Sacrifice: not so small as to feel meaningless and not so extreme as to be unreasonable.
E.g., not donating a couple cents every century and not reducing oneself to poverty or martyrdom.
GiveWell (1)
Animal Charity Evaluators (2)
Who are we marketing it to?
Various individuals who have extra money, and are not caught up buying the next phone and bigger car*:
(1) Empathetic liberals (I guess), those who haven’t been rich all their life, altruists, etc.
Not hard conservatives, not those who haven’t given others a second thought, not rationalists.
(2) veg*ans, and others I don’t know how to categorize specifically...
Who will be doing the marketing?
Almost all effective altruists except those who are CEOs of non-EA based orgs. In other words, those who are not forever swamped in work (or certain specific problems). Should all EAs? No, not really. Some know too little, and some convey the message poorly.
Where will (audience) ultimately buy the product?
The “beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that produce effective giving behavior” should not be thought of as something to hard sell. It should be sometimes thought as bringing simple awareness, and building a dialogue with others.
“not going to waste it on a big house, a new car every year and a bunch of friends who want a big house and a new car every year.”—Larry (Bill Murray) The Razor’s Edge 1984 movie ~ 1944 book.
We posit that altruistic donors are more driven by the actual impact of their donation, and thus
information to reinforce or enhance perceived impacts will drive higher donations. On the
other hand, for warm glow donors, information on impacts may actually deter giving [because it’s not emotionally based]. This distinction is much along the lines of Kahneman (2003), in which System I decisions (peripheral decisions which use intuition and mere reaction, but no deliberation) are “warm glow” decisions, and System II decisions (deliberative decisions requiring conscious reasoning and thought) are “altruism” decisions.
I particularly like the “giving fast” vs “giving slow” distinction. One of the reasons I think donor intermediaries are so important is because they often nudge donors to give thoughtfully instead of instinctively. For instance, Donor Advised Funds represent an enormous opportunity both because of the size of the market and because they let donors separate the decisions of “whether/how much to give” and “why to give.”
What, exactly, are we marketing?
Sacrifice: not so small as to feel meaningless and not so extreme as to be unreasonable.
E.g., not donating a couple cents every century and not reducing oneself to poverty or martyrdom.
GiveWell (1)
Animal Charity Evaluators (2)
Who are we marketing it to?
Various individuals who have extra money, and are not caught up buying the next phone and bigger car*:
(1) Empathetic liberals (I guess), those who haven’t been rich all their life, altruists, etc.
Not hard conservatives, not those who haven’t given others a second thought, not rationalists.
(2) veg*ans, and others I don’t know how to categorize specifically...
Who will be doing the marketing?
Almost all effective altruists except those who are CEOs of non-EA based orgs. In other words, those who are not forever swamped in work (or certain specific problems). Should all EAs? No, not really. Some know too little, and some convey the message poorly.
Where will (audience) ultimately buy the product?
The “beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that produce effective giving behavior” should not be thought of as something to hard sell. It should be sometimes thought as bringing simple awareness, and building a dialogue with others.
“not going to waste it on a big house, a new car every year and a bunch of friends who want a big house and a new car every year.”—Larry (Bill Murray) The Razor’s Edge 1984 movie ~ 1944 book.
Related Research
https://www.nber.org/papers/w20047.pdf#page=13
Thanks for sharing these thoughts!
I particularly like the “giving fast” vs “giving slow” distinction. One of the reasons I think donor intermediaries are so important is because they often nudge donors to give thoughtfully instead of instinctively. For instance, Donor Advised Funds represent an enormous opportunity both because of the size of the market and because they let donors separate the decisions of “whether/how much to give” and “why to give.”