As I’m reading more,I’m realizing that multiplier organizations are not as much about evaluation as my post makes them out to be, so I will just say that I agree with the point in the post about wanting to give the single most effective charity rather than a mix, and not really understanding the value added of an intermediate organization.
To give you some updated numbers, in 2019 TLYCS raised over $6 for AMF for every dollar we spent on operations plus another $7 for other recommended charities. If you look only at GiveWell recommended charities, our multiplier was 10X.
As I mentioned to HStencil, if these multiplier numbers are remotely accurate, there’s a huge margin of safety. You could believe that donations to any charity other than AMF are totally worthless AND that TLYCS overestimated donations to AMF by 3x, and you still would have doubled your impact by giving to TLYCS. And our multiplier is going to be even higher this year. (I’m talking about TLYCS because that’s what I’m familiar with, but I also recall seeing strong multipliers from e.g. RC Forward and REG.)
As I’m reading more,I’m realizing that multiplier organizations are not as much about evaluation as my post makes them out to be, so I will just say that I agree with the point in the post about wanting to give the single most effective charity rather than a mix, and not really understanding the value added of an intermediate organization.
The multiplier for the single organization you want to support within the mix could still be > 1. From this:
These are old numbers, though.
I think this is a really important point.
To give you some updated numbers, in 2019 TLYCS raised over $6 for AMF for every dollar we spent on operations plus another $7 for other recommended charities. If you look only at GiveWell recommended charities, our multiplier was 10X.
As I mentioned to HStencil, if these multiplier numbers are remotely accurate, there’s a huge margin of safety. You could believe that donations to any charity other than AMF are totally worthless AND that TLYCS overestimated donations to AMF by 3x, and you still would have doubled your impact by giving to TLYCS. And our multiplier is going to be even higher this year. (I’m talking about TLYCS because that’s what I’m familiar with, but I also recall seeing strong multipliers from e.g. RC Forward and REG.)
Really appreciate that you spelled out your thinking so clearly- thank you!
I think intermediaries make more sense for more casual donors, unlike people like yourself who are putting lots of thought into where to give.