Thanks very much for your comments Peter, it’s very useful to know what people’s hesitations are. And thanks Ben, for answering! I just had a couple of quick things to add:
With regard to the one large donor—having one such actually makes it more likely that we’d attract others than it would have been otherwise. It doesn’t just provide evidence that it’s possible—it provides us with opportunities for meeting others in similar networks. Indeed, that has already happened. That impact is then partly due to the original large donor rather than separate things we do. But if attracting that original donor was impact down to GWWC, then presumably the impact of other donors coming partly through their help is similarly so.
It feels like you’re taking that 1:2.3 number at face value, but it’s worth bearing in mind that it leaves out a large number of our routes to impact, including, for example, any good done by donations to non-top charities, any good done by people giving to more effective charities than they would have otherwise, and any donations by non-members other than the one. And of course any money given by members in the future.
In terms of whether returns are diminishing or increasing, I think the third impact assessment on the fundraising prospectus is probably the most informative thing to read. It seems like at the moment we’re experiencing economies of scale rather than diminishing returns. That could be due to things like it being hard to be a very early adopter of something like giving 10%, but it being much easier to make the leap when there are already a whole bunch of people doing it; it could be because it’s easier now we’ve built up a bunch of infrastructure like a good website. Either way, it does seem to be the case.
Thanks very much for your comments Peter, it’s very useful to know what people’s hesitations are. And thanks Ben, for answering! I just had a couple of quick things to add: With regard to the one large donor—having one such actually makes it more likely that we’d attract others than it would have been otherwise. It doesn’t just provide evidence that it’s possible—it provides us with opportunities for meeting others in similar networks. Indeed, that has already happened. That impact is then partly due to the original large donor rather than separate things we do. But if attracting that original donor was impact down to GWWC, then presumably the impact of other donors coming partly through their help is similarly so. It feels like you’re taking that 1:2.3 number at face value, but it’s worth bearing in mind that it leaves out a large number of our routes to impact, including, for example, any good done by donations to non-top charities, any good done by people giving to more effective charities than they would have otherwise, and any donations by non-members other than the one. And of course any money given by members in the future. In terms of whether returns are diminishing or increasing, I think the third impact assessment on the fundraising prospectus is probably the most informative thing to read. It seems like at the moment we’re experiencing economies of scale rather than diminishing returns. That could be due to things like it being hard to be a very early adopter of something like giving 10%, but it being much easier to make the leap when there are already a whole bunch of people doing it; it could be because it’s easier now we’ve built up a bunch of infrastructure like a good website. Either way, it does seem to be the case.