t otherwise receive. The project supports donors and highly effective nonprofits, to make it as easy as possible to participate in matching opportunities with counterfactual value. EA Giving Tuesday has historically been focused on Facebook’s Giving Tuesday match.

If you’re unfamiliar with the project, there’s in-depth information on our website, and in the EA Giving Tuesday 2020 retrospective. Since 2019, EA Giving Tuesday has been housed within Rethink Charity.

How valuable is EA Giving Tuesday?

The project’s main impact metric is matching funds directed to effective nonprofits during Facebook’s match. Here is what donors have accomplished through EA Giving Tuesday’s preparation and coordination efforts:

Year	Donated	Matched	Overall match %	Learn more
2017	$379k	$48k	13%	EA Forum post
2018	$719k	$469k	65%	EA Forum post
2019	$1.1M	$563k	52%	EA Forum post
2020	$1.6M	$412k	25%	EA Forum post
2021	$1.4M	$411k	29%	Website

The value of the matching funds should be weighed against the resources required to run the project. You can find more information about project inputs in the EA Forum posts linked in the table above.

The project may have other sources of value, including:

• Offering a way for EAs to collaborate and take tangible action together

• Potentially inspiring EAs to donate more, because of the match

• Being a source of frustration and joy that fuels the creation of potentially dank memes

When does the project need to be handed off by?

A hand off plan will likely need to be in place by September 30, 2022, if EA Giving Tuesday is to be actively run this year. Otherwise, the project will “hibernate.” The next section describes some likely changes under this “hibernation” scenario.

I’m a donor or effective nonprofit that’s participated in EA Giving Tuesday? What does this update mean for me?

EA Giving Tuesday will very likely “hibernate” if not handed off. Donors and nonprofits will see key changes in this hibernation form:

• We expect the website and most of the resources will likely remain online indefinitely.

• Donations will need to be made without a restriction (e.g., “Nonprofit’s X Project”) or the need for a regranting arrangement (e.g., “Nonprofit A via Nonprofit B”).

• We’ll add disclaimers to the website and resources (i.e., instructions and FAQ) to reflect that they won’t have been updated since 2021 and may be out of date.

If the project is handed off successfully with enough lead time before Giving Tuesday, its incoming leadership would plan and execute a 2022 strategy.

What type of organization could be a good fit to lead this project?

Here’s some characteristics of an organization that could be a great fit:

• The org’s mission involves effective giving and/​or EA community building.

• The org is an active member of the EA community, and would take trust and relationships with donors and nonprofits in this community seriously.

• The org either has a U.S.-based person to lead the project, or would be able to source U.S.-based talent for this role.

• The org has experience running complex operational projects.

• The org can take over this project permanently, not just in 2022.

If you have ideas or leads for others that could be a good fit, please email Megan at [e-mail].

What resources are required to run EA Giving Tuesday?

The receiving organization would be responsible for funding all project expenses and for recruiting a team and taking ownership of all of the systems used to run it (HubSpot, Mailchimp, Google Workspace, etc.).

Funding from EA funding sources could possibly be available for this project. For an idea of the time and resources required to run EA Giving Tuesday in the past, please see the Estimating our impact section of the 2020 retrospective.

I’ve received feedback that EA Giving Tuesday could be run in a leaner style, by focusing on the few aspects of the project that offer the most value. I basically agree! I think running a leaner project would be a good goal for the new leader to have.

Lead EA Giving Tuesday in 2022 and beyond!

I believe EA Giving Tuesday is a valuable project for the EA community. Unfortunately, neither I nor Avi Norowitz (the project’s leader for several years) are able to lead it. At this time, Rethink Charity is unable to recruit new leads for the project.

I’m deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to work on this project since 2020 alongside talented and dedicated colleagues. In particular, I have really enjoyed supporting a wide network of donors and nonprofits in the EA community.

EA Giving Tuesday is an exciting and operationally complex project that empowers donors in the EA community to take action together to maximize the impact of their donations.

If you’d like to help out with finding EA Giving Tuesday an EA-aligned organization to lead the project, please don’t hesitate to reach out – email [e-mail]!

[david_reinstein]

Q: Where can we see the ‘bottom line’ on the impact for the most recent years?

I’m looking for.

1. Additional amounts raised/​diverted relative to counterfactual (with no EA GT org)

minus

1. Cost (money and value of time) of this

As I didn’t see anything in the linked posts etc., I sketched one below (which took about 20 minutes):

Proto-BOTEC sort of for 2020, sort of going forward

A quick skim and proto-Botec from the recent linked report for 2020

1. Benefit: 243k increase in counterfactual funds raised for effective charities

Report: 411k in counterfactual matched donations …

• 275k from 100% match. Previous report suggests no EA donors would get the 100% match without the EA GT org. This seems wrong to me. Maybe EAGT made this happen in the past, but in the future many of the institutions and knowledge are in place … so let’s say 100k would be raised from this without EAGT going forward.
  --> 175k counterfactual impact of 80k

• $136k of which was from 10% match … ~ 40% of which obtained without EA GT (see discussion in that report) --> --> 81k counterfactual impact of 80k

81 + 175 = 256k

• Less 17% lost tax benefits, which I’ll estimate at 25% … so subtract about 5% of the total

1. $25,000 in costs (Hours organizing, other expenses)

466 + 297 = 763 paid and unpaid hours organizing this. I suspect that as we learn more, get better, have the sheets etc. in place, it will take fewer hours.

… So let’s say 450 total hours going forward.

I’m not sure what type of labor goes into this. Let’s say 150 hours of ‘managerial and tech time’ valued at $100 per hour, and 300 hours of ‘volunteer/​student time’ valued at $30/​hour.^[1]

150 * 100 + 300 * 30 = $24,000

Nonlabor costs … about $1000

Not considered:

• chances Facebook continues GT matches

• extent to which this leads counterfactual donations to be made

• less tangible benefits,

• cost of the time spent by donors (est: 411 donors spending ~30 min each = 200 hours = maybe 10k in value of time?)

Overall first-pass assessment

This seems like a potentially good use of resources. ~243k in increased amounts received by to EA charities per year. Let’s say these have 10x the value of the counterfactual matched charities, so a this is worth $219k per year.

Relative to perhaps $25-35k in time costs? Or, if I’m wrong about the ‘learn by doing time savings’, maybe $50-60k in time costs.

Probably worth doing, or worth further investigation (including perhaps a MonteCarlo Fermi using Squiggle or something).

---

1. ↩︎

   (Of course some might say EA hours are super valuable, on the other hand people get something out of this, it’s social, and it may not substitute for time spent solving X-risk issues etc.

[mjamer]

Hi David! I apologize for the very slow response. A few points:
- Your analysis makes me upgrade how important I think diligent time tracking is on this project in future years, segmented by e.g., ‘managerial and tech time’ vs ‘volunteer/​student time’
- I don’t have a go-to answer for you on the time costs for EA GT 2021. We had 2 Ops Specialists (Aisha and Mac) each work ~200 paid hours; I worked about 350 paid hours (including hiring and training); Avi worked probably a few hundred volunteer hours (including hiring and training); Gina and a few others worked a small amount of volunteer hours.
- Can the project’s time costs decrease via “learn by doing?” I am somewhat optimistic about this. But it’s tricky because historically, new people have had to be trained on the systems and context every year. So processes can be improved, but a big thing is getting the same people to contribute to the project year after year. And this is tough, because it’s uncertain the project will run any given year, and it’s only seasonal. Ideally, the “institutional knowledge” would sit at an EA org (ideally, with the same people) over the long term.
- Thanks again for your BOTEC, I enjoyed reading it and I imagine it has helped folks in the community evaluate the projects’ value.

[mjamer]

Thanks for taking the time to complete and share a first-pass assessment, David! I’ll follow up with a bit more info when I’m able.

[david_reinstein]

And thanks for all the work you have done on this project!

[mjamer]

I appreciate that—thanks! I have worked a lot on it. A lot of the credit goes to my great EA GT teammates, in present and past years.

[Jack Lewars]

Hi guys—OFTW is interested in hosting this. I’ll reach out by email.

[Denkenberger]

Is there funding available for the org/​individuals if they take it on?

[mjamer]

Hi David! At present, there’s no funding secured. That said, the project has received funding in past years. I’m relatively confident (70-80%) that for the right org/​individual, there are a few different funding sources that would consider funding it.