While I assume that all long-time EAs learn that employer donation matching is a thing, we’d do well as a community to ensure that everyone learns about it before donating a substantial amount of money, and clearly that’s not the case now.
For each thing ‘everyone knows’ by the time they’re adults, every day there are, on average, 10,000 people in the US hearing about it for the first time.
I also had a similar experience making my first substantial donation before learning about non-employer counterfactual donation matches that existed.
It was the only donation I regretted since by delaying making it 6 months I could have doubled the amount of money I directed to the charity for no extra cost to me.
That’s an interesting anecdote! I donated for the first time a few days ago, and did not know “Giving Tuesday” existed, so I’m one of today’s lucky 10,000. I really hope organisations like GWWC that help funnel money to the right charities engage in tricks like this; not investing your money immediately, but finding various opportunities to increase the pot. It would probably be worth the time and money at GWWC to centralize individual discoveries like this, and have a few people constantly looking out for opportunities. The EA forum only partially solves this.
Great point, thanks for sharing!
While I assume that all long-time EAs learn that employer donation matching is a thing, we’d do well as a community to ensure that everyone learns about it before donating a substantial amount of money, and clearly that’s not the case now.
Reminds me of this insightful XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1053/
I also had a similar experience making my first substantial donation before learning about non-employer counterfactual donation matches that existed.
It was the only donation I regretted since by delaying making it 6 months I could have doubled the amount of money I directed to the charity for no extra cost to me.
That’s an interesting anecdote! I donated for the first time a few days ago, and did not know “Giving Tuesday” existed, so I’m one of today’s lucky 10,000. I really hope organisations like GWWC that help funnel money to the right charities engage in tricks like this; not investing your money immediately, but finding various opportunities to increase the pot. It would probably be worth the time and money at GWWC to centralize individual discoveries like this, and have a few people constantly looking out for opportunities. The EA forum only partially solves this.