I think trust is one of the reasons why a donor may or may not decide to give to a fund over a charity, but there are others as well, e.g. a preference for supporting more specific causes or projects. I expect donors with these other reasons (who trust evaluators/​fund managers but would still prefer to give to individual charities (as well)) will value charity recommendations in areas for which there are no public and up-to-date evaluations available.
I think what I’d like to see is funds saying something like, if you want to support our work the best thing is to give to the fund, but the second best is to support orgs X, Y, Z. This recommendation wouldn’t be based on a public evaluation, but just on your trust in them as a funder.
Note that this is basically equivalent to the current situation: we recommend funds over charities but highlight supporting charities as the second-best thing, based on recommendations of evaluators (who are often also fund managers in their area).
Thinking more, other situations in which a donor might want to donate to specific charities despite trusting the grantmaker’s judgement include:
Preference adjustments. Perhaps you agree with a fund in general, but you think they value averting deaths too highly relative to improving already existing lives. By donating to one of the charities they typically fund that focuses on the latter you might shift the distribution of funds in that direction. Or maybe not; your donation also has the effect of decreasing how much additional funding the charity needs, and the fund might allocate more elsewhere.
Ops skepticism. When you donate through a fund, in addition to trusting the grantmakers to make good decisions you’re also trusting the fund’s operations staff to handle the money properly and that your money won’t be caught up in unrelated legal trouble. Donating directly to a charity avoids these risks.
Yeah agreed. And another one could be as a way of getting involved more closely with a particularly charity when one wants to provide other types of support (advice, connections) in addition to funding. E.g. even though I don’t think this should help a lot, I’ve anecdotally found it helpful to fund individual charities that I advise, because putting my personal donation money on the line motivates me to think even more critically about how the charity could best use its limited resources.
Thanks again for engaging in this discussion so thoughtfully Jeff! These types of comments and suggestions are generally very helpful for us (even if I don’t agree with these particular ones).
I think trust is one of the reasons why a donor may or may not decide to give to a fund over a charity, but there are others as well, e.g. a preference for supporting more specific causes or projects. I expect donors with these other reasons (who trust evaluators/​fund managers but would still prefer to give to individual charities (as well)) will value charity recommendations in areas for which there are no public and up-to-date evaluations available.
Note that this is basically equivalent to the current situation: we recommend funds over charities but highlight supporting charities as the second-best thing, based on recommendations of evaluators (who are often also fund managers in their area).
Thinking more, other situations in which a donor might want to donate to specific charities despite trusting the grantmaker’s judgement include:
Preference adjustments. Perhaps you agree with a fund in general, but you think they value averting deaths too highly relative to improving already existing lives. By donating to one of the charities they typically fund that focuses on the latter you might shift the distribution of funds in that direction. Or maybe not; your donation also has the effect of decreasing how much additional funding the charity needs, and the fund might allocate more elsewhere.
Ops skepticism. When you donate through a fund, in addition to trusting the grantmakers to make good decisions you’re also trusting the fund’s operations staff to handle the money properly and that your money won’t be caught up in unrelated legal trouble. Donating directly to a charity avoids these risks.
Yeah agreed. And another one could be as a way of getting involved more closely with a particularly charity when one wants to provide other types of support (advice, connections) in addition to funding. E.g. even though I don’t think this should help a lot, I’ve anecdotally found it helpful to fund individual charities that I advise, because putting my personal donation money on the line motivates me to think even more critically about how the charity could best use its limited resources.
Thanks again for engaging in this discussion so thoughtfully Jeff! These types of comments and suggestions are generally very helpful for us (even if I don’t agree with these particular ones).