I think this is all correct as criticisms, and also very weak, and it’s enough to convince me we should make sure the organization is sufficiently funded to meet demand from new donors. The three key reasons are:
1) It doesn’t seem that the organization is materially misleading people, and at least is clear about what is happening, and isn’t allocating funds in ways that they would find upsetting.
2) It does create counterfactual donations to EA charities, albeit from the donors, not from the match.
3) This is a marginally effective use of EA dollars, especially if you are relatively cause neutral between the effective charities they support. That is, the donor still has given the money effectively, so (absent the below point about costs,) this can’t be any less effective that just giving the money to the organizations which end up receiving it. This is even more clear if the users who start with Giving Multiplier end up getting more involved in EA giving, which seems very likely, but unless overhead costs are high, it remains true without that. I’m unsure / they have not yet reported how much they have raised, how much has been donated, and what their costs have been. (I’d guesstimate the 1,000 donors are giving an average of over $50, and on average probably give around half to the EA org, as long as operating costs are a relatively small fraction of $25,000, it seems likely that it’s on net effective.)
Isn’t (2) is in conflict with (1)? That the counterfactual donations are all coming from the donors and not the matchers is not what (I would predict) the donors believe.
I don’t think that most donors who are looking at getting matching donations are particularly interested in thinking about / worried about counterfactual donations—but if they are, and bother to do minimal reading, the situation is very clear. (Note that they are doing counterfactual donation direction, since otherwise the money will not necessarily go to the organization they picked, which is what, in my experience, most non-EA people think they are doing when getting matched donations.)
I think this is all correct as criticisms, and also very weak, and it’s enough to convince me we should make sure the organization is sufficiently funded to meet demand from new donors. The three key reasons are:
1) It doesn’t seem that the organization is materially misleading people, and at least is clear about what is happening, and isn’t allocating funds in ways that they would find upsetting.
2) It does create counterfactual donations to EA charities, albeit from the donors, not from the match.
3) This is a marginally effective use of EA dollars, especially if you are relatively cause neutral between the effective charities they support. That is, the donor still has given the money effectively, so (absent the below point about costs,) this can’t be any less effective that just giving the money to the organizations which end up receiving it. This is even more clear if the users who start with Giving Multiplier end up getting more involved in EA giving, which seems very likely, but unless overhead costs are high, it remains true without that. I’m unsure / they have not yet reported how much they have raised, how much has been donated, and what their costs have been. (I’d guesstimate the 1,000 donors are giving an average of over $50, and on average probably give around half to the EA org, as long as operating costs are a relatively small fraction of $25,000, it seems likely that it’s on net effective.)
Isn’t (2) is in conflict with (1)? That the counterfactual donations are all coming from the donors and not the matchers is not what (I would predict) the donors believe.
I don’t think that most donors who are looking at getting matching donations are particularly interested in thinking about / worried about counterfactual donations—but if they are, and bother to do minimal reading, the situation is very clear.
(Note that they are doing counterfactual donation direction, since otherwise the money will not necessarily go to the organization they picked, which is what, in my experience, most non-EA people think they are doing when getting matched donations.)